Solid Water, Frozen Time, Future Justice: Photography and Mining in the Andean Glaciers, shortened as Frozen Future is the latest project by Traces of Nitrate (Louise Purbrick, Xavier Ribas, Ignacio Acosta). We have widened our geographical scope to glacial systems of the Central Andes and have returned to the Salar de Atacama. Our focus is also extended through closer collaborations with activists and the use of sound, but photography is still at the centre of our work. Frozen Future experiments with the spatial and temporal collisions that can be created by photography to expose the global relationships, legacies and inequalities of capitalism, colonialism and extractivism. The historical and colonial relation we continue to explore is that between Chile and Britain, which has shaped the contemporary journey of minerals that fuel electric and digital technologies. They may be called ‘green’ yet they are dependent upon highly industrialised mining operations often occluded from public view. Frozen Future studies lithium alongside copper. Mining for both substances has reshaped the living spaces of earthly landscapes and altered the course of waterways. The work of Frozen Future is the documentation of the extractivism of the Earth’s materials and the consequent disruption of its water cycles to seek ecological justice.

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Supported by
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), UK

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Links
Traces of NItrate

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Frozen Future, Royal College or Art, London
Ignacio Acosta, Royal College of Art, London

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