The hill and the hole : from apu to resource in the post-industrial Andean landscape

Abstract

This thesis takes as a starting point two images: on the one hand I use the old, historically and symbolically loaded image of the apu, which in Quechua means the spirit of the sacred mountain and the home of the ancestors. The apu is also the icon for the environment as whole and stands for the undivided relationship between people and land. I argue that through the historic processes of colonization, modernization, industrialization and globalization, this "whole" is fragmented into the symbolic and literal hill and hole that have resulted from sustained neoliberal economic policies and uneven forms of development. The opposing iconographies of the hill and the hole articulate a model of fragmentation that channels the contested Peruvian history of urbanization and dispossession. I argue this history has been informed by dichotomies between the national state and indigenous communities, between the city and the countryside, and between the formal and the informal settlements. While the hill in this thesis stands for gradual settlement by informal occupation, and the migratory and phenomenological conditions that this implies, the hole is the symbol of land exploitation through open pit mining, of fragmentation, and of dispossession brought on by accelerated economic policies. Therefore, two interwoven histories will compose this rigorous yet speculative analysis as a way to unearthen this complex history, the emblematic hill of San Cristobal in the capital city of Lima that has been occupied for nearly a century with informal settlement, and the post-industrial hole being produced by contemporary mining at the politically symbolic site where the town of Morococha in the Andes now stands. I excavate relevant political and economic accounts, while also reviewing artistic and architectural practices that have shaped and interpreted the territory and the economy. This research, and the analysis of formal and informal artistic and design strategies that I have undertaken, ultimately outline new methodologies and concepts that redefine my own work as an artists, architect, and designer within a research-based, analytical, and critical spatial practice.