assemblage a

assemblage a A note on how to read this work: This text is accompanied by a separate document consisting of a set of images in various levels of juxtaposition. Read in tandem, the documents form a machinic image of sorts and are added to the overall body of machinic assemblages undertaken in response to research conducted in Alentejo, Portugal. Within the text, numerals in the form iii correspond to the equivalent page number in the document of images. Together, the documents are read as a two channel work.

“Every work of art is an incarnation: an investment of matter with spirit. The term "assemblage" has been singled out, with this duality in mind, to denote not only a specific technical procedure and form used in the literary and musical, as well as the plastic, arts, but also a complex of attitudes and ideas.”

1

osomdaterra is the current iteration of a year long project consisting of a series of works that have machined research, heavily based in Alentejo, Portugal through a variety of inter-permeating media such as film, performance, photography, writing, and most recently as sound and radio. Within the work and more broadly throughout the overarching project two foci have developed. The first, is the project’s methodology, which draws on ideas of the machinic to create speculative places of conversation and dialogue between various distinct and seemingly unrelated actors; connecting existences. In so doing it aims to be generative of new understandings and ideas with regards to a variety of environmental conditions. This piece of writing should, therefore, be understood as one within the body of previous assemblages that draws on the research undertaken between Portugal and The United Kingdom. As well as providing a greater level of rationale to the design and manifestation of osomdaterra it enables a more direct level of criticality and reflection on ideas running throughout earlier works as well.

The second focus central to osomdaterra, is that of the contemporary sound of labour in Alentejo. Manifested through sound and radio the work positions itself as a collective sound indicative of various environmental ruptures constituting the larger metabolic rifts that exist throughout Alentejo, Portugal. Specifically, the research focuses on the relation between changing labour conditions and between historic and contemporary realities impacted by the intensification of industrial agriculture in the region. Its concentration on localised conditions enables an intimate understanding of labour-relations as inherently environmental concerns and far wider reaching than typically understood: extending beyond the confines of ‘the field’ and to the many non-human realities in their own right. The understanding of these specific conditions allows for an expansion and application on the global scale.

— Signal — — —

— —

—

An expulsion of information. Typically used when referring to radio as an electrical impulse but can also be used in the context of information conveyed through a bodily gesture or sound.

Sound has been central to the work throughout its development. That is to say, sound in its conveyance of information rather than aesthetic quality. Rather than focus on its prominence in relation to the visual the focus has remained with how and what information can be conveyed through it. This has included the voice, in various forms of testimony, music and an array of field recordings taken whilst in Alentejo. These include but are not exclusive to sounds from within the Guadiana River; of bats’ echolocation system; of a riparian dawn chorus, and the sound of olive kernels being cracked to expose the seed within.

Sound signals what? It conveys what information? To engage with this information it must first be received and then registered. It must first be heard and then listened to. Crucially - listened to. This distinction is not frivolous but one that has important consequences if practised rigorously as set out by Pauline Oliveros in her meditative techniques of Deep Listening. Take Oliveros’ following insights: “Deep Listening is listening in every possible way, to everything it’s possible to hear, no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, or one’s own thoughts, as well as musical sounds.” 2 “Deep Listening is active. What is heard is changed by listening and changes the listener. I call this the ‘listening effect’ or how we process what we hear…Focal listening garners detail from any sound and global listening brings expansion through the whole field of sound.” 3

1

William C. Seitz, The Art of Assemblage (New York: The Museum of Modern Art,1961), 10.

Pauline Oliveros, Quantum Listening (ignota.org, 2022), 29.

3 Oliveros, Quantum Listening, 30.

2

The implications of exercising this distinction and undertaking a practice of it are profound. Within the context of the project and more widely it provides a platform for an expansive model of environmental engagement and research. Whether it is realised in the work is another thing and is, perhaps, down to the individual engaging with it. As with any mode of mediation, a level of information is lost, altered and translated.

The aim of this practice in listening and intensifying focus is to understand how it can be used as a tool “...to connect with the acoustic environment, all that inhabits it and all that there is.”4 A further question that arises is: How can we listen to everything we hear?

