Abstract

The project «Art at Risk: Environmental Humanities and Social Sciences explore and express life at risk from art» (Art at Risk) set out to investigate in a transdisciplinary way a territory designated as a «risk zone» from the posthumanist perspective. The project was carried out by members of the Red de Investigación en Humanidades Ambientales (RIHA) of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC) during 2021. This exploration aimed at the recovery and resignification of objects found in a risk area, initially imagined as a garbage dump, for articulation in an installation in the space designated for art exhibitions. The project included five interdisciplinary workshops with RIHA volunteers, and weekly meetings for 10 months with the executing unit. The intention of the exploration was to play with the concept of the creation of possible worlds beyond the characteristic rationality of the academy and humanism, questioning conceptions about waste and its space-time context, that is, depending on the subject that finds it, a same object valued as rubbish, vestige, remainder, can be definitively discarded or resignified. This essay reports this exploration process.