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- SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chileans
stood in
awe on Wednesday as they watched a young woman roll out of bed
and get
dressed inside a glass house one block from the presidential palace
as
part of an art project.
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- Actress Daniella Tobar sleeps, showers, uses the
bathroom,
eats, brushes her teeth, reads and talks on the phone inside
the simple,
one-room transparent house, which is in the heart of
downtown Santiago
next to a bank and church and built in an empty,
weed-filled lot across
the street from the stock exchange.
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- In a bold step for
the Catholic, conservative South American
nation, the National Fund for
the Development of the Arts financed the
project, which aims to open a
debate about public and private spaces and
will run for two weeks
before heading to neighboring Argentina.
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- The house, built especially for
the project, is surrounded
by a wall, but passersby can easily peer
over it. Metal barricades have
been set up along the street to keep
pedestrians from interrupting the
flow of traffic.
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- ``I feel a little bit like I am
in a glass zoo. I do
not think people are ready for this. In this
country, people need to learn
to see the beauty in daily life,'' Tobar
told radio Cooperativa.
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- About a hundred people -- most of them men -- stood on
the sidewalk under the tiring sun on Wednesday afternoon waiting for Tobar
to reappear. An occasional ``here comes the chick'' raised and immediately
dashed the crowd's hopes when found to be a false alarm.
-
- Another person in the
crowd shouted, ``I bet Frei is
watching,'' referring to the proximity
to President Eduardo Frei's headquarters.
-
- ``I came here out of
curiosity,'' Sergio Subiabre, a
46-year-old agricultural worker who
came from Talagante, 24 miles (38 km)
southwest of Santiago just to see
Tobar, told Reuters.
-
- ``This is a way to show feminine beauty,'' he said,
adding
that he had been waiting four hours just to see her, but she
still had
not returned.
-
- Tobar appears to have won a secret admirer. A red rose
tied with a ribbon lay atop a white envelope in the dirt inside her patio,
waiting for her arrival.
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