(about) PADA RESIDENCY 2023

For 2 months I explored colonial politics of material migration through my work with Agave Americana, an invasive plant that grows in the former industrial park where PADA is located. I also dove in the the history of Portugal through the fiber industries that thrived at the peak of the industrial era in Barreiro.
The footage was taken at the landfills of the abandoned industries by the Tajo River.
I wrote the text, a poem, intermittently during my stay, while traveling back and forth into the city from Barreiro. Pondering on the impact of fiber extraction of Jute and Sisal, taken from Mozambique, Angola, São Tomé, Pakistán, India, Bangladesh, Birmania and Thailand, and the many lives this affected. Researching, (as Londa Schiebinger writes in her book “plants and empires”) the frantic transfer of trade goods and plants between Europe and its colonies and the nontransfer of important bodies of knowledge from the New World into Europe.

The text was later translated to Xhosa by Siviwe James and her aunt, keepers of their language. I hardly explained the intention of the text, so it remains their interpretation imprinted in the encompassing intonation.

CAF 8

architect-in-residence

CAMPO GARZÓN