Chilehaus: Atacama / Hamburgo

Chilehaus: Atacama / Hamburgo
by Alfredo Thiermann, Pedro Correa, Ella Neumaier, Xavier Nueno

September 27, 2024–January 25, 2025

Centro Cultural La Moneda, Santiago, Chile

Exhibiting a vast and previously unseen collection of archival material gathered between Germany and Chile, Atacama / Hamburgo examines the relationship between a monumental and emblematic building built in the city of Hamburg—the Chilehaus—and the nitrate industry established in the Atacama Desert in the early 20th century. The material, explored through various visual and sonic media, highlights the alchemical transformation of nitrates—extracted and processed by workers under precarious conditions—into symbolic and financial capital on the other side of the world.

Without critically revising its history, the Chilehaus was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage in 2015. This exhibition, therefore, aims to reflect on the elements that constitute a monument and to challenge the processes of memory and heritage designation. At the same time, it offers a method for observing the local effects generated by the global dynamics of extractive, industrial, and financial capitalism, highlighting a historical episode yet with multiple contemporary reverberations.

Atacama / Hamburgo is the result of research conducted by the Laboratory of History and Theories of Architecture, Technology and Media at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), directed by Alfredo Thiermann and integrated by Pedro Correa, Ella Neumaier, and Xavier Nueno. The research was conducted in collaboration with historian Damir Galáz-Mandakovic and researcher Dominique Mashini with sound design by Pablo Thiermann.

This research originates with HITAMs ongoing investigation on the political and economic motivations driving modern environmental consciousness, with specific focus on how these motivations coincide with, and facilitate, the rise of global information networks via specific technological expertise. In a contemporary world defined by the fascination and anxiety triggered by the ubiquitous presence of information and its expanded technological apparatus, the laboratory directed by Alfredo Thiermann seeks to interrogate—with historical depth—the social, political, economic, and ecological dimensions of this condition.