In answer, might we see Deep Listening as more a practice of opening up one’s sonic engagement? It need not exclude limitations in what we can register to be effective in its aims. With what is registered, Oliveros directs her thinking at music stating: “Interpretation of our sense information (listening) and the sharing of this experience with each other is the basis of culture and our values.

For example, the members of traditional musical ensembles share knowledge through the experience of performing together, interpreting and creating repertoire and sharing it with audiences. Audiences participate by responding to it. We rejoice in the pleasure of music that we know and love. Community develops around music. Critical response, discernment and education helps to shape and conserve musical values.”5 After the performance, people mill around the hall talking. Murmurings of conversations are heard in Portuguese, French and English [Gesturing to members of the audience, one singer invites people to stand among the singers.]

“Come here. Come. To the middle” “[Unknown name called]” “...very good…”

[The circle encloses around the audience. A lone voice rises above the conversations, initiating the moda…]6

Cante Alentejano is a polyphonic form of singing found traditionally in the Baixo Alentejo, although its reach is far wider. Structurally it relies on three separate parts. i The ponto (bass) that introduces the canto (song) to which a reply is given by the alto and is then supported by the body of the choir7. Yet it is far more than this narrow definition offered by UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage. The title of Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco’s essay, Ecologies of Music Heritage in Alentejo, Portugal, already questions such strict categorisation with the one word; ecologies. In so doing, we can think of the Cante Alentejano community cybernetically rather than an object in isolation; its normative structure unchallenged by external forces.

Castelo-Branco does not fail to mention Cante Alentejano’s key formalisation as a result of the Estado Novo Dictatorship referencing the Foucaultian concept of ‘disciplining bodies’,8 which can certainly be seen in the enduring choreography of staged performances. Despite this, Cante Alentejano’s many transformations, appropriations, formalisations have not filtered out the many nuances and changes ongoing within the community today.

4

Oliveros, Quantum Listening, 36.

Oliveros, Quantum Listening, 45-46.

6 Performance by Cantadores de Paris and Cantadores de Desassossego at the UNESCO Centre, Beja 7 “Cante Alentejano, polyphonic singing from Alentejo, southern Portugal,” UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, accessed, 24 July, 2023, https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/cante-alentejano-polyphonic-singing-from-alentejo-southern-portugal-01007 8 Salwa El-Shawan Castelo Branco, “Ecologies of Music Heritage in Alentejo, Portugal,” in Music, Communities, Sustainability: Developing Policies and Practices, ed. Huib Schippers and Anthony Seeger (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022), 182-183.

5

“I was attracted by this process, traditional...and I went to the group like that. I learned, I learned and now it is like a part of me. It is very important. It's earth, it’s earth with...it's not folkloric. It's universal. It can speak about earth of Britain, earth of Algeria, earth of Italia but it’s Alentejo. It's Alentejo, it’s roots…It's so strong, it’s so important that it’s universal. It’s not ‘ah Alentejo Alentejo’. Yes but I discover something. I discover roots, I discover to sing in a group…As a group it was very important to sing just like an artist...no the group is very important and it’s meant to how do you say, ‘rencontre’, to meet, to meet persons who you don't, that you don't meet when you just visit just have touristic visits…”9 There is a power to such an experience of listening to tens of people articulate with such precision and clarity a collective sound solely composed of voices. Further to this, the spatialisation of voices adds further depth of available listening. Either directly in front of you or, more powerfully, surrounding on all sides it seems to transgress the purely material nature of sound and enter the world of ephemerality10. ii The idea of collective sound, materialised in polyphony, also stuck with the research both in the approach to the methodology of film and image making realised through our conceptualisation of the machinic but also conceptually as a framework with which to critically engage with precision agriculture and the monocrop plantations enabled by the Alqueva Dam. Polyphony is antithetical to conventional agriculture’s status quo.

Speaking to Rui Teixeira, the leader of Os Cantadores do Desassossego, after a performance at the UNESCO Centre in Beja, he explains the formation of Cante as it is seen today and most notably its role as “...protest. A form of resistance, more than protest yes…” to the fascist dictatorship. Towards the end of our conversation he remarks: “When the dictatorship was sent down, I was nine years old. So I don’t have, luckily I don’t have very present memories of that time. We have older guys who remember something but we don’t have that memory so hard that we think we need to keep it alive. It’s a mistake and we should.”

