Mining Waste and the Construction of a Sublime Landscape

This proposal deals with the issue of mining tailings dams from the perspective of their perceptual invisibility, their non-existence as part of the collective cultural construction and the impacts they generate in their environment, taking as a case study Las Tórtolas tailings dam, located 45 km away from the city of Santiago.

The tailings dams are developed according to the mining production, some of them are not being subject to any regulation, generating serious environmental consequences. Nowadays, the tailings projects or proposals, aim to remedy or compensate the damage already produced, and in some cases they have to improve the production system to reduce its impacts. However, these waste remain outside human perception, becoming invisible landscapes.

The purpose of this project research is to make tailings dams visible, as a building and shaping element of landscape, positioning them within our collective cultural construction. This statement is based on the idea of raising awareness about the invisibility of mining waste, changing the perception of it, in order to establish possible intervention strategies. The visibility of Las Tórtolas Tailings Dam is intended through an itinerary of observation of the sublime landscape as an aesthetic experience. The project seeks to unveil the productive, resulting and existing landscapes of the place, through the strategies of water containment, definition of edge and building up of views, in order to generate a sublime aesthetic experience, and then open the discussion on possible processes of regeneration and reclamation.