Pilbara Interregnum: Seven Political Allegories - Biennale Architettura 2023

Amaia Sánchez-Velasco, Jorge Valiente Oriol, Gonzalo Valiente Oriol, with Caitlin Condon, Laura Dominguez Valdivieso, James Feng, Jordi Guijarro, Raquel Vázquez, Miguel Rodriguez-Casellas.

Pilbara Interregnum is an architectural and artistic research-led project that uses allegorical representation to unpack the multi-scalar and multi-temporal complexities of current and historical struggles that have shaped
the Northwestern Australian region as a spatio-temporal battlefield of expulsions, explosions, and exploitation. This project uses the figure of the allegory as a research and design method to address the region’s political, cultural, and environmental struggles and to imagine alternative social and ecological contracts for the Pilbara and beyond.

The project deconstructs the recurring framing of the Pilbara as a passive extractive hinterland or a pillaged territory. Instead, Pilbara Interregnum presents a region situated at the centre-stage of the most radical political transformations that are already redefining our environmental, energetic, economic, technological, and cultural agendas at a planetary scale.