The Cultural Aglomeration Zone (CAZ) project investigates the accumulation of cultural, historical, and environmental layers in Bahía Wulaia and Seno Ponsonby (in the Cape Horn archipelago), considering more than 7,000 years of occupation by seafaring nomads. In collaboration with the Austral University of Chile, the project will carry out an extensive study in the Ponsonby area during January and February 2026, with the aim of rethinking the current conception of human settlement in this territory and its historical interaction with the environment. Read more about the project here >>>
Author archives: Carsten Stabenow
Navigating Radiales
by Raviv Ganchrow + Carsten Stabenow
broadcast premiere, August 29, 2026, Deutschlandradio Kultur
This audio montage consists of raw location recordings, with no added audio effects, tracing a research journey through Chile’s southernmost regions (Tierra del Fuego and Navarino Island) to the decommissioned radio station at Wulaia Bay.
Antarctic Congresses 2025
X Latin American Congress of Antarctic Science +
XII Chilean Congress of Antarctic Research
From 28 July to 1 August 2025
During the last week of July, Valdivia will host the X Latin American Congress of Antarctic Science (CLCA) and the XII Chilean Congress of Antarctic Research (CCIA), two key events for scientific knowledge about the white continent. Both will be held at the Nahmías building on the Isla Teja Campus of the Universidad Austral de Chile and are organised by the IDEAL Centre, the Chilean Antarctic Institute (INACH) and the National Antarctic Research Council. The official inauguration will take place on Monday 28 July at 7pm at the Cervantes Theatre, and will bring together representatives from the academic, scientific and cultural world interested in the environmental dynamics of the southernmost part of the planet.
On this occasion, the transdisciplinary platform Terra Ignota has been invited to participate with an audiovisual intervention during the opening ceremony.
Continue reading “Antarctic Congresses 2025”Presentation at Weltmuseum Vienna
On July 18th, we presented the Terra Ignota platform along with several of our recent research initiatives at the Weltmuseum Wien. On this occasion, we also visited the museum’s depots—the collections of the Weltmuseum Wien comprise around 200,000 objects, of which only 1.5% are on public display. Accompanied by Claudia Augustat, curator of the South America Collection and member of the Terra Ignota team, we had the opportunity to conduct an in-depth exploration of the museum’s archives.
Continue reading “Presentation at Weltmuseum Vienna”Interfacing Ecologies
Date: 10 April 17:00 – 18:30 (CET)
Online on Zoom
How do mammalian abilities of hearing and sounding underwater adapt to marine environments? What interlinks cetacean sounds, seabed topographies and ocean structures? How do human-whale relations refract through maritime and coastal techniques? This talk sets these questions in dialogue with insights and discoveries from recent experimental hydrophone recordings in the Chilean sub-Antarctic archipelago of Magallanes.
Raviv Ganchrow is going to present Wahle Refractions at Interaction Design @ Zurich University of the Arts. See details >>>
Inauguration of the UACh Academic Year 2025
The Faculty of Architecture and Arts at the Universidad Austral de Chile (UACh) will kick off its Academic Year 2025 with an inaugural event to be held on Wednesday, April 3, starting at 2:15 p.m. in the university’s Aula Magna. The event will feature Terra Ignota.
During the opening ceremony, the members of Terra Ignota, Nicolás Spencer, Florencia Curci and Iván Flores (Director Instituto Artes FAA, Chile), will present the talk ‘TERRA IGNOTA: Transdisciplinary research and creative methodologies’, in which they will share their experience in the exploration of innovative methodologies for the generation of knowledge in contexts of environmental and social change.
Later at 16:30 hours, Terra Ignota will carry out the intervention ‘Ecotono’ in the Emilio Pugin building of the Faculty of Science, a proposal that seeks to activate through vibrations the interstice between the Botanical Park and the building. Professors and students from both faculties have been invited to participate in this intervention, fostering an interdisciplinary dialogue between art and science.
Traces and Encounters
Traces and Encounters – Between Art, Science and the Museum.
Date: 5 and 6 February from 18:00 – 20:00
Venue: Museo Territorial Yagán Usi – Martín González Calderón
Aragay corner Gusinde, Puerto Williams, Chile.
As part of the Radiales project the interdisciplinary group Terra Ignota invites dialogue on present and future ways of caring for the natural and cultural heritage on Isla Navarino, through a two-day programme of presentations, listening and workshop sessions. Through these meetings Terra Ignota proposes places of community resonance by opening up its way of working that includes the use of artistic, scientific and museological tools. see details >>>
Whale Refractions: Heritage in the Age of Mammals
How do shifting relations between mammals, climate and geology refract through whale sounds? And how are human techniques of hearing underwater conductive of transformations in human-whale relations?
Raviv Ganchrow is researching rigth now as a fellow of The Centre for Advanced Study inherit. heritage in transformation based at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He will present his project on November 19 @ Lecture Hall 3075, Main Building, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin for the first time (details here). He will be also part of the upcoming artistic research workshop Listening in Practice on November 14 @ Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik (HZK) / Tieranatomisches Theater (TA T).
Two new research programmes for 2024/25
Following the Terra Ignota Forum 2024 we started two new research initiatives – Radiales and Cerro Otten. Radiales is the geographic continuity of the “Intercultural Contact Zone” research further south to the island of Navarino. The project is proposing the development of an “emerging archive” that responds to the need for new cartographies that reflect the complexities that integrate territories based on the systematization of knowledge, know-how and sensitivities, with the contribution of transdisciplinarity and the local community. Cerro Otten is an archaeological prospection in Última Esperanza, Magallanes, Chile and is following the discovery (2022) of rock-paintings by Alfredo Prieto.
Terra Ignota Forum 24 @ UMAG
After collaborations with institutions such as the Ethnological Museum Vienna (Weltmuseum Wien) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Santiago (MAC), the first TIF field lab and forum in Yendegaia National Park in March 2023, the geographical mirrored experience with the field lab in Northern Germany (Rügen, September 2023) and the knowledge transfer and training programme at La Leñera Cultural Centre in Valdivia (December 2023), the different lines of activities – which include fieldwork, research, artistic production, mediation and education – now converge in the Terra Ignota Forum hosted by the Universidad de Magallanes in Punta Arenas.
Exhibición March 01 – June 31
Forum March 13 – 15