“Agrietar el Archivo. Imagen, Tierra y Crisis en los Killed Negatives”

Thousands of negatives preserved at the Library of Congress were
perforated to render them unusable: these are the so-called killed
negatives. This practice of disposal was carried out by the director of the
photographic section of the Farm Security Administration, created to
document government aid during one of the most devastating periods of
ecological and human crisis in United States history. Ninety years later,
in the midst of an unprecedented planetary crisis, how does this archive
address us? Which readings, previously ignored, now gain force? Can
these "killed" images be revived through artistic practices that find in
them a critical contemporary sensibility?
The research presented at Duke University is grounded in an
ecofeminist methodology, drawing on the theory of terricide developed
by Mapuche Indigenous leader Moira Milán and on the concept of strong
rationality proposed by Colombian anthropologist Arturo Escobar, both
centered on interdependence with the environment. It takes Ground
(2019) by Bill McDowell, in which black circles shift from marks of
rejection to aesthetic forms and openings for interpretation. The hole
thus operates as a creative force and a temporal aperture, reactivating
the relational tension with the earth as a shared and ongoing problem.