Ciudad Nazca
280km. N of Lima, Peru (2010) Land-art
In Collaboration with artist Rodrigo Derteano

Derteano and his team had just created a “tracing robot” built from a quadbike and a plough that could follow GPS coordinates. They had already received permission from the authorities to use it on the extremely arid desert of Huarmey, 280 km North of Lima. Our role, was to create the design for a drawing on the 4km x 1km available “canvas”.
What could we do? If the pre-Columbian civilization that drew the Nazca Lines represented their cosmogony through figures of plants and animals, which figure would properly represent our civilization?
Undoubtedly, our most complex and sophisticated creation is THE CITY. But, how could we represent it? We used this opportunity to lay out a collage of 300 1:1 scale city blocks from Latin America’s 10 largest metropoles.
From Plaza de Mayo (BUE) go North in Reconquista (BUE) until Paseo Huérfanos(SCL), turn on Paseo Ahumada(SCL) and reach the Plaza de Armas (SCL). Keep North and we can decide to go to Belo Horizonte, or turn East to Sao Paulo or why not turn West to get to Lima.
300 Latin American cityblocks traced full-size in the Huarmey desert…do those traces in the desert simply stand as an XXXL drawing? Could this be the board for a full-scale game of Monopoly? Or is this the beginning of a new city? Traces in the desert are the Nazca lines, but equally they are what created the barriadas of Lima.
Watch a film on Ciudad Nazca here