He also speaks of the nature of the poems that are sung. Many surround “the hard conditions of labour on the land” Yet if they are not sung as a form of resistance now and are not sung by the majority of workers today then what is their role within contemporary labour struggles?

In a review of an early film within the project, in response to Rui Teixeira, Godofredo Enes Pereira comments: “There is a history of a relationship between land, bodies and music as a form of resistance and so when someone is saying we need to keep that memory, we don’t. We need to produce new things worthy of memory. That memory is not going to be particularly helpful for the people from Bangladesh, from Morocco that are working those fields…there are new kinds of alliances that need to be forged…”

That is not to negate the value of Cante Alentejano but is to reflect on how music, song and sound might play a role in contemporary labour struggles. Certainly the nature of Cante Alentejano and the content of its poetry of old reflect contemporary conditions on the land.

“Stories of past lives in Alentejo by research partners emphasise the centrality of collective singing that accompanied arduous agricultural work, permeated moments of conviviality among coworkers, families, and friends, and marked religious and secular festivities. Many also evoke a rural Alentejo under authoritarian rule where the joy of group singing and dancing was imbricated with the pain and hardship and exploitative agricultural labour, police repression, the deprivation of freedom and other basic human rights (food, education, healthcare) and migration.”11

9

Karim of Cantadores de Paris speak to me about his relationship with Cante Alentejano after a performance at the UNESCO Centre, Beja 10 Performance and broadcast of osomdaterra https://soundcloud.com/o-som-da-terra-radio/osomdaterra-hyde-park-broadcast_300623 11 Castelo Branco, “Ecologies of Music Heritage in Alentejo, Portugal,” 180-181.

In conversation with Carlos Balbino of Cantadores de Paris and Rádio Campus Paris, Isabel Palacios-Macedo hears: “So what happens is because it’s a very social environment, a very social practice, it does welcome people in but whoever comes in, especially if they come with a particular status, they can modify it because they have room for it and that's what happened. Cante Alentejano was not always protest.

Cante Alentejano even today is not protest in its majority way.”

Carlos’ approach to Cante Alentejano is seemingly a-political, citing a geographic removal from the labour struggle of Alentejo’s fields. This stance is of course a personal one but if we, nonetheless, take this situation, poetry (much of which came from labour conditions) is now being sung in Paris by a choir diverse in gender, profession and background it is a striking vehicle and space with which to build these cross-border alliances and worker solidarity. iii iv Furthermore, according to Pedro Frazão of Radio Voz de Planície there are examples of workers, many of whom are international migrants, taking an interest in Cante Alentejano and joining choirs. He continues: “...they have a few singing harmonies that look like Cante Alentejano, some of them from regions in India and they sing with the same melodies, with the same kind of melodies we have here, it’s very interesting…Cante Alentejano, we have, with a link to Romanian and some places in Asia.”

Whether it be through Cante Alentejano or other music and sound labour struggles will benefit from this expansion of the sonic landscape. Oliveros writes: “Unfamiliar contemporary music test values, challenges habits, helps to create new thought patterns and expanded awareness. We need an improvisatory of music to balance the conservatory and promote the creation of music.”12 Drawing on ideas of polyphony and the voice, testimonies v of a variety of different actors in the region form a core component within the works. Through its curation in relation to imagery and, indeed, lack of imagery, this collective sound is positioned as evidential of the metabolic rifts witnessed in the region. These works form diaolgues or imagined conversations often between unrelated and conflicting positions. In so doing they form a sort of mediation between two points that generate a new idea. The narratives of these evidential pieces are also the result of exercise in dialogue and juxtaposition. The machinic image.

If we understand the work as a series of assembled images, although not always materially visual, they bear much in common to the cybernetic system of drawing proposed by Thomas-Bernard Kenniff and Ben Sweeting.

