The Film-Artefact of the Atacama Desert Or about translations in Social Sciences

Abstract

Operating within the field of visual sociology, this thesis analyses the notion of translation in the social sciences, exploring the expansion of materials used in the construction of research results. The thesis starts by reflecting on B. Latour’s (2005) method of research production, which creates objects of knowledge by collecting, superimposing and stabilising traces of the world within the limits of a given material device. The central argument is that whenever research is conducted it needs to translate its phenomenon of reference into a new medium in order to visualise it. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this investigation combines filmmaking and sociological practice towards the creation of a visually based artefact, which takes the form of a feature- length documentary film made about the Atacama Desert, northern Chile. Thus, this work has two interconnected lives. The first consists of a written exploration of the problem of translation in social sciences, arguing that describing the social is at the same time the act of recreating it. The second undertakes a material exercise of translation, constructing a film artefact entitled The Region.