Celeste Olalquiaga

Lisa Blackmore

Hailed in the 1950s as a beacon of Latin America's modernist architecture, Venezuela's El Helicoide is a futuristic fantasy gone sour. At its conception, this drive-through shopping center embodied the narrative of progress fueled by soaring oil prices, consumerism and car culture. Yet a very different story unfolded on its spiral ramps. Caught up in the transition from military dictatorship to democratic rule, El Helicoide became a site of abandonment, encircled by slums, repurposed as an emergency shelter for flood victims, and finally taken over as the intelligence police headquarters and jail. Combining archival documents, critical analysis, literary excerpts and visual artworks, From Mall to Prison traces the turbulent history of this living ruin and shows the dystopic side of urban modernity.

El Helicoide's Descent from Mall to Prison

Downward Spiral

Liliana Gómez

This interdisciplinary book brings into dialogue research on how different fluids and bodies of water are mobilised as liquid ecologies in the arts in Latin America and the Caribbean. Examining the visual arts, including multimedia installations, performance, photography and film, the chapters place diverse fluids and systems of flow in art historical, ecocritical and cultural analytical contexts. The book will be of interest to scholars of art history, cultural studies, environmental humanities, blue humanities, ecocriticism, Latin American and Caribbean studies, and island studies.

Lisa Blackmore

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