Vanishing Trails Of Atacama

Excerpt from Desert Trails of Atacama It has become the fashion to say that major exploration is at an end because the North Pole and the South Pole have been attained and the general design Of the mountains, deserts, and drainage systems Of the earth has become known. Yet in truth the map is still crowded with scientific mysteries though its great historic mysteries have been swept away. The Mountains Of the Moon, the sources Of the Nile and the Congo, the secrets of the inner Sahara, the heart of Tibet, these are among the great mysteries that long awaited the explorer and that have been dispelled one by one. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

An examination of the interplay between cultural context and artistic practice in the work of Robert Smithson. Robert Smithson (1938-1973) produced his best-known work during the 1960s and early 1970s, a period in which the boundaries of the art world and the objectives of art-making were questioned perhaps more consistently and thoroughly than any time before or since. In Robert Smithson, Ann Reynolds elucidates the complexity of Smithson's work and thought by placing them in their historical context, a context greatly enhanced by the vast archival materials that Smithson's widow, Nancy Holt, donated to the Archives of American Art in 1987. The archive provides Reynolds with the remnants of Smithson's working life—magazines, postcards from other artists, notebooks, and perhaps most important, his library—from which she reconstructs the physical and conceptual world that Smithson inhabited. Reynolds explores the relation of Smithson's art-making, thinking about art-making, writing, and interaction with other artists to the articulated ideology and discreet assumptions that determined the parameters of artistic practice of the time. A central focus of Reynolds's analysis is Smithson's fascination with the blind spots at the center of established ways of seeing and thinking about culture. For Smithson, New Jersey was such a blind spot, and he returned there again and again—alone and with fellow artists—to make art that, through its location alone, undermined assumptions about what and, more important, where, art should be. For those who guarded the integrity of the established art world, New Jersey was "elsewhere"; but for Smithson, "elsewheres" were the defining, if often forgotten, locations on the map of contemporary culture.

This two-volume Historical Dictionary of Chile covers the economy and the environment, political parties and history, and reprehensible period of dictatorship during a crucial time in Chile’s history. The end of the iron-fist rule of Augusto Pinochet, who ruled from 1973 until 1990, however, allowed a return to democratic rule, and the country kept searching for coherence and unity in national life among diverse and often discordant elements. This fourth edition of Historical Dictionary of Chile contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Chile.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, Anita Carrasco examines the socio-environmental impacts of contemporary mining on the Atacameños, an indigenous community in northern Chile, and their home in the Atacama Desert, one of the driest regions in the world. Carrasco describes the impacts of short-term mining corporations like Anaconda Copper that arrived, destroyed, and departed, and explains the positive and negative memories of those left behind. Embracing the Anaconda: A Chronicle of Atacameño Life and Mining in the Andes is recommended for students and scholars of anthropology, sociology, environmental studies, race and ethnic studies, and Latin American studies.