The narratives are an ecology of actors with their own voices trying to convey their interests to the others. In so doing, this back and forth of information (the input) organically results in an output. Much like a machine that is compiled of many tasks doing or producing a thing, so too is the ‘design process’. In this case as narratives, as statements or conveyances of information between testimonies and sounds, they are inherently part of their own dialogues - both creating the discourse (the creator) and being posed a question (the onlooker) in return. Through this process, a conversation occurs. A drawing occurs. An image occurs. It extends beyond the bounds of the projection.13 Importantly, the conversational nature of design in this way allows for the participation of the ‘other’ in a form of feedback loop. The ‘other’ in this context poses a difficulty in terms of the sensibility of the methodology and works. The ‘other’ in this case is not just any onlooker but ‘partners’ we have been working with in Alentejo. After all it is their voices, faces, ideas, knowledge and input that forms the work. The dialogue ensures the work does not extract, offering nothing in return. The filmic essays have been sent back to Alentejo and so too will the current work, osomdaterra. The level and quality of dialogue in this sense is certainly stronger in person rather than through remote communication. Very little material was gathered through a series of flyers xvi whereas much more was gathered through direct conversation for example.

12

Oliveros, Quantum Listening, 46.

Thomas-bernard Kenniff and Ben Sweeting, “There Is No Alibi in Designing: Responsibility and Dialogue in the Design Process.” Opticon1826, no.16 (2014): 1. pp.1-8 13

Kenniff and Sweeting speak of ‘othering the self’ so as to use empathy in order to design for the ‘other’.14 It is at this point that our works diverge from the dialogue process of drawing and are in a way inverted. The ‘other’s’ input becomes material for our own reflection and the narrative works become very personal reflections on the research material.

Filmic essay to filmic lecture. The personal reflections within the works become more prominent with the introduction of performance in reference to works of Filipa César whose work similarly blurs the distinctions of film, projection, performance and writing. vi The insertion of our voice into osomdaterra was necessary to take a position. Just as we are affected by our experiences we also affect and cannot pretend to be passive bystanders.

Tito Mouraz Pedro Nogueira Alvaro Fonseca Tiago Domingues Antonio Chambel Dipal Patel Diana Takacsova Miguel Teodoro Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Carlos Balbino Julia Alimasi

Fabienne Wateau Pedro Frazão

hhhhhhh Alberto Matos

Leopoldina Almeida Cristina Matos Caro Jose Francisco Olinda Monteiro Acácio Malta Ana Ademar

Ana Ademar

Alexandra Melao Patricia Ricardo Benvindo Maçâs António Mira Denis Medina

Paulo Barriga Denis Medina Ressurrectos

Bar Infantes Radio Voz de Planicíe Cantores de Desassossego Cantores de Paris Rui Teixeira Karim

Thus, might these works enable an ecological aesthetics through their creation of alternative worlds and realities of

unspoken and unheard conversations? Complementary to Oliveros, Enes Pereira states: “The polyphonic dimension of an environmental aesthetics requires the opening of ways to practice the future otherwise. The key point is to not see futures as predictions; the future is not a bet, but the dismantling of power-relations that are presented as certain or eternal. In this sense the future is something that is practised….”15

14

Kenniff and Sweeting, “There Is No Alibi in Designing: Responsibility and Dialogue in the Design Process,” 1-8 Godofredo Enes Pereira, “Towards an Environmental Architecture,” e-flux, June, 2018, https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/positions/205375/towards-an-environmental-architecture/ 15

The polyphonic sound of a collective voice at moments throughout the works, most clearly articulated in osomdaterra, is a response to concerns in using certain isolated voices, particularly those of itinerant migrant works, whose precarity necessitates a degree of sensitivity. Apart from redactions vii and cacophony at moments, collectivity not only offers anonymity but also the diversity and strength of polyphony. This sound asserts itself as an existence. It exerts its right to be there, to be heard on the land. Just as Cante Alentejano asserted itself and conditions of labour through its poetry, so too does this sound assert the contemporary conditions as if to signal “I am here”, “I exist”.

“So it's really centred on some particular communities. Nowadays it become institutional so now it has a weight to the other songs, they are very far you know because also the fact we don't recognise their rights. I mean through recognising their singing their music and their culture would also have to recognise their identity and their rights to the ground and right now those are not recognised. I mean they're not acknowledged somewhere, it's conflicting so, of course, they're not going to stand unless something revolutionary happens to their status in case they get accepted.” 16 — Interference viii — In Interview with Alberto Matos Alberto: “Hello? Podes entrar. Just a moment. Francais?

Man: English Alberto: English? Okay, we are speaking English. Okay, you can enter [Gestures to come in].

Man: I am asking for a house.

