Nicolas Sanchez L.

Noah's raft, (living off) the fat of the land

[2011] The project consists in building a raft to navigate downstream the Mapocho river, since its channeled entrance into the center-north of the city of Santiago until its mouth in the Maipo river, across the districts of Vitacura, Las Condes, Providencia , Recoleta, Independencia, Santiago, Renca, among others. To build the raft I will use only industrial waste collected around the city... to sail and navigate in search of another land, beyond this city, to survive the flood and find “where germinates the seed of a new humanity” (Wisdom 14:6 .) The phrase living off the fat of the land – also of biblical origin (Genesis 45: 17) – refers to live off the fertility and abundance of the earth. In a contemporary sense and focused in urban dynamics, this fat, once abundance and generosity, has now sadly been exploited to excess, extravagance and waste. It is precisely these excesses caused by certain ideas of progress, which I see symbolized in the waste that will be used to build the raft; excesses from which I escape by the sailing aimlessly away. The project ultimately explores the human experience in the cities, showing certain urban situations that reveal the need to recover public space for people, imagining new occupation dynamics which poetically illuminate richer, diverse and simpler ways of living