Crystal forest

The Crystal Forest in this body of work is the Amazon rainforest— a place that means many different things for many different people-- scientists, indigenous people, tourists, oil companies, governments, etc. It is as much allegorical, cultural and geopolitical as it is geographical. This work considers how to represent the Amazon in light of its multiplicity of refracted meanings. The title also references the Crystal Palace built in London in 1851 originally to house the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, which has been cited by many writers as an epochal moment in the development of Integrated World Capitalism. We imagine the Crystal Forest in this sense as the inverse or shadow of the Crystal Palace. Currently, the project consists of two series of collages and a video essay and other visual elements are in process: 

The “Edifice” collage series combines original images of the rainforest with images of a building we encountered there. This building was constructed to house a private university called Politécnica Ecológica Amazónica that had the dubious mission of educating the local population, including indigenous people, in western science and business management. When the university failed, the jungle started taking it back. We think of it like Smithson’s “ruins in reverse,” in the sense that the building exists in a state that anticipates its future. However, unlike Smithson’s term that assumes the inevitability of industrial development, here the jungle is asserting its own right to opacity and inner logic of growth.