Alberto: You are asking for?

Man: I am asking for a house for rent.

Alberto: Okay I don’t know nothing about that.

Man: If you can help me, I look but I still don’t get it Alberto: That’s not our business here. We are an imigrants association about documents and so on but renting houses no.I don’t know nothing about that. You are from? Gambia?

Man: Yeh, exactly.

Alberto: When did you arrive.

Man: I arrive here 3 years, this year is coming to 3 years.

Alberto: 3 years in Portugal?

Man: Yeh Alberto: And in Beja?

Man: Yeh in Beja Alberto: Always in Beja Man: Yeh always in Beja Alberto: But there are a lot of Gambian friends. Before you were in another house and now you look for a new one?

[UNKNOWN] Alberto: It’s not easy my friend.

Man: Not at all Alberto: That’s not our business.

Man: I have something also. I have [unknown], I want to check back but I forget my password at home so I can’t.

Alberto: If you can access your email you can recuperate password. You have, that’s Gmail?

Man: Yeh I have that email, I don’t remember [inaudible] it’s in the paper Alberto: At least you should open your email to recuperate SEF password. If you lost Gmail password too that’s possible to recuperate.

Man: [Inaudible] Alberto: Now we are talking about something. I have not a lot of time but…It’s not difficult to recuperate password.

Man: I have password here Alberto: SEF password?

Man: No [inaudible] Alberto: It’s not easy but…

16

Carlos Balbino of Cantadores de Paris and Rádio Campus Paris

The project sets out voice and, by distillation, sound as assertion of existence and, therefore, of rights. In so doing it aligns itself with the research line, Take Back the Land put forth by Godofredo Enes Pereira, Christina Geros and Jon Goodbun. Therefore, it should be acknowledged within “struggles over socio-environmental relations that recognise land as crucial for a counter-hegemonic project”17. The capitalist and colonial mechanisms that have expropriated the means of subsistence land-based existences18 on a global scale can only be resisted through this very means. Whether it be through direct redistribution of land ownership as was witnessed widely across Alentejo in 1974 xii or through the grassroots work of organisations like Solidaridade Imigrante, sound plays a role.

Workers in Alentejo as in industrial agriculture the world over are used for their cheap labour and are accessed through obscure and exploitative recruitment networks.

“In California, very old phrase they use "without illegal workers, without illegal immigrants, there are no crops."”19 These ‘counter-hegemonic’ processes, in which we situate the project, are central to what has been termed the Green New Deal (GND). Goodbun notes that there is a degree of inaccuracy here as there must be as many GNDs for as many communities that there may be, so as to adapt to as many environmental crisis that we are currently in the midst of. The GND consists of a dialogue of many parties20. The GND must, therefore, be a polyphony. Although this means there will be many interests to negotiate, solidarity at a global scale is essential.

In so doing, it is central to ensuring the existing net flow of resources stops moving from the Global South to the Global North and that workers, regardless of locality, are not exploited21.ix Across seminars and in draft writings, Goodbun sets out why global solidarity is ‘necessary for resisting the expansion of the extractive frontiers’. Marx’s idea of surplus value, which contends that the worker is paid less than the value of the product they produce. By, for example, reducing labour costs in relation to a competitor one can extract surplus value. Given the globalised nature of such a system this same surplus can also be captured elsewhere other than “the site of extraction”. Whether this surplus is extracted in the Olive fields of Alentejo or a Diamond mine in South Africa is irrelevant as at some point in the network there must be exploited labour. It is for this very reason that we understand the conceptualisation of osomdaterra as a space for alliances and worker solidarity to form and be maintained.x Stephan Harding a pioneer of Deep Ecology understands the moment of ‘encounter’ as an interaction between a ‘presence’ and oneself in a way that is beyond one’s intellect. It is poetry and an emotional connection where two become at one22. Just as with Deep Listening, it indicates an expansive ecological connection and one suggestive of a type of wisdom or understanding absent from capitalism’s rationalist approach to the world.

In the chapter, Some Problems with Scale of Anna Tsing’s book The Mushroom at the End of the World, Tsing writes:

“Scalability requires that project elements be oblivious to the indeterminacies of encounter; that’s how they allow smooth expansion. Thus, too, scalability banishes meaningful diversity, that is, diversity that might change things.”23

17

Godofredo Enes Pereira, Christina Leigh Geros and Jon Goodbun, “Take Back the Land,” Architectural Design 92, no. 1 (2022): 56.

