«Intermediations of the gaze in the co-construction of the wetland landscape of Valdivia.»

Katherine del Carmen Barriga Placencia (Chile) Table B – Hybridizations

Currently, the city of Valdivia is inhabited among fragmented landscapes, inaccessible from the gaze and the body. Wetlands enclosed by fences, surrounded by sidewalks and concrete parks that overflow invisibly to the periphery, where new human settlements, the enclosure of borders, the proliferation of unauthorized landfills, or the development of productive activities linked to warehousing, machinery and industrialization, degrade them and condemn them to disappear.

The wetland landscape of Valdivia emerges in these spaces as ecotone strips, cracks that unfold in the interstices of daily life, for which the positioning of the gaze becomes the only possibility of survival for a space that cannot exist if it is not observed.

The understanding of the (inter)mediations of the gaze, and its representations, is proposed as a possibility to generate new knowledge about the wetland landscape of Valdivia, which produces a transforming effect on the ways of approaching the professional/intellectual work on contemporary landscapes, providing new theoretical-methodological elements for an undisciplined approach, on the ways of co-inhabiting our daily spaces, especially those peripheral sectors, segregated and/or invisibilized by the evolution of societies.