projects

During this year’s exploration, we will install a radio studio in the former Wulaia station and broadcast daily. We will continue the research in situ, offering listeners a perspective on different projects while experimenting with the radio format itself.

The Cultural Agglomeration Zone project investigates the accumulation of cultural, historical, and environmental layers in Bahía Wulaia and Seno Ponsonby (in the Cape Horn archipelago).
Indigenous habitation, over prolonged periods of time, is also understood as a sustainable model from which to gauge current transformations in the region. The effects of climate change in Ponsonby can be observed in real-time through precipitation patterns and vegetation as well as the rapid growth in maritime logistics and expanding Antarctic route linked with the politics and economics of the thawing polar region. This increasing global pressure threatens the fragile local heritage and its uniquely rich sub-Antarctic oceanic ecosystem. Ancient forests, lichen cultures, peat- and wetlands, rivers, and marine habitats and migration channels become increasingly vulnerable in a geopolitical zone that has long been shaped by territorial disputes that ignores this ecological fragility.

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.

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. On this occasion, the transdisciplinary platform Terra Ignota has been invited to participate with an audiovisual intervention during the opening ceremony.

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.

Since 1967, Villa Ukika —founded as part of state relocation policies— has been the main Yagán settlement on Navarino Island, in the heart of the Fuegian archipelago. In its surroundings, the Ukika Municipal Park stands out as a true living archive of ancestral knowledge and history, thanks to the presence of at least 103 documented Culturally Modified Trees (CMTs) to date.

Raviv Ganchrow is going to present Wahle Refractions at Interaction Design @ Zurich University of the Arts.

This application is designed to distribute the content stored in rocks, wind, and the gaze of a subjective observer along 1000 km of the fire-patagonian territory. The platform functions as a map that transcends the three Cartesian planes that delimit it, managing information that integrates spatial, temporal, and sensory dimensions.

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 my stay in Wulaia, I repeatedly imagine the scene of the first radio transmission. I playfully extrapolate that late 19th-century moment in the United Kingdom, where a sound generated in Bristol (England) resonated in Pernath (Wales): for the first time, I can hear something happening simultaneously but outside my immediate surroundings. It is not just an acoustic phenomenon; in some way, time and space are transformed. Something happening elsewhere, in real time, reaches my ears, challenging the physical boundaries that once defined my daily experience.

This research aims to get in tune with the intensities, turbulence and heterogeneity of the the masses of moving air based in Wulaia/Ponsonby. I would like to generate experiences that allow us, in a sensitive way and with rudimentary technologies, to tune in to (1) the complexity of chaotic movements that make up the winds (2) and how this invisible activity shapes not only the physiognomy of the landscape but also the biological activity that inhabits its surface.

Whale Refractions is a research project currently underway at the Centre for Advanced Study inherit based at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Questions of addressing ‘heritage at large’ grew out of previous itterations of the Terra Ignota platform while observing oscillatory interrelations between humans and marine mammals and evolutions of cetacean underwater hearing in the historical and geological and climate contexts of the Magallanes Region.

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 @ Museo Territorial Yagán Usi - Martín González Calderón

The Murray Channel, formerly known as Yagashaga or Yagán Channel, is a silent witness to a vast cultural heritage that stretches from the ancestral past to the recent historical past. Its legacy spans from the original people who gave the bay its name, dating back over 6,000 years, to the colony and the European exploration and exploitation processes of the 19th century.

Radiales is the name of the new project by Terra Ignota, extending the geological research "Intercultural Contact Zone" conducted between 2017 and 2024 in Yendegaia National Park. This project continues the transdisciplinary study as a way to understand this territory and its different forms of interpretation.

