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YuraqJanka_AlexanderLuna
© Janka Yurak und Alexander Luna

Abschlussprojekt: Yuraq Janka / Cordillera Blanca

Cordillera Blanca relays on 4 different platforms: a Website, a documentary film, a book and an exhibition concept.

Vision Statement

We aim to reveal the history of the Cordillera Blanca region in the Peruvian Andes since 1930 using classical media such as photography and video as well as new digital technologies. We will allow people to experience glacial retreat and climate change from different perspectives. This also raises significant questions over how we can think of responsibility in times of global warming

Synopsis

Throughout the world, global warming is affecting the prospects of human life. Local communities such as small-scale farmers in the Peruvian Andes encounter increased vulnerability since dramatic shifts in the climate and landscape transform the way they engage with their environment. In the impressive Andean Mountains those rural communities encounter environmental pressures such as increasing water scarcity in a context of historical marginalization and contemporary uneven development marked by social in equality and deficient infrastructure.
Peruvians have suffered the wrath of melting glaciers like few other societies on earth. In Peru’s Cordillera Blanca Mountain Range, global climate change has generated deadly glacial lake outburst floods and glacier avalanches, killing nearly 25,000 people since 1941. As melting glaciers continue flowing into mountain lakes, entire cities face the prospect of destructive floods.
The region is immersed in a complex global geopolitical conflict involving engagements between humans, technology and the environment. It’s Story is shaped by scientific research, industrial development, adaptation strategies of local communities, political decisions, business interests and the hunger for energy. Tracing how Andean conceptions of climate change and responsibility are brought to a global stage, the project conveys the stories of individuals, communities and organizations that are facing the impacts of climate change and who are actively involved in the creation of knowledge about glacier retreat and environmental change.