The Spectropolis

The Spectropolis examines the traces of widespread violence etched across the deserts of northern Chile and Bolivia. It views these scars as temporal imprints left by the traumatic shifting of paradigms from Spanish colonisation to the contemporary lust for “white gold” lithium. These extractivist mentalities declare the deserts and salt lakes of the Lithium Triangle blank slates, empty vessels to be filled with productive bodies and mercilessly extracted. The Spectropolis rejects this claim suggesting that the memories and traces of past violences persist and continue to haunt the region. It is a cautionary tale for the impacts of extractivist operations.

The catalogue of wounds draws scars and absences from the Lithium Triangle. The follies are a reinterpretation of these wounds, cleansing the colonial and extractivist myths of the salt lake.

The Spectropolis is anti-utopian in that is not strictly defined, having porous borders that allow for the spontaneous emergence of a necropolis, following the ritualistic procession of a festival gathering.

Rings of inhabitation growing outwards from the central folly. Passing from smaller rituals of care to the monumental folly in the centre dedicated to the wider wounds of the region.

Arriving at the ritual site. Co-inhabitation of the animitas with spectres. Ritual burning of the central folly to cleanse the salt lake of its inherited scars and wounds.

Influenced by the cabinet of curiosities, the artefact builds a virtual world through a curation of the scars and wounds of the territory, and the follies which re-imagine them.