GeoSemantics II / Anti-apus

This video-essay covers five historical locations for Peruvian mining during the 20th century: San Mateo, Casapalca, Morococha, La Oroya and Cerro de Pasco. These localities present different states and extractive relations that Peru has had in its complex entanglement with the global market based on the exploitation of geological and indigenous bodies. The main protagonists of the video are the geological bodies that are depredated but that, in turn, excrete new toxic entities that reconfigure the mountain landscape. Among rivers, black hills of mining tailings, rocky mountains, ghost lakes and open pits, it is possible to open a critical narrative towards the country’s extractivist past and present, opening horizons of change from the rocks themselves. The video is accompanied by an oral narration with English and Spanish subtitles that open up the colonial, capitalist, and developmental history that has sustained this activity to the detriment of the political pendulums of the 20th century. The horizon of this video-essay is to recover from the historical and critical review a navigation device for other futures using speculation, chthonic presences and the commitment to a cosmos, which is perforated from the roof of the Andes.

*Apus in Aymara are mountain deities that live among Andean communities.

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  Diego Orihuela Ibañez

  Diego Orihuela Ibañez is a Peruvian artist and researcher who lives and works in Lima, Peru. He holds a Bachelor and Licence degree in Visual Arts - Painting from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), Master CCC degree (Critical Curatorial Cybermedia) sponsored by the Hans Wildorf (Rolex) bourse d’étude with congratulations from the jury and winner of the Excellence Prize awarded by the Haute École d'Art et Design (HEAD) in Geneva, Switzerland. He holds a PhD in Latin American Studies at the Cergy-Paris University in Paris, France. He is interested in issues around cultural studies, algorithmic logics, queer ecology, theory/fiction and critical methodologies for artistic praxis.