> projects / 2022 / Extinction!? / background / documentation / participants Before the research trip to the Zona de Contacto Intercultural, Fernanda Olivares and Nicolás Spencer were invited to participate in a residency at Weltmuseum Wien to be part of the exhibition “Extinction!?” as part of the TAKING CARE project. The idea of this residency was to work with objects from the collections obtained

A sound installation by Nicolás Spencer made up of 44 stones in suspension – all collected from Fiordo Témpano north of Puerto Edén to Cabo de Hornos and about to be returned to the place where they were found. In addition to being considered part of the living heritage of the southern territory, the rocks are conceived as lithic witnesses of geological, historical or present-day events.

Archaeology is a scientific discipline that studies human behavior through the recovery, analysis, and interpretation of past and present material and cultural remains. The wind oscillator is a tool that considers this natural force as a cultural object, providing clues about human activity where it resonates.

This project is an archaeological prospection in Cerro Otten, Última Esperanza, Magallanes, Chile – following the discovery of rock-paintings by Alfredo Prieto in 2022. Despite being located in an easily accessible territory close to inhabited places, the area features numerous unexplored valleys and favorable conditions for discovering rich archaeological sites. The study is aiming to document Prieto's findings and to establish and discuss protocols for archaeological prospecting of this area in the future.

In preparation for the Radiales project (2025) we did an initial field trip in March 2024 in order to familiarize ourselves with the territory, to meet with the local community, partners and friends, to discuss some first ideas and frameworks and to get an idea about the place, logistics (transportation, access routes, etc.).

This project grew out of a commitment to those entanglements and attempts to trace exchanges between cultural features and material properties of the location. In particular language-landscape links that go beyond mere vocabulary encapsulations of topography, seeking instead elemental imprints of terrain and climate on the sonority of spoken words.

The exhibition at UMAG documents results and different methodologies developed around the discovery of the Intercultural Contact Zone (ICZ) in the Yendegaia National Park. The expedition(s) carried out by the Terra Ignota team (2021 and 2023) confirmed the existence of a transit zone between the Beagle Channel (Yendegaia Bay) and Almirantazgo Sound (Bahía Blanca) through the Darwin Range, suggesting a point of contact between three ancestral ethnic groups (Selk'nam, Kawésqar and Yagán).

3 day conference as part of Terra Ignota Forum hosted by the Universidad de Magallanes in Punta Arenas.

The Terra Ignota Forum (TIF) is a knowledge transfer and training program with the communities of the Magallanes Region and Chilean Antarctica. The project was developed around the discovery of the Intercultural Contact Zone (ICZ) found in 2021 in Yendegaia National Park by the Terra Ignota team. The discovery confirmed the existence of a passage between between the Beagle Channel (Yendegaia bay) and the Admiralty Sound  across the Darwin Range, a point of contact between three ancestral ethnic groups that used to pass through this area: the Selk'nam, Kawésqar and Yagán communities.

On September 19th, we presented the process, documentations and some preliminary results of the project Sonic Islands in an open studio format at Liebig 12, Berlin. You can find some impressions from that day below.

Resonance Extra – Sonic Darts with Gwaith Swn is presenting Terra Ignota  Monday 6th November 2023 22:00 - 23:00 GMT. Edited by Victor Mazon.

ourney in the Great Archipelago is a map by Dr. Alfredo Prieto, Cristian Espinoza, and the production of Nicolás Spencer, based on John Bartholomew’s Atlantic map tracing a journey of early humanity from the centre of Africa to Tierra del Fuego during the Würm glaciation.

Preparing the walk through the Lapataia valley with maps and through the cartographic gaze from afar we strongly felt our foreignness and the valley's negative space. Its resonance space was an external void. Its prevailing elements seemed to be water and wind.

The noise emanating from the sea serves as a wake-up call, a mechanism or device, an artifice that heralds an emergency with nymphs' cries from a place, be it a utopian or dystopian topos. This is how a narrative emerges, originating from the depths of the sea, carried by air currents and surface waves, creating turbulence as it interacts with the seabed and crashes against the coastal breakers. The mythological noise, or "Lärm," undergoes a transformation and dissolves, taking on premonitory forms or dystopographies.

