04. Resist:
The Flooding of Alqueva


In October 2017, I conducted preliminary field-work in the areas affected to the project of the Alqueva dam, to inquire on the ground about the extent of its impacts. I collaborated with photographer Yannis Drakoulidis in producing of a series of images, aimed at capturing what the soil samples from Alentejo deposited in the Pedoteca in Lisbon represent from a ground perspective.

In observing the ongoing simplification of the landscape, we were looking to capture the present day consequences of the reductionist view of the soil archive, in the context of the environmental transformations set in motion with the expansion of the Alqueva irrigation project. In great part inspired by the method of captioning employed by Cabral in his visual analysis of soil erosion, we were also interested in exploring how the recording of this loss was able to perform as an instrument of resistance.  

















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(2)    Yannis Drakoulidis, untitled, 2017. Images courtesy from Yannis Drakoulidis, October 2017.




Yannis Drakoulidis, untitled, 2017. Images courtesy from Yannis Drakoulidis, October 2017.