An encounter with the ruins

Abstract

This text constitutes a cartography that seeks to narrate the history of the ruins of Villa Epecuén, a small village near the city of Carhué, through images produced during a visit to the site. In recounting this experience, we engage with the questions of the Anthropocene in order to emphasize the power of art in a world marked by rubble. The text intertwines narratives of distinct moments from the visit with photographic images and discussions of the Anthropocene, in an attempt to foster a new regime of visibility emerging through these images. We come to understand the ruins not merely as remnants of a catastrophe, but as archives of colonial ways of inhabiting the Earth, exposing the violence of the extractive model that underpins the Anthropocene. The images, as witnesses to a vanished world, are brought forth so that these histories are not forgotten, as happens with so many others. In this way, we invest in new modes of inhabiting the Earth that may equally contribute to other possibilities of thinking, acting, and feeling-with, making us capable of imagining different ways of dwelling in the world and of building more sensitive relationships.