Artist Residency
Dispositivo 2/Plataforma Editable
17-25 June 2014
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Dispositivo 2/Plataforma Editable flyer
The yearly residency is conceived as point of cultural and artistic exchange between artists and curators and local Chilean Audiences. I was invited because of my PhD investigation of the transformation of the Atacama Desert by the copper mining industry. It is organised by the curator, Rodolfo Andaur, who works from Iquique, at the heart of the Atacama Desert and is funded by Chilean Ministry of Culture. For the 2014 residency, the participants were: the curators, Soledad García and Lorenzo Sandoval, as well as the artists Benjamin Ossa and I. The project was structured as an artists’ residency. It involved a series of fieldwork investigations and workshops/lectures with local artists. The work had a strong impact as the regions where the activities took place are major mining zones. In addition to the activities, during this residency I conducted a photographic work, Chanavaya, of a former guano extraction zone in the Tarapacá Region, a work which has been featured in the TSOEG website.
Guano provides a rich source of fertilizer. For centuries, guano and the birds that produce it played a crucial role in the cultural activities of indigenous communities of Latin America, who were concerned with the fertility of the land and sea. During the industrial revolution, guano helped the increasing farming intensive needs in many parts of the earth as well as the imperial aspirations of European power. The appropriation of guano deposits was the main reason of the first international conflict of the industrial age fought almost entirely over a natural resource, the War of Pacific (1879-84).
These remote extractive geographies witnessed the suicides committed by hundreds of Cantonese slaves because of harsh working conditions of the working environment. Today, instead of guano, workers from Peru and Bolivia collect ‘huiros’, an algae which is exported mainly to Asian Markets, such as China and Japan for the cosmetic and food industries.