The ideas of meeting and encounter sparked the Terra Ignota project, initiated in 2015 by and for a dynamic group of Chilean and international artists, scientists, curators and producers as a recurrent nomadic lab in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.
The transdisciplinary research platform studies the relationships between culture, nature, knowledge and their different forms of representation. Terra Ignota is a concept used in maps to designate places unknown to mankind. We propose the extension of this concept to refer to the little or erroneous knowledge we have as a society of the territory beyond the geographical confines of the extreme south of the planet.
Terra Ignota is informed by archeology, (colonial) history, (indigenous) practices, nature and climate of the region and is aiming to connect that to urgent global questions. It is rhizomatic, it moves slowly, listens, zooms in and out, and connects.
In a modular way – through small-scale and interconnected encounters and thematic clusters – it facilitates artistic alliances and interdisciplinary learning that is strongly rooted in the local. Terra Ignota aims to develop and grow organically from the local context while it is conscious of its outside perspective and embraces a non-extractivist attitude. Endorsing omitted native and historical knowledge, Terra Ignota aims to stimulate and contribute to new entangled narratives, artistic production and mediation. The dialogue and encounters it facilitates, feed into the wider practice of the participating artists, curators and scientists.
Terra Ignota’s periodic encounters continuously (re)shape the direction of the project. The outcomes are critically evaluated and research questions and methods are addapted. The process is driven by the constant feedback of the place and it’s communities and based on trust and mutual inspiration. The various results are verified and presented as artistic and scientific publications, performances, interventions, installations, workshops and discourse formats in the very direct local as well the international context. Central to our work is the question of representation – the mediation and translation to different audiences.
The project evolves in the current backdrop of massive local and global developments. Chile, and many other places, are in crisis, in a historical moment in which the prevailing economic system and the laws that support it have been exhausted. The idea of development linked to unlimited material progress has nullified our core values and has amalgamated our society in a purely utilitarian pragmatic mindset. Progress has replaced the ideas of equality and respect for maximization and extraction. We are in a historical moment in which economic and social models are becoming increasingly obsolete and the poor understanding of our relationship with the environment has led us to a general state of fear and instability.
Terra Ignota will have to adapt to these new realities. It is even more important now that new sociocultural-, resource utilization and distribution paradigms are being explored, and that cultural and educational platforms are developed that are inclusive, decentralized and not extractive. Approached in careful steps and small research groups, with slow pace but in-depth, in order to search for the right dialogue with a place. A search that starts from the Southern tip of Chile but that relates to the planet, acknowledging that these are global issues and that a re-listening is necessary that involves all and everyone.
