During the Cold War a number of episodes of technological exchange between Latin American countries, the USA and the USSR took place when NASA’s US tracking stations and Soviet astronomical domes and telescopes were installed all along the South American continent, in Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile. But the upward views driving these exchanges paradoxically had an even more profound impact on the earthly surface and its associated cultures. What does this history of infrastructures for sky observation tell us about international networks and power relations? By discussing a wide array of objects and visual materials, the speakers will explore how science and technology were imagined, designed, constructed, and practiced in Latin America, alongside the politics and the associated artistic and visual cultures attached to the reception and adaptation of a whole new set of urban, architectural, and technological objects.

Discussant: Jean Louis Cohen (Architecture)