A richly illustrated survey of Alfredo Jaar's Studies on Happiness (1979-1981) and its deep political stakes in the historical context of Chile's neoliberal transition. Between 1979 and 1981, Alfredo Jaar asked Chileans a deceptively simple question: "Are you happy?" Through private interviews, sidewalk polls and video-recorded forums, among other interventions, Jaar's three-year and seven-phase project,
Studies on Happiness, addressed a furtive and fearful population living under Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship. It also spoke to a country in transition, as a newly adopted constitution remade Chile through privatisation and other neoliberal reforms. In its varied interventions and direct mode of address,
Studies on Happiness functioned as a feedback device meant to catalyse a critical awareness with its blunt questioning.
Edward A. Vazquez contextualises
Studies on Happiness within Jaar's early production and situates his practice within a Chilean art world haunted by the residues of political violence. This study foregrounds the project's historical embeddedness and the deep political stakes of its apparent sociality, recognising the crucial role that context has always played in Jaar's practice. By turning to the Santiago of
Studies on Happiness, Vazquez explores the work's political and art historical environment and provides a wedge to realign current interpretations of Chilean art and hemispheric conceptualism with the openness central to Jaar's project.
一部豐富插圖的調查，探討阿爾弗雷多·哈爾（Alfredo Jaar）的《幸福研究》（Studies on Happiness，1979-1981）及其在智利新自由主義轉型歷史背景下的深刻政治意涵。
在1979年至1981年間，阿爾弗雷多·哈爾向智利人提出了一個看似簡單的問題：「你快樂嗎？」透過私人訪談、人行道民調和錄影論壇等多種介入方式，哈爾的為期三年、七個階段的計畫《幸福研究》針對生活在奧古斯托·皮諾切特（Augusto Pinochet）軍事獨裁下的隱秘而恐懼的民眾進行探討。這個計畫同時也反映了一個正在轉型的國家，因為新採納的憲法透過私有化和其他新自由主義改革重塑了智利。在其多樣的介入和直接的表達方式中，《幸福研究》作為一個反饋裝置，旨在透過其直白的提問來催化批判意識。
愛德華·A·瓦斯奎茲（Edward A. Vazquez）將《幸福研究》置於哈爾早期創作的背景中，並將他的實踐定位於一個受到政治暴力殘留影響的智利藝術界。這項研究突顯了該計畫的歷史嵌入性及其表面社會性背後的深刻政治意涵，認識到背景在哈爾的實踐中始終扮演著關鍵角色。透過探討《幸福研究》的聖地牙哥，瓦斯奎茲探索了該作品的政治與藝術歷史環境，並提供了一個切入點，以重新調整當前對智利藝術和半球概念主義的詮釋，與哈爾計畫中核心的開放性相一致。
Edward A. Vazquez is associate professor in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Middlebury College. A scholar of modern and contemporary art, he is interested in the terms of materiality and everyday processes of art making in the wake of conceptual art in Europe and the Americas. He is the author of Aspects: Fred Sandback's Sculpture (2017) and his writings have appeared in Art Journal, Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, caa.reviews, and in edited volumes and exhibition catalogues.
