Terraforming. The seminal proposals of the Centro Rural de Arte

Abstract

This article analyzes some of the proposals by the Centro Rural de Arte, a Buenos Aires platform for artistic projects that has been working since 2008 on the creation of poetics of the earth. To understand this practice, I present what I have named terraforming: aesthetic experiences that bring together concerns for the territory and the environment. These are seminal proposals where nature, rather than being a subject, is an experience of the world that is lived from the body. Returning to the concept of body-territory of Latin American feminisms, I present how the work of the Centro Rural de Arte has delved into a diversity of experiences that include walks, residences, meetings, interviews, compilation of cookbooks, interventions in markets and publications. If the concept of a body without organs proposed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari served as a metaphor to explain the disorders of post-modernity, through the work of the Centro Rural de Arte we will see how in the 21st century the body becomes organic, interdependent and territorialized, filling itself with affections and sensibilities.