Stone and water: Technopoetics as tools for the symbolic reconfiguration of disputed territories

Abstract

This article presents a summary of interrelated topics that emerged from the authors' participation in the seminar Infrastructures, extractivism, and territorial disputes, as part of the Doctorate in Arts and Technoaesthetics program at the National University of Tres de Febrero. These topics are linked to their research projects, entitled: Cultural valuation of the digital territory of the Qhapaq Ñan in the province of Mendoza and Sensitive cartographies: The techno-aesthetic sonification of environmental data in the territory of Cuyum.

This paper explores the Andean landscape of Mendoza, Argentina, as a kind of dynamic palimpsest where historical and contemporary relationships between humans and nature are imprinted on the territory. Through an important theoretical framework, landscape and space are linked as an articulation between the legacy of past forms and the dynamics of current life, through the analysis of two key infrastructures: the Andean Road System and the Irrigation System.

Based on the concepts of technoaesthetics and technopoetics, this study examines how ancestral and modern techniques not only modify the physical environment, but also reconfigure social, cultural, and power relations. Art is proposed as a critical tool for creating sensitive and dissident cartographies capable of challenging hegemonic logics and making reality visible as a territory of dispute. The study concludes that landscape is a political construction, a testimony, and a creative space for imagining new possible worlds.