INDEX



LOS HOYOS DEL
CAMPO DEL CIELO
Y EL METEORITO



Silver gelatin contact prints, wallpaper, silkscreened wall text
FONDAZIONE MERZ, TURIN 2011-12
DEPARTAMENTO DE CIENCIAS GEOLÓGICAS, UNIVERSIDAD DE BUENOS AIRES 2014



Originally commissioned for The Inaccessible Poem, curated by Simon Starling at the Fondazione Merz, Los Hoyos del Campo del Cielo y el meteorito is an interpretive reconstruction based on the events related to the figure of geologist Juan José Nágera and the expedition he commanded in the early 20th century to the impact zone.

In May 1923, Nágera arrived at Campo del Cielo with the purpose of providing confirmation on the discovery of the long-lost Mesón de Fierro meteorite, for which the province of Santiago del Estero had been offering substantial rewards in both money and land. This pledge, of course, gave rise to private initiatives, such as the one carried out by the businessman Manuel Santillán Suárez throughout the decades of 1900 and 1910. In the vicinity of the town of Gancedo, Santillán Suárez found three "hoyos" or pits, curiously located very close to each other; from the largest of these depressions, which was also the only one filled with water, he was able to retrieve several metallic fragments that he immediately recognized as meteorites. The largest weighed 2000 kg. It is also said that during these incursions Santillán Suárez believed he had indeed found the Mesón, but that he kept his discovery a secret for unknown reasons. Even so, rumors began to circulate and the Argentine State decided to send Nágera to investigate.
The results of the official expedition were published in 1926 by the Directorate of Geology & Mining in a volume illustrated with maps and a series of photographs, entitled Los hoyos del Campo del Cielo y el meteorito. From the observations and analysis of the three pits that Santillán Suárez had found, plus a fourth, laconically baptized by Nágera as “Hoyo Aislado” [Isolated Pit], the geologist concluded that it was not possible to confirm whether the Mesón de Fierro had been rediscovered, nor to attribute the existence of the pits to meteorite impact (Nágera determined, incorrectly, that the depressions were actually excavations that had been made by the native inhabitants of the area).

Nearly 90 years later, Faivovich & Goldberg were able to locate the original negatives of Nágera's research within a semi-abandoned state archive. The series of 25 photographs, which included unpublished images that had not been printed in his original report, was reproduced in its entirety using the silver gelatin contact method. Further research into the life of the scientist took the artists to his hometown, Gualeguaychú (Entre Ríos, Argentina), where they photographed a monolithic monument erected in his honor that was included in the exhibition as a wallpaper, inducing, through a trompe l'oeil effect, a strange opening in the space of the room that seemed to invite the viewer to travel to remote places.

                                                                                                                                                       



















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