Episode 18: Cross-Pollination between North & Latin American Conservators with Josefa Orrego Trincado
Continuing our conversation with Latin American conservators, Roxy speaks with Josefa Orrego Trincado is preventative conservator based in Santiago, Chile.
Josefa’s recent MA thesis focused on the approaches that LA conservators take to be sustainable. While many don’t use the language specifically, their actions and perspectives often are congruent with sustainable action.
Due to financial and local sourcing difficulties, LA conservators are much more adaptive, making reuse a common strategy of their practice as well as reconsidering rigid climate set point regulation, and reliance on energy-consuming equipment.
She argues for a more holistic perspective of sustainability one that includes social and economic alongside environmental, and highlights how having a relationship with the indigenous communities as a steward of their heritage has impacted her work as a preventative conservator.
She advocates for conservators to occupy higher administrative roles and better communication between LA and NA conservators. Having attended AIC Annual Meeting on a scholarship, she believes there’s much we can do to create more spaces for dialogue between the two geographic groups.
One recommendation of Josefa’s we’d like to highlight is make sustainable thinking a part of your lab conversations. The more we talk about how sustainable thinking motivates our actions, we can create momentum for integrating sustainability into our common ethos passively. After all, many of us are already engaging in a sustainable practice, as best as we can; we just might not see it that way.