Tindaya Variations

Abstract

The mountain of Tindaya (Fuerteventura, Canary Islands) has been entangled in controversy for over thirty years. The mountain is, at once, a sacred site for the indigenous people of Fuerteventura– who decorated it with hundreds of engravings–; a mining resource where trachyte rock is extracted; and the proposed location of a monumental artwork consisting of a huge cubic cave dug into its interior. Tindaya Variations follows the traces of the conflict against a background of everyday activities, tourist landscapes and post-crisis ruins– revealing, in the process, the tensions between environmental conservation, indigenous heritage and development-oriented futures.

Isaac Marrero Guillamón teaches anthropology at the University of Barcelona. He was previously senior lecturer in anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he convened the MA in Visual Anthropology. His research has focused on spatial conflicts and controversies where questions of heritage, displacement and ‘progress’ are at stake, and where new forms of expertise, activist formations and conditions of possibility are enacted. He has conducted ethnographic research on the transformation of ex-industrial neighbourhoods in Barcelona (Poblenou) and London (Hackney Wick). More recently, his work has approached the relationship between indigeneity, modern art and development in Tindaya, Fuerteventura (Canary Islands). Across these projects, he has experimented with a range of visual, multimodal and collaborative research devices including film, photography, public events, textual objects and exhibitions.