Colonizing Flow: The Aesthetics of Hydropower and Post-Kinetic Assemblages in the Orinoco Basin
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22409/arte.lugar.cidade.v1i2.65130Keywords:
water, infrastructure, artAbstract
Even amid increasing climate instability, faith in hydroelectric megaprojects continues worldwide. This situation compels a revision of the human-nature relations historically interwoven into such infrastructure. This article explores hydropower infrastructure as “concrete semiotic and aesthetic vehicles” (Larkin) of developmentalist discourses and material structures that entangle humans and nonhumans. I retrace these relations through historic and modern conceptions of the Orinoco River as a source to be colonized. I analyze the aesthetic and discursive valences of hydroelectric infrastructure and industrial-scale artworks built there in the mid-twentieth century by linking them to national narratives of industrialization. By attending to recent interruptions of hydroelectric production in light of new materialist thinking, I reframe Venezuelan hydroelectricity as an assemblage shaped by human feats of engineering and art and by the “vibrant matter” (Bennett) of nonhuman actants.
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Copyright (c) 2024 Lisa Blackmore; Ana Carolina Tonetti
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