Sebastián Marchant’s main interest revolves around the construction of new narratives based on queer/cuir theory in the fields of architecture and the arts. Their research is related to identity, spatial practices and archives, as well as to contemporary critical discourse. Instagram
Devenir Cucaracha (To become Cockroach)
Palm trees, shrubs, native and introduced species. Pigeons, flies, worms, ants, dog urine, human urine, spit, bacteria. Traces of food and decomposed bones, cigarette butts, lipsticks, eyelashes, hair remains, and hair extensions too. This proposal introduces speculative and fictional methodologies for a post- natural understanding of the ecosystem of Santiago de Chile’s main square, the Plaza de Armas. Through photogrammetric and animation techniques of more than 500 objects (collected, rescued, and indexed archaeologically in the city’s so-called Kilometer Zero), a narrative about the past, present, and future is proposed. From the perspective of a cockroach, the story questions the spatio-temporal factor of the material, political, and poetic conditions of things. An introduction to the culture of dirt, expanded by Anna Lowenhaupt when she poses pollution as collaboration and, therefore, as a possibility for living with environmental decline and our path to extinction.