DESILHA 2021
3rd Seminar on art and city research_DESILHA 2021: MINERAL LANDSCAPES
10.06.2021, 17h30
3rd Seminar on art and city research_DESILHA 2021: MINERAL LANDSCAPES
10.06.2021, 17h30
Presentation and mediation: André Leal
Rocks are inert elements produced deep in the earth's crust, a product of the deep time of geology. When they emerge, they are transformed by human action and converted into the materials that are the basis of our society. How can we access the stories that are deposited in the mineral layers on which we walk every day? How can we tell the stories inscribed in the stones, in certain places, in the paths we trace? These are some of the themes and questions that will guide the presentations that revise and displace these mineral landscapes in different ways. In the practices of Mabe Bethônico, Claudia M. Plens, Flora Dias, Barbara Marcel and Tom Nóbrega reside exercises of making visible the subterranean layers that compose the present.
Barbara Marcel and Tom Nóbrega talk about the artistic project "Blue Canary, Golden Tone".
"Blue Canary, Golden Tone" is a video installation about canary birds, the domestication of mines and the denaturalization of nature. The project comes from a research on the historical and cultural landscape of the Harz mountains in Germany, where many of the technologies for extracting mineral soil were developed and then exported to various parts of the planet. In an essayistic way, the video reflects on the intersections of past, present and future of this anthropogenic landscape, through the particular history of domestication, breeding and trade of canary birds in the region. In a set of videos made of hands and machines, silver and serinets, heavy metal contaminated hills and fallen pine trees, sightseeing tours and intimate interviews, the iconic landscape of the German Harz gradually reveals its many hybrid layers, giving way to an open field of potentially transformative sonic flights.
Click here to watch the conversation.
