Ciudad Nazca
280km. N of Lima, Peru (2010) Land-art
In Collaboration with artist Rodrigo Derteano
Derteano and his team had just created a
“tracing robot” built from a quadbike and a plough that could follow GPS
coordinates. They had already received permission from the authorities to use
it on the extremely arid desert of Huarmey, 280 km North of Lima. Our role, was
to create the design for a drawing on the 4km x 1km available “canvas”.
What
could we do? If the pre-Columbian civilization that drew the Nazca Lines
represented their cosmogony through figures of plants and animals, which figure
would properly represent our civilization?
Undoubtedly, our most complex and sophisticated creation is THE CITY. But, how
could we represent it? We used this opportunity to lay out a collage of 300 1:1 scale city blocks from Latin America’s 10 largest metropoles.
From Plaza de Mayo (BUE) go North in Reconquista (BUE) until Paseo
Huérfanos(SCL), turn on Paseo Ahumada(SCL) and reach the Plaza de Armas (SCL). Keep
North and we can decide to go to Belo Horizonte, or turn East to Sao Paulo or
why not turn West to get to Lima.
300 Latin American cityblocks traced full-size in the Huarmey desert…do those
traces in the desert simply stand as an XXXL drawing? Could this be the board
for a full-scale game of Monopoly? Or is this the beginning of a new city? Traces
in the desert are the Nazca lines, but equally they are what created the barriadas of Lima.
Watch a film on Ciudad Nazca here
ARTIST: Rodrigo DerteanoDESIGN TEAM: César Becerra, Fernando Puente Arnao, Manuel de Rivero with Gabriel Vergara, Eduardo Peláez
SURFACE: 3345717 m2 (plot)
LOCATION: Huarmey, Ancash, Perú
YEAR: 2010
PHOTOGRAPHY: Rodrigo Derteano y Musuk Nolte