Contraband Desert
Simon Harvey
Origin: Static Issue 02
Content: Film and PDF
Contraband
Desert (26.2 Mb)
'The industriousness in the film, Desierto del Contrabando,
makes for a busy desert. The state is inscribed on the landscape
through coal and salt extractions. El Cerrejón is a huge
opencast coalmine in southern, or ‘Baja’ (lower),
Guajira. It is linked to a large deepwater port in the northwest,
or ‘Media’ (middle), Guajira by a dead straight railway
line. To the west of the railway, some twenty kilometres distant
at its nearest point, still in ‘Media’ Guajira and
on a coastline where the waters are ‘seco’ - shallow
(literally ‘dry’ in Spanish) - and smuggling has diminished
as the draught of boats has become deeper and as loads got bigger,
is the port of Manaure and its centuries old ‘salinas’
or salt extraction reservoirs...'
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Contributor:
Simon Harvey is a lecturer in
art theory at the Art Academy, University of Trondheim. His PhD
was entitled 'Smuggling in Theories and Practices of Contemporary
Visual Culture'. He is also a guide book writer.
Associated Links:
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