Please join us in the Bookshop and meet photographer Ignacio Acosta, who is launching his photobook Copper Geographies, published by Editorial RM ( Mexico/Barcelona).
On the night Ignacio will be presenting his book in conversation with the architect and researcher Godofredo Enes Pereira, and will be also signing copies.
Copper Geographies invites the viewer on a journey of copper from raw material through stock market exchange value, smelted commodity, capital wealth and recycled material. From the transformed landscapes of the Atacama Desert through a re-imagined voyage to Wales and the City of London, the project documents spaces of circulation, environmental disruption, protest and trade, and makes visible the return of the copper hidden within technological devices to its geographical origins.
The publication presents documentary research in the form of maps, photographs and texts, and offers a critical spatial imaginary for re-thinking the geographies of copper. It includes six written contributions by curators, historians and poets; Andrés Anwandter, Marta Dahó, Tehmina Goskar, Tony Lopez, Louise Purbrick and Frank Vicencio López.
Copper Geographies stems from the practice-based PhD thesis The Copper Geographies of Chile and Britain: A photographic study of mining, carried out as part of Traces of Nitrate, a research project developed in collaboration with Art and Design historian Louise Purbrick and photographer Xavier Ribas, based at the University of Brighton and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Ignacio Acosta is a Chilean born, London based artist and researcher working with photography and exploring geopolitical power dynamics in minerals, geographies and historical narratives. His interconnected research projects involve extensive fieldwork, investigative analysis, visual documentation and critical writing into sites and materials of symbolic significance. Acosta develops collaborative working methodologies with local actors such as activists, artists and writers. His work is distributed through exhibitions, public events, publications and online platforms.
Godofredo Enes Pereira is an architect and researcher whose work is centred on environments, ecologies and collective politics. His doctoral research titled The Underground Frontier: Technoscience and Collective Politics investigated political and territorial conflicts within the planetary race for underground resources, focusing on Venezuelan petropolitics and environmental conflicts in the Atacama Desert in Chile. He is a member of Forensic Architecture where he lead the Atacama Desert project and was part of Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s Anthropocene curriculum & campus, a pedagogical and research project that brings together experts from natural sciences, humanities and the arts to discuss the consequences of climate change to planetary architecture. Pereira is currently a Senior Tutor and Course Leader on MA Environmental Architecture and ADS7 Ecologies of Existence in the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art.
Thursday 21 Feb, 18.00 - 20.00.
Free event, no Booking.
