TRÊS MOMENTOS DE UM RIO // THREE MOMENTS OF A RIVER, 2017-2020

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"When, at times, the breast of heaven emits threatening noises, women and children moan in fear. It is not without reason! We all fear being crushed by the fall of heaven, like our ancestors in the beginning of time." Davi Kopenawa, A Queda do Céu //The fall of heaven

 

According to the Yanomami narrative, the sky has already collapsed twice due to the carelessness of the human being with the Earth, causing an imbalance between it and the sky. The concern with developmental political and predatory decisions to nature accompanies our work since 2017, when we started a historical research about the rivers of the city of Belo Horizonte and its canalization and closure process (which culminated in 208 KM of rivers invisible under the avenues). In addition to historical research, we annually registered the rain periods that cause flooding due to lack of runoff, which led us to create a dystopian future for the city, dated to 2025, when it ends up flooded and submerged after a major storm.

In 2020, Brazil, and the world, saw the catastrophic consequences of the rainfall in BH, which was the highest in 112 years. The plumbing started with the justification that industrial progress would end the open sewage and that it would contain flooding, but what we saw over the nearly 100 years of plumbing was that each year the floods grow and more rivers die in the landscape.

 

The work unfolds in photographs, videos and a book publication, which deals with the threshold between reality and fiction, in the search to rescue the blue and its affections back to the urban landscape.