el tiempo del maguey
in a glass house
micro-odissee quotidiane
portraits
The Time of Agave - in progress
Dams of Affect
2022
with Simonetta D’Ovidio and Roberta Longo
Our project is constructed as a methodology of sensible mapping, based on the notion of affectivity, to identify critical zones of the territory of the Kanatuahkuiau/Uanaman Hipu/Uepatauekat Shipu/Rivière Romaine out of literature. By looking at the problematics from an emotive point of view, we consider equally the voices of everyone, being human or more-than-human, as emotive and physical responses to the environment are legitimate, timeless, and universal.
We therefore used the methodology we developed to deepen the research into a personal lecture of the territory. We got ourselves inside the map, by spatializing the Romaine through words, and most particularly, through sensations. The exercise is one of introspection, of getting in, but also letting the territory in.
Out of this, we created 3 scenarios, one each. During the semester, we got closer to the Romaine territory. We met people from different backgrounds who told us about their experience, all with passion and devotion, in their own kind of way. Like them, we translated our time on the Romaine territory affectively, through the specific aspects that imprinted on each of us while analyzing it.
For me, travelling through the Romaine was from the beginning a matter of identity, as questionable as the word can be. My scenario is a journey where the river, from sea to wood, takes you back to your root, to your deepest feelings, as if it was and always had been its purpose. I looked at the Romaine how it is right now, exploring its ability to still be a river, no matter the confines of the dams. What I found out is that water is still water. It still brings people together, in so many ways. Its flow washes wounds, it purifies. But it is also an impulsive element that has the strength to expend, to take back its own space. Water has the particularity to be both necessary to life and a threat to human habitability, through floods or dryness. Dams are only an obstacle on its natural course, as they were in my journey.
The next addition we made is then a pedagogic layer, characterized by the yellow color on the panel. At its center, the dictionary connects our personal vision to the methodology by contextualizing some key words we used in our narrations, in the Romaine territory.
Then, the grid, representing a path that follows the river, appears as a space where people can express themselves by overlapping infrastructures on the territory, responding to some specific need they feel after the lecture of the map and of the literature. The aim is to make people involved by making planning accessible and welcoming, and to enhance a critical and sensible participation.
An extrait of a Romaine Dictionary
Cold
There are so many synonyms for the word cold. Frozen, glacial, cool, polar, frosty, frette (for quebecers), shikatshu (the Innu brings more than 20 other expressions to the glossary). All these words apply to the Romaine territory. They are used to describe your state when everything around you has a lower temperature than yourself, on the thermometer and in the heart. For example you feel cold when you are taking a swim in La Romaine on a winter's evening, or when you are far from home and nothing around you is familiar.
Electricity
Electricity here has an ambiguous meaning.
Technically, it is the strength of a river passing through a turbine, activating an alternator’s rotor, where a magnetic field movement of electrons. The electrons are responsible for electricity. Or maybe it is the river itself, after all.
Physically, it is walls of cement, forests of pylons and camions going back and forth on a new 400km route.
Affectively, it is the constant confrontation with an enemy (or an ally?). Electricity creates its own human magnetic field.
Liquid
All fluids that shape the territory and its inhabitants. Water, salty on the shores, fresh in the river. Blood, warm, in the veins of the humans, the dogs, the caribous, the wolves, the salmons, and any other animal living in the wild. The sap of the tree is liquid, but sticky. The snow becomes liquid when spring comes. Alcohol in the drinks is liquid, and non-alcoholic beverages too. When people cry, of happiness or sadness, liquid tears flow on their cheeks. Innus have 72 words to describe different types of liquids. Liquids are everywhere, of any colour and consistency, pure or dirty, sacred or damned.
Sea
In French, the sea is woman. La mer (the sea), and mère (mother), have the same sonority. Mer, mère, mer, mère. You can confuse them like if there was no difference between a sunset swim and a maternal embrace. They are a point of reference where to look out of the blur. They both evoke the smell of a summer day. Still, they keep secrets from you that you could not even imagine. While some fishermen know some of them, some did not come back to share their tale. The sea, just like the mother’s youth, remains a perpetual mystery.