Terra Ignota is a transdisciplinary research platform that has been developing a recurrent nomadic laboratory in the sub-Antarctic territory of Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn since 2015. The modular team is testing hybride scientific/artistic methods of knowledge-production and mediation in a territory with unique ecosystemic and geopolitical singularities that is undergoing rapid transformations. In a modular way – through interconnected encounters and thematic clusters – it facilitates artistic alliances and interdisciplinary learning that is strongly rooted in the local and founded on sustainable partnerships.
In the past five years, Terra Ignota has studied the effects of anthropogenic influence in the Zona de Contacto Intercultural (1) – between Bahia Blanca and Yendegaia Bay, and its geological extension through the Murray Channel to the bio-cultural aggregation zone of Seno Ponsonby. A current research focus among others is the development of a contemporary archive(2) and comprehensive vertical mapping(3) approach of this territory, connecting diverse layers of information from geophysiological deep time to global data streams, trying to understand their complex entanglements. (see Radiales)
(1) Zona de Contacto Intercultural
a natural corridor served as a place of contact between three ancestral ethnic groups that used to traverse this area: the Selk’nam, Kawésqar, and Yagán. (see details)
(2) contemporary or emerging archive
a register that organises and represents the connections between the elements of the territory, considering them as sources of information. More than a storage of data, this archive systematises and translates knowledge in terms of matter, energy and information, covering time scales ranging from geological processes to the present. (see details)
(3) vertical mapping
Cartography of a territory that transcends the three Cartesian planes that delimit it, incorporating temporal and sensorial factors (example vertical cartography). (example vertical cartographl)