Gaseous vibrations in pipes display distinctive overtone patterns, linking the lengths of pipes with the propagation speeds of the gasses through which energies travel. Accelerating reconfigurations in piped energies across national borders along Germany’s northern coastline, sustain overtones of global geopolitics, reverberating throughout the local milieu.

Walking trough the woods around Ralswiek, in Rügen, a new type of marks on the trees began to emerge in the landscape.

While pine trees in Germany used to be rarely treated with resin, the war quickly aroused interest in resin extraction and led to extensive experiments with this tree in particular.

This essay embarks on a journey through time and disciplines, exploring the multifaceted role of kites in shaping our world.

The utilization of wind energy represents an ancient relationship between humanity and the natural world. Windmills, wind engines and wind generators embody this enduring connection and stand as both scientific marvels and artistic expressions. We will delve into the historical chronology of these remarkable devices to celebrate their scientific and artistic significance.

Here you can listen to 30 secs edits of field recordings from different locations on the island of Rügen. Starting on the mainland at Lubmin industrial port with an ‘as close as we could get’ perspective of the FSRU (Floating Storage Regasification Unit) currently stationed there.

For the sonic islands project we took one of the Radio Earth mobilemics with us and placed it along the trajectory of our activities on the island. On this page we'll document the locations, provide a bit of context and share some thoughts and discussions with the radio earth community.

Long term reflection and refraction on matter at 250kms: An Ode to the hum

We arrived without really knowing what we were going for. We received the invitation to participate, and we embarked on the Terra Ignota adventure. We let ourselves be carried along a new, unknown path. 
In the immensity of the landscape, we could perceive our smallness, the tiny fragment we represent on this Earth. 
We knew that we had to merge with that landscape, to feel part of it, to understand. In that sense, it was fundamental to internalize, to understand the perception of the other members of the group. What unites us, what connects such a diverse group of people in terms of culture, trades, languages, ways of seeing life. In this extreme area of light, sea, wind, the movement of knowledge and experiences was fundamental.

The region of fjords, channels, and archipelagos south of Tierra del Fuego is characterized by rugged terrain, with high and steep mountains bordered by deep incised valleys that even govern the underwater landscape. Its origin ingeniously links tectonic and climatic processes, embracing persistent uplift as a result of endogenous folding and faulting, as well as depressions and exhumations caused by the weight and carving of glaciations.

The campaign developed by Terra Ignota in 2021 had already documented evidence of archaeological material in the area near the "Death" or "Kent" Pass. This lithic material was in the Alero, momentarily called El Paso. The fact of making this finding motivated the development of an investigation that would allow documenting both the route of the pass and the possible archaeological findings that could be found.

The origin of this work dates back to 2015, following a visit to the Gusinde-Hagenbeck collection consisting of cultural objects originally belonging to the Kawesqar, Selk’nam, Yagán and and Aonikenk peoples, which are now housed in the Weltmuseum, Vienna (formerly the anthropological museum).

For the Lapataia Valley crossing (TIF 2023) we experimented with different methods of 'registering' the way, time, movement, progress, rhythm, structure, topography, climate, social interaction...
One attempt was a long duration recording (LDR) of the whole process. In total 416 hours of constant audio recording.

Reality progressively begins to transfer its own identity (what it says about itself) and its corporeality (scopic) to a synthetic panoptic device. An orbital paranoid eye that sees everything, and from its vision gives governance, ordering of the world and synchronized reorientation of the micro-politics in each subject and each survivor tends to a unique geometry of government, exploitation and reformatting (an ocular geometry).

With these map sketches we try to review a Pan-American route that origins ca. 26,000 years ago in Beringia and will end in approximately 100 years in Antarctica.

