In 2006 a mining company proposed to the Chilean authorities that they could salvage glaciers by relocating them. Following public outrage with the proposal, state authorities commissioned scientists to produce a national inventory of glaciers: for the first time, the state would know where glaciers along Chile’s long Andes Mountains are located, an essential first step needed to protect them from mining and other activities. The satellite images that make up the inventory provide too static and remote a view, however. Glaciers mean much more to Chileans than these images allow, and it is these testimonies – full of memories, awe, gratitude, anger, and fear; in word, full of life – that the Social Inventory of Glaciers captures. This living socio-cultural Inventory celebrates nature/society entanglements and records environmental memories for future generations.
Hugarflug annual conference on artistic research
11. - 12. September 2025
Iceland University of the Arts
Javiera Barandiaran
Associate Professor in Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)
Javiera Barandiarán is Associate Professor in Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and director of the CREW Center for Restorative Environmental Work. She has written five books on Chilean environmental politics and policy, including her forthcoming book, Living Minerals: Nature, Trade, and Power in the Race for Lithium (MIT Press, expected early 2026). Her research has been funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and others, and has been recognized by awards from the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Academy in Berlin. She was a co-PI on the project “Irreversible Returns”, funded by Chile’s ANID.
Cristian Simonetti
Professor of Anthropology at the Catholic University of Chile, in Santiago.
Cristián Simonetti is a professor of Anthropology at the Catholic University of Chile, in Santiago. His research examines time concepts in science. He has co-led the project “Solid Fluids in the Anthropocene,” which redefines the traditional divisions between the human and earth sciences, drawn by tensions between what is traditionally considered solid and fluid in Western thought (see www.solidfluids.org). He is lead PI on the study “Irreversible Returns: Glaciers and Glaciology Research during the Anthropocene,” and led the design of the Social Inventory of Glaciers.
Jose Ragas
Assistant Professor in the Instituto de Historia at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
José Ragas is Assistant Professor in the Instituto de Historia at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His forthcoming book examines the emergence of a grassroots biometric system in postcolonial Peru. Meanwhile, he is conducting ongoing fieldwork towards his next major project: an examination of how ice was commodified and traded in colonial and post-colonial Chile and Peru. Along with his academic duties, he maintains a public profile where he disseminates scholarly work to a public audience. He was a co-PI on the project “Irreversible Returns”, funded by Chile’s ANID.