An artificial fauna

Abstract

The pampas plain of South America is inhabited by a forgotten fauna living in an open and infinite zoo. Perhaps they are already fossils, skeletons covered with the rust and woodworm of a century and Argentina a half of history and change, like those “skinless dinosaurs” that the American Land artist Robert Smithson described when he visited Passaic, a suburb of New Jersey. It is a vast compound of constructions that have been left next to the rails, partly in ruins, in a landscape area of profound beauty and elusive richness. We are referring to human-made constructions, a non-measurable series of utilitarian and industrial structures scattered across the landscape: water tanks, silos, sheds, warehouses, turntables, and workshops, a product of the expansion of the railroad during the second half of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th. They all have great importance in Argentine history and become a part of the enormous palimpsest the territory can be.