“Forest with people”: audio-visual assembly and disassembly of the Chaco Salteño landscape

Abstract

This paper reflects on the continuities and discontinuities of the (i) privilege of vision in landscape construction and (ii) the scission between nature and culture in three audio-visual productions contextualized in the Chaco Salteño (two documentaries and one fiction). These audio-visual productions refer to the clearing and erosion of the cultural landscape in the region. For this, it traces the historical lineage of the scopic regime and the development of ocularcentrism in the West, its implications in the construction of the landscape and the rationalization of space in the modern episteme. In addition, it contextualizes the construction of the national territory and the “desert production” in the Chaco Argentino. From this genealogical trace, it analyses the assembly strategies and resources through which the Chaco landscape is built.