During the month of May, through a series of simultaneous radio meetings in the studios of Radio CASo and Radio UACh, some results of the most recent journey of the project will be presented, which included three days of forums with artists, geologists, philosophers, archaeologists, local entrepreneurs, women of the selk’nam and yagán people, with

If you mirror the globe, you will find Germany's largest island, Rügen, at almost exactly the opposite position of Tierra del Fuego. Both lie at precisely the same latitude. (54°36'20.5 "S Tierra del Fuego / 54°36'20.5 "N Rügen). A closer look reveals many similarities in geography and landscape, climate, flora and fauna, history and archaeology, culture and even recent social and demographic dynamics.

Terra Ignota Forum (TIF) is a field laboratory that seeks to develop and implement a contemporary archive on the so-called “intercultural contact zone” (Selk’nam, Kawesqar and Yagán) located in Yendegaia National Park (YNP). The project is deployed in two stages, the first is the continuation of our interdisciplinary research in the territory and field forum (2023). The process and research will be documented and published in different media, individual artistic projects developed further and presented in the second stage to the public beginning of 2024 at the Universidad de Magallanes, Punta Arenas.

Edmundo Mansilla, Vice Rector(s) of Outreach of the Universidad de Magallanes and Verena Lehmkuhl, Director of Goethe Institut – Chile, are pleased to invite you to the Conversatory “Terra Ignota” to be held on Thursday, June 2 at 16.30 hrs in the Ernesto Livacic Auditorium of the Universidad de Magallanes. Presentations will be made by

In 2022, Fernanda Olivares and Nicolás Spencer were invited to participate in a residency at Weltmuseum to be part of the exhibition “Extinction!?” as part of the TAKING CARE project. The idea of this residency was to work with the objects belonging to the collections obtained by Martin Gusinde and Carl Hagenbeck and explore new museographic forms based on perception, feelings, the discussion around extinction, and the recognition of the Selk’nam community in Chile as a living community.

From May 3rd to July 26th, 2022 we will show the results of the last years of work at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC) Santiago.

Almost 100 years ago the artist and explorer Rockwell Kent crossed the Baldivia Chain between Seno Almirantazgo and the Beagle Channel via the Lapataia Valley. His documentation* of the landscape and climate is one of the first descriptions of this passage and serves as an important historic reference. Especially interesting in our context is his perspective as an artist becoming an explorer – sensing, registering, translating and documenting in an unconventional way.

In 2018, Terra Australis Ignota Research Group (TARIG) – Alessandra Burotto (CL), Paula Lopez Wood (CL), Víctor Mazón Gardoqui (ES/DE), Alfredo Prieto (CL), Gerd Sielfeld (CL) and Nicolas Spencer (CL/AT) – traveled to Cape Horn, the southernmost continental island in the world before Antarctica. Ars Electronica 2020 - In Kepler's Gardens platform will present a translation of that trip under the title Achæoscillator_Towards incorporeal forms of sensing listening and gaze.

From 7 to 22 December 2019, a second trip is going further south to sharpen possible research directions. On suggestion of the archaeologist Alfredo Prieto the group is intending to search for a possible prehistoric meeting place of the ancient tribes in the Bahia Blanca Valley.

This field trip in the frame of the actual Terra Ignota project was carried out from 2 until 18 March 2019. Starting from Punta Arenas, the group traveled as far south as possible by car to the end point of the road constructions in the Cardon Central.

Artistic vision  The Antarctic continent is the one continent that is still seemingly secluded from the rest of the world. It was the last great land mass discovered by humans and uninhabited until the beginning of its colonization in the early 1820s. For decennia, it has served as a collaborative research territory, governed and safeguarded

This stage of the project aimed to expand the team by including other invited artists and to begin a deeper journey through Tierra del Fuego, by land and by sea, reaching Cape Horn Island.

This trip aimed to expand the experience of working with wind by involving a larger team. To this end, work was carried out on the installation anemOSC, which would later be called Wind Oscillator.

In early 2015, the first exploratory trip was made to the commune of Cape Horn, south of the Beagle Channel. The work revolves around the notion of distance—both cultural and geographical—and the materiality of wind, approached as a cultural object for interpreting the territory.