18 David Harvey, “Class 01 Reading Marx's Capital Vol I with David Harvey”, filmed 2007 by Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey, video, 1:51:07, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBazR59SZXk 19 Alberto Matos speaks to us in the Beja office of Solidaridade Imigrante 20 Jon Goodbun, “On the Possibility of an Ecological Dialogue; There isn’t one Green New Deal,” Making Futures Berlin, (2019): 1. p78 21 Goodbun, “On the Possibility of an Ecological Dialogue; There isn’t one Green New Deal,” 79.

22 Stephan Harding, “Encountering another being,” uploaded 22 April, 2018 by Mindfulness 360 - Centre for Mindfulness, video, 4:33, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWdBDzwakds 23 Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 38.

If we use this as a lens through which to analyse Alentejo’s agricultural reality since the construction of the Alqueva Dam we can see how the Latifundio south of the River Tejo xi has enabled already extensive areas of land to be bought by external investors and dedicated to intensive agricultures, facilitated by irrigation. It is case in point for Tsing’s description of the capitalist colonial project that has: “Showed how alienation, interchangeability, and expansion could lead to unprecedented profits. This formula shaped the dreams we have come to call progress and modernity”24 In a lecture given at the Strelka Institute, Pier Vittorio Aureli outlines how this form of production relies on control and a permanence that is achieved through private property and ownership. The itinerancy of alternative forms of subsistence existence are not compatible and therefore “life itself becomes a form of production”25. However, what we see in Alentejo is exactly this; itinerant labour. The difference is that this itinerant labour exists within an established system of controlled private property that leaves little room for existences independent of it. This dependence, therefore, accommodates the itinerance (to its advantage) through systems of precarity that enable its exploitation.

“And these ones [employees] do their job. They don’t worry. They will get the same wage. In fact, they might not want to have two or three things growing because it might be more work for them so they might be best if they stay only with one [crop]...because it’s more simple” “My neighbours in an array of, I don’t know, 20km, it used to be 2km but in an array of 20km all properties changed owner and that’s weird when we are talking about land. It’s not a normal thing that land changed owner and some of them changed owner more than once….”26 xii The difference between a conventional farmer and an organic farmer in the general is the application of chemicals not the conditions of workers. The necessity to “[create] levels of autonomy required for the survival and wellbeing of many peoples; and for exploring alternative forms of stewardship of nature and resources.”27 remains. The necessity to Take Back the Land remains. “...scalability is increasingly reduced to a technical problem rather than a popular mobilisation in which citizens, governments, and corporations should work together.”28 Two moments within our research speak to this speculative nature of what one of many Green New Deals may look like. On the 4th of May we attended the 1st Seminar of TerrAlimenta a project focused on "Transição para um Sistema Alimentar Territorializado no Baixo Alentejo."29 One of the presentations was given by Associação Terra Sintrópica, a community organisation in Mértola who focus on agroecological food production. Both projects offer an opportunity to pursue an alternative agriculture. Despite being situated as responses to or adjacent to the ongoing environmental crisis both projects say very little in terms of what their ideas mean for labour-relations.

However, they must be treated in the same way as the environmental concerns that they situate themselves in because they are one and the same. The very same socio-economic structures that enable exploitative labour conditions enable environmental degradation and will not be solved independently of each other.30 xiii

24

Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. 40 Pier Vittorio Aureli, “Less is Enough,” filmed 2013 at Strelka Institute, video, 1:19:16, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-9_7r3g0Ko 26 We speak to Ana Carla about her experience as an organic farmer 27 Enes Pereira, Leigh Geros and Goodbun, “Take Back the Land,” 56.

28 Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. 42 29 Transition to a Territorialized Food System in Baixo Alentejo 30 Goodbun, “On the Possibility of an Ecological Dialogue; There isn’t one Green New Deal,” 79.

