Spirals of the Anthropocene by Lorenzo Poli
Issue 181
This photographic investigation is a personal reflection on human values and how they carve into the Land. As a European architect expanding into the metaphysical realms of the visual arts, I traversed South America's mining territories for 18 months in search of meaning.
I sought to engage with the spiritual dimensions of our epoch, immersing myself in monumental voids descending into the Earth. What emerged transcended the commodification of minerals for energy transitions; these voids stand as testaments to humanity's aspirations.
While ancestral geoglyphs once etched cosmovisions into the ground, the Anthropocene now inscribes modernity's chronicles onto Earth's body. From lunar paths spiralling down into infinities to gridded imprints of industrial impermanence, sacred lands have become kingdoms of accumulation, empires of extraction. These are the geoglyphs of our time--monuments to the values we pursue.
Humans possess the divine power to consciously and collectively cooperate. Through 'Spirals of the Anthropocene', I draw viewers into an enigmatic vortex of human ambition and ecological disruption. This multimedia spatial narrative reverses the downward spiral of accumulation into an upward expansion of consciousness: it urges a collective language--an idiom of Nature above anthropocentrism.
The geoglyphs of our epoch stand as testaments to our dominion over the Earth, yet they ask: what if we chose a new path?
Be still, the Earth will speak to you--Aboriginal Proverb
Spirals of the Anthropocene won The Series Award Edition X – First Prize for Life Framer.
Lorenzo Poli (he/him) lives and works between Argentina, Antartica, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Perù, Colombia.
lorenzopoli.photography| @lorenzopoli.photography
The Mountain of Silver.
The skeleton of minted Globalisation, Cerro Rico - Bolivia 1545.
[Cerro Rico looms over the Bolivian plateau like a hollowed ghost, its sterling veins once pulsing with the imperial riches of globalisation. Beneath its shimmering prosperity lies a maze of tunnels spiralling into endless voids, with layers of toxic amalgams stratified into the hillsides. Mercuric fumes, silicosis, and caves-in plague miners past and present, and have left a toll of millions over five centuries (E. Galeano)].
Minted Icon - 1840
The globalised materialisation of a sterling Treasure.
[Since 1545, Cerro Rico's silver fuelled globalised colonial trade to Europe, Manila, the Ming Dynasty, and beyond. It financed wars, and empires of slavery. At its peak, Potosi supplied 60% of the world's silver, embedding plata and argent as synonyms for wealth in latin America and French colonies].
Mining Infinity
The unending spiralling of anthropocentric ambitions.
Sierra Gorda Copper Mine, Antofagasta, Chile Dec 2023
The Nine Circles of Hell
Illustration for The Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy by A. Kopisch, 1842. Ed E. Buchhandlung (F. Muller).
[Limbo, for virtuous pagans, in sorrow eternally. Lust, souls blown by violent winds. Gluttony, gluttons in vile slush. Greed, with hoarders & squanderers pushing weights. Wrath, with the angry fighting and sullen submerged. Heresy, with heretics in flaming tombs. Violence, split into rings of blood, trees, and burning sand. Fraud, in ten ditches of torments. Treachery, in icy Lake Cocytus.] - web image upscaled via Gigapixel AI
The Chamber of Absence
Where the Vacuum Descends Into Hollowness.
Sierra Gorda Copper Mine, Antofagasta, Chile Feb 2024.
Spirals of Anthropocene
A multimedia immersive installation designed to reverse the downward spiral of accumulation into a spiralling upward expansion of consciousness.
Humans possess the divine power to consciously and collectively cooperate.
Drawing from my architectural experience, this luminous, enigmatic helix immerses viewers in the vortex of human ambition and ecological disruption, urging the creation of a collective language--a new idiom of Nature that transcends anthropocentrism.
AI CGI image composite.
Gridded Impermanence.
Cycles of extraction overwhelming life and death.
Chuquicamata Mine and miners' settlement, Atacama, Chile Nov 2023.
[The photo portraits the cemetery, the abandoned miners' settlement being swallowed by the unending expansion of the mine. Chuquicamata is recognized as the second largest open-pit copper mine in the world by excavated volume and the second deepest, reaching depths of approximately 1,000 meters (3,300 feet)].
Arteries of Ambition
The relentless pulse of globalised flows.
Cerro Verde Copper Mine, Arequipa, Peru. Nov 2024.
[The Cerro Verde Mine is a large open-pit copper and molybdenum mining operation with a history dating back to the 19th century, Cerro Verde is one of Peru's largest copper producer].
The Kingdom of Accumulation.
The unending horizons of expansive extractivist empires.
Escondida Copper Mine, Antofagasta. feb 2024
[The Escondida Mine, is renowned as the largest copper mine in the world].
The Circles of Hell
Where sins take form.
Escondida Copper Mine, Antofagasta Chile.
[The Escondida Mine, is renowned as the largest copper mine in the world].
Self-organising Geographies
Terraforming patterns of sprawling tailings. The emergent patterns of life's transcendent resilience.
Chuquicamata Mine, Atacama, Chile Nov 2023.
[Self-organising patterns emerge from the waste rock deposit at the edge of the of one of the largest extractive operation on the planet. Mines emerges from the ground as new complex systems. While instigated and managed by human decision-making, the intricate dance of emergent granular choreographies transcend human-scale control, human intent and natural order seems to converge. The geological unpredictability and the complexity of the operations influence emergence and self-organising behaviours akin to some natural processes].
Shell of the Anthropocene.
The sedimentary processes of monumental mining depositions. Chuquicamata Mine. Atacama, Chile, Feb 2024. [waste rocks from the largest open-pit copper mine in the world by excavated volume]
Earthly Womb
Where cosmic winds and human ambition converge. Chuquicamata Main Mine pit.Atacama, Chile, Feb 2024. [The second largest open-pit copper mine in the world by excavated volume and the second deepest, reaching depths of approximately 1,000 meters (3,300 feet)
Frontlines of Ambition
Human endurance encroaching into jagged terrains of extraction.
La Rinconada Gold Mine, Peru. November 2024.
[A lone miner moves across the glacier's surface, threading his way through a maze of makeshift water pipes piercing the ice. The "water strings" are placed individually by each small mining company e channel ice melt into the informal infrastructure of the settlement, to feed gold mills].
Glacial Orb
The Silent witness to the unrelentless extractivist ambitions
La Rinconada Gold Mine, Peru. November 2024. (5,200m)
[La Rinconada--Earth's highest inhabited settlement--relies on glacial meltwater to sustain gold extraction operations. The "water strings" channel ice melt into the informal infrastructure of the settlement, reflecting the fragility of life. Survival is precariously suspended between human ambition and nature's depletion, underscoring environmental costs of gold extraction].