HEAVY KINHSIP vol. 8: Rock, Flesh and Water - Stages of Fluidity and Notions of Time
Fieldwork, research and participatory work-sharing at the Cava di San Mauro, Valfredda, (the cold valley) and the Lago di Lases, Lona-Lases, Trentino-Alto Adige .
For Pergine Festival (Italy)
July 2022
Photo documentation of research by Elisa Vittori for Pergine Festival 2022
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During my research into the porphyry industry of the Italian Trento region, it became apparent the how important this material and industry has been as a foundation for the modern societies in the region today - from forming roads and houses to laying a foundation under a strong economy. All of it is linked to this rock. I became curious about how the movement or flow of the stone over time is linked to the movement of human bodies and machinery and linked to the flow of ressources and capital. How both rocks, flesh and water flow and intertwine over time.
I wanted to find non-extractive ways of meeting and moving with the stone. Intimate, caring, curious and restfull ways.
Through dialogues with workers from the quarries and visits to the places of production and through researching the material, social, economic and embodied implications of the extracting industries, I developed a participatory performative exploration of intimate, curious and caring encounters between human bodies and mineral bodies revolving around acts of acknowledging the material and existential effects of extraction and offering acts of care through reciprocal exchanges. The journey led the participants through bonding and moving with the rocks of the quarry, to resting with a natural ravine in the cold valley, and to finally submerging our human bodies in the waters of the Lago di Lases. Together we explored how the relationships between humans, mountains extraction and civilisation have shaped the bodies of both landscapes and humans over time.
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Video-snippet from part of the workshop-performance
Photographer: Giulia Lenzi
Pergine Festival 2022
SOUND ON
“...our bodies always extend and connect to other bodies, human and non-human, to practices, techniques, technologies and objects which produce different kinds of bodies and different ways, arguably, of enacting what it means to be human. The idea of the body as simply something we both have and are is displaced in this perspective as the focus shifts to what bodies can do, what bodies could become, what practices enable and coordinate the doing of particular kinds of bodies, and what this makes possible in terms of our approach to questions about life, humanness, culture, power, technology and subjectivity. These are some of the themes.... which radically refigure the idea of the body as substance or entity and even as distinctly human.”
(Lisa Blackman, The Body).