Browsing by Author "Hall, Allison"

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    Imaginaciones de una pampa alternativa: Multiplicidad y futuro en Distancia de rescate y Las aventuras de la China Iron
    (2021) Hall, Allison; Michelotti, Graciela
    Using a decolonial framework based in ecological and queer values, this thesis analyzes the role of the environment of the pampa intwo contemporary Argentine novels, Distancia de rescate (2014) and Las aventuras de la China Iron (2017). Influential in the creation and development of Argentine national identity, the pampa occupies an important role in the imagination and culture of the country. First exploring the physical and cultural construction of this environment in the nineteenth century, this thesis then examines each of the two novels and how they portray the past, present, and future of the natural space. Distancia de rescate, a terror-ridden novel written by Samanta Schweblin in 2014, presents a dis-futurized vision of today's pampa as having been destroyed, both environmentally and culturally, by the homogenizing imposition of soy monoculture. In the novel, the natural environment is saturated with toxic chemicals which make impossible the characters' escape from contamination and illness, thus removing the possibility of an empathetic future from the landscape. In response to this apocalyptic image of the pampa in the contemporary world, Las aventuras de la China Iron, written by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara in 2017, returns to a foundational poem in the construction of Argentina and its national imagery, El gaucho Martín Fierro (José Hernández, 1872), reorienting it towards the ecological and the queer to create an alternate possibility for the future of the pampa and for Argentine national identity. By proposing alternative historical roots which employ pleasure and multiplicity to open up spatial freedoms, Cabezón Cámara effectively re-futurizes the pampa.
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    In Pursuit of Poetic Community: Alternative Imaginations of Architectural Politicality and Identity at the Open City, Chile
    (2021) Hall, Allison; Krippner, James; Friedman, Andrew, 1974-
    In 1965, a group of ten architects, poets, artists, and philosophers set out from Punta Arenas, a town deep in Chilean Patagonia, with the intention of traversing the South American continent to find poetic inspiration for their architectural endeavors. Following the imposition of the Southern Cross constellation onto the continent, this group of men, many of whom were professors of architecture at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, wandered the landscape, musing about the interaction between geography, landscape, and Latin American identity. This journey inspired their creation of an experimental laboratory, called the Open City, at which life, work, and study were united and the disciplines of architecture, poetry, and visual art were woven together. The present study traces the activities of this group, called the Escuela de Arquitectura y Diseño, or more simply the EAD, for 25 years: from this1965 journey, to the founding of the Open City in 1970, and through the ensuing socialist regime of Salvador Allende (1970-1973) and military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). Over the course of this period, the EAD developed and strengthened its own unique architectural project by embedding it within multiple interactive spheres of spatial and philosophical experimentation. I argue that the EAD was able to adapt to the differing, oftentimes tumultuous, political moments within these 25 years, and that it succeeded in the foundation of alternatively oriented spaces of architectural exploration. I emphasize the EAD's focus on spatial dynamics from the scale of the local to the continental, and the social power of architecture that the group demonstrates, through which it was able to construct a counter-hegemonic political space during even the most repressive years of the dictatorship.