Afluir Journal

Peace Center: Learning Experiences of Arts Students from the Central University of Ecuador at the Conclusion of the National Strike of June 2022

Pablo Tatés Anangonó — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On June 13, 2022, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities, CONAIE, declared a National Strike. For the indigenous movement, the symbolic taking of Quito, the capital of Ecuador, is important in its mobilization processes. This means for the peasantry to search for allies who support their actions. The students of the Faculty of Arts of the Central University of Ecuador organized to adapt the faculty facilities as a Peace Center, intended to provide food and shelter to the farmers who moved to Quito. Members of 38 communities in the province of Cotopaxi, located 192 kilometers from Quito, belonging to the UNOCAM Peasant Union, occupied this Peace Center. The objective of this work is to demonstrate what has been learned by the peasant arts students. A qualitative methodology was developed that encompasses participant observation and semi-structure interviews through which a memory of what happened is made. At the end of this interaction, the students changed their perception about politics, interculturality and the meaning of art.

Artistic action as a means for the social visibility of the deaf community.

María Lorena Cueva Ramírez — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article is an approach to the narrative-based research titled Look at me, I want to talk to you. Visibility and social interaction of the deaf community through artistic action. From the analysis of socio-educational mediation work through the arts with the group, and from repeatedly recounting the process, results, and conclusions reached over the years of working with them, this narrative approach emerges. Through it, the need to take a further step becomes evident—namely, to narrate.

Based on a series of artistic practices carried out with the Provincial Association of Deaf People of Jaén, the collection of their results, and the awareness of the need to create a communication channel with people outside the community—so that society can better understand the reality of this community and the individuals within it—the idea arose to create a public exhibition showcasing the work produced with APROSOJA.

It could be said that this article presents a creative research process, structured narratively. It is an inquiry that has led me to the exhibition format, which appears to offer a solution to the visibility issue that so deeply concerns the community. In other words, it seeks to answer the question: Can artistic action serve as a means for the visibility and social interaction of the deaf community with the rest of society?

Looking for the musical meaning

Álvaro Sanz Fernández — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Historically, it has been widely accepted—without controversy—that music not only possesses meaning but is also capable of conveying it. Indeed, countless artists and philosophers of art have gone so far as to describe it as the “supreme language.” Similarly, it is generally understood that music operates and communicates within a metatextual (beyond its written form, the score) and temporal dimension. In other words, the mere study of its formal properties is insufficient to access the symbolic plane in which it unfolds. Nevertheless, the discipline that has traditionally sought to analyze music has largely remained within formalist paradigms, reducing its symbolic and metatextual nature to its immanent properties: formalism.

This article seeks to propose a new perspective on the matter—a sort of paradigm shift in conceiving the musical object as a sign: Semantically Informed Interpretation (SII). Drawing on semiotics (given that musical language exists within a semiotic ecosystem), hermeneutics (since performers, theorists, and audiences alike make interpretive inferences about the musical work), and narratology (by framing music as a language endowed with symbolic properties), SII positions itself as an alternative to traditional approaches to music and its meaning.

The Music education and its pedagogical use in the state of Sinaloa, México

Jesús Fernando Ramírez Bernal, Karele Maxinahí Félix Piña — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Music education constitutes a fundamental pillar in the holistic development of students, as it fosters creativity, strengthens cognitive skills, and promotes cultural awareness. However, in Mexico, and particularly in Sinaloa, its implementation in basic education faces structural and policy-related limitations. This paper therefore analyzes the current state of music education in Sinaloa’s primary schools, highlighting both the challenges and opportunities that exist to consolidate its pedagogical role. Among the main obstacles are limited infrastructure, lack of musical instruments, insufficient pedagogical training of some teachers, and the perception of music as an extracurricular supplement rather than an essential area of learning. In this context, the New Mexican School (NEM) proposes a curricular renewal framework, although it is primarily aimed at generalist teachers, which reduces the impact of arts specialists. In response, the Department of Artistic Education of the Secretaría de Educación Pública y Cultura (SEPyC) of Sinaloa, Mexico, has developed synthetic programs that seek to integrate music and other artistic expressions into curricula, adapting them to the needs of school communities. It is concluded that consolidating music education in Sinaloa requires institutional recognition of specialist teachers, greater investment in infrastructure, and a pedagogical approach that values music as a transversal resource for both learning and humanistic formation.

Animation and wartime conflict, Studio Ghibli as a study context

Vicente Monleón Oliva — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Studio Ghibli is consolidating its position as one of the most influential animation
production companies globally, addressing deeply current and controversial issues such as
feminism, ecology, sexual dissidence, and armed conflict in its narratives. These themes,
integrated into its stories and characters, resonate widely with the public, generating significant
media and cultural impact. The study employs a qualitative methodology of Image-Based
Research (IBR) to explore how war is represented in Studio Ghibli films, analyzing the visual
and symbolic narrative of the company's movies. Through a visual and contextual analysis, the
study examines how Ghibli utilizes graphic and narrative elements to showcase the destructive
impact of war, highlighting its effects on individuals, communities, and nature itself. This
approach allows for deep reflection on the capacity of animation to raise awareness and educate
audiences of all ages, promoting pacifist values and a critical perspective toward armed conflict.
The results suggest that Studio Ghibli not only entertains but also emotionally and ethically
educates the audience, proposing alternatives to conflict through complex characters and
powerful visual narratives. This type of cinema fosters civic awareness regarding sensitive
issues, enabling an Artistic Education that transcends the screen and becomes a valuable
resource for critical analysis in educational contexts.

School visits to museums and art centres: analysis of the perspective of two pedagogical departments

Navarro, Diego Luna — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The main objective of this exploratory case study was to understand how school group
visits from Primary Education are planned and conducted, based on the experiences of
professionals working in the educational departments of the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville and
the Andalusian Centre of Contemporary Art, respectively. To collect participants’ testimonies, a
structured interview was conducted following a script of questions inspired by the scientific
literature. The results obtained are organized here into three thematic blocks: 1) educational
programs and the school curriculum; 2) educational departments and their teaching strategies;
and 3) the experience with Primary Education groups. The analysis and discussion of such
results contribute to problematizing and relativizing the educational impact of school visits to
museums and art centres.

Paradigm shift in the use of social networks

Andrés Armando Rojas Galeano — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 08:20:51 +0000

Humanity has gradually emerged from the global pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus. A pandemic that wreaked unprecedented havoc in the contemporary world: millions of deaths, a health crisis, confinement, social distancing, in addition to collective surrender and the subsequent discovery of panoptic surveillance, are just some of them. Unfortunately, these havocs acted merely as a preamble to a warlike confrontation between two different world orders: the established one and the one aspired to be. Unprecedented in the contemporary era, these events have primarily hurt the backbone of the developed world, the first world.
As a result, those in power within the world order have been severely affected by the damage caused. While the rest of the world, the developing world, although also seriously disrupted by circumstances, is more accustomed to these "systemic disruptions" and is advancing like a runaway horse, blindfolded.