25

Through field recordings taken from Alentejo and their inclusion in the works we have made an active decision to complicate the understanding of labour and its exploitation. Labour cannot be understood solely in relation to humans and should be expanded outside of the ‘factory’ walls as well as to our extra-human counterparts. “For labour power, read nature.”31 Jason W. Moore’s cybernetic approach understands labour as “work-systems”32 rather than seeing labour solely of the individual, instead encompassing the entirety of a given metabolic system.

In so doing, this expansion of what should be deemed ‘labour-power’ enables us to understand it’s cheapness. A cheapness enabled by the exploitation of work also carried out by extra-human existences. It exposes “The unifying relations exhausting human and extra-human natures in the capitalist world-ecology.”33

We approach the end of a dirt track where there is a cluster of ruined buildings associated with a water mill. In the calmness of the night, insects dart frantically between screens and torches, marsh grasses rustle alongside the calls of sigarras and crickets, the Guadiana flows on by. George’s ‘bat detector’ ticks over registering and translating the calls of various signals (insect and technological). Suddenly as if jumping to life it emits a sharp series of pulses. The sound of a bat in search of insects, navigating its riverine habitat with ultrasonic emissions.

“So if you have insects, you have bats. If you don't have insects, you don't have bats, and bats mostly eat or hunt, where the insects grow, appear it's mostly on water lines, dams, reservoirs and also where are humidity and all of those olive camps that you saw. They have a lot of humidity. So they have insects also and bats go there to eat. And then you must set up the tree is intensive, planted, very intensive in a intensive way. That's no problem for a bat…”34

A systemic understanding of labour-relations must, therefore, extend what is deemed ‘labour’ beyond the confines of the plantation. ‘Non-productive’ labour as coined by Marx encompasses everything that is not directly productive to industry and as a result is not paid but, nonetheless, is inherent to sustaining the system of capital.

It “invades everyday life, and encompasses more and more work within the logic of abstract social labour.”35 What does this sound like? xiv We start with the sound of bees, the worms moving through the soil, the dawn-chorus of birdsong, the water of the Guadiana moving over the hydrophone. These sounds offer a distinction between work and labour with reference to St. Francis’ rejection of private property36 and the agroecological practices of Terra Sintrópica that can help us envision an alternative future of labour. Aureli’s reference to St Francis is to make the distinction between private property and impermanent use (much like the agricultural commons). Rather than exploiting the systems we live in, alternative agricultural systems can propose a mutual relationship of diversity and complexity in which select components of ‘nature’ are not protected for their singular benefits to capital but rather form a metabolic system of cohabitation that is used as needed but not owned. This relinquishing of ownership allows for ‘work’ - the “co-production of the human and the rest of nature.”37

— Transmission —

31

Jason W. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital (London: Verso, 2015), 163.

Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital, 163.

33 Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital, 163.

34 Paulo Marques of EDIA (Empresa de Desenvolvimento e Infra-estruturas do Alqueva) tells us that they are encouraging farmers to protect riparian habitats so as to promote the accommodation of bats and birds as bio pest control instead of chemicals 35 Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital, 165.

36 Aureli, “Less is Enough,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-9_7r3g0Ko 37 Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital, 166 32

May 2023. As we walk through the scrub that covers the ground surrounding the Cork and Holme Oaks of a, approximately, 1000 Hectare Montado. Men, split into teams of 2, methodically harvests cork from the oak, seemingly drifting across the hillside. Muffled thuds of cork being split by axe heads are followed by squeaks and metallic pings as they are removed with a twist. Every so often someone sings. Simultaneously, a radio broadcasts Nelly Furtado’s Say It Right across the hillside. xv In the day, in the night Say it right, say it all You either got it or you don't You either stand or you fall When your will is broken When it slips from your hand When there's no time for joking There's a hole in the plan Oh, you don't mean nothing at all to me (Hey, oh, oh, hey) No, you don't mean nothing at all to me (Hey, oh, oh, hey) But you got what it takes to set me free (Hey, oh, oh, hey) Oh, you could mean everything to me (Hey, oh, oh, hey) I can't say (say) that I'm not (not) at a loss (loss) and at fault (fault) I can't say (say) that I don't (don't) love the light (light) and the dark I can't say that I don't (don't) know that I am alive And I love what I feel (feel) I could show (show you) you tonight, you tonight Oh, you don't mean nothing at all to me (Hey, oh, oh, hey) No, you don't mean nothing at all to me (Hey, oh, oh, hey) But you got what it takes to set me free (Hey, oh, oh, hey) Oh, you could mean everything to me (Hey, oh, oh, hey) From my hands I could give you something that I made From my mouth I could sing you another brick that I laid From my body (from my body) I could show you (I could show you) A place (a place) God knows (that only God knows) You should know, this space is holy (Oh oh oh oh) Do you really wanna go? (Three, four) Hey, hey, hey You don't mean nothin' at all to me Hey, hey Hey, hey, hey You don't mean nothin' at all to me Hey, hey 38

The sounds of labour, gathered and machined, are emitted from Hyde Park as a low-powered broadcast. The electromagnetic signals travel across the A315, Kensington Gore and are received by a series of radios on 88.1FM in the Darwin Building, the Royal College of Art. Within this broadcast is our own research and resultant reflections, including interviews with academics and audio taken from found media. More importantly there are field recordings and the sounds of people currently involved in Alentejo’s labour-relations including workers themselves. xvi “Radio perhaps offers an alternative to the visually demanding nature of television and film and could even be considered constructive of a certain kind of alternative ‘visuality’ composed from listeners’ experiences and memories” 39 The rationale of using radio to realise our research on the sound of labour is succinctly summarised above by Alisdair Pinkerton in his book, Radio. As a medium it has allowed for the continuation of a machinic visuality that has been consistent throughout the project but also enables the research to be distributed with a greater level of accessibility than the visual works that have preceded it. Much like music, the broadcast uses sound’s abstraction to concentrate on the speculative nature of the project. Beyond our performative broadcast it’s aim was to demonstrate the potential of radio as a medium to be used in pursuit of both local and international spaces of communication and solidarity amongst workers.

38 39

Lyrics to Say It Right, Nelly Furtado Alasdair Pinkerton, Radio: Making Waves in Sound, (London: Reaktion Books, Limited, 2019), 41.

“Indians and Pakistanis are more inclined to stay and bring families. A few years ago many come to work in fields then to the berries at the coast and now stay, open shops and restaurants. Perhaps migrants from Africa are less inclined to stay, less of a cohesive and organised social group - many African migrants come alone and find people here from home and connect but not such close relationships. Often their goal is to get money to send home then return home themselves to marry.”40 “David Hendy notes, radio is perhaps the ‘most adaptable’ medium at locating its audience, even when those audiences stretch across international frontiers:” “While being the local medium par excellence, radio is also able to reach across large spaces, potentially threatening place-specific cultures with its homogenised content, potentially forging new delocalised communities of interest…”41 It is these very ‘delocalised communities of interest’ that could be so important within the context of migrant workers who often lack permanent communities due to the impermanence of their situations. However, rather than interpreting radio as a threat to place-specific cultures it can be seen as an electromagnetic polyphony of: ideas, information, cultures and much more that have the possibility of being tuned into with the right equipment.

Indeed to draw a parallel between Martin Stokes’ recognition that…

“Ethnomusicologists have noted with great frequency the fact that musics are seldom stable in contexts of social change.”42 …so too do ‘place-specific cultures’ lack stability in contexts of social change. A change certainly being witnessed in the Alentejo.

Just as the emittance of a signal should be understood as an assertion of existence, tuning into a radio community is a powerful and performative assertion of active engagement in one’s reality. Stokes describes the “‘tuning in’ through music of these social alignments” as a “powerful affective experience in which social identity is literally ‘embodied’”.43 Needless to say, radio conceptualised in this way is not new. There is a long history of it being used as a means of resistance to hegemonic structures such as in pirate radio, an ongoing practice as well as a space of identity, community and gathering. xvii Both of these ideas need to be tempered with the understanding of radio as a technology equally implicit in hegemonic structures of controlling identities and populations. Perhaps most interesting in complicating the emancipatory qualities of radio is David Harvey’s criticism of technologies that compress time and space as enablers of capitalist interest44. Although not his intention, the historian David Hendy’s suggestion “that radio was integral to the ‘rewiring’ of the modern mind’”45 may indeed be correct in regards to modern society’s reliance on speed and efficiency and their role as capitalist tools. Although a reality, this should not disqualify the merits of radio conceptualised in osomdaterra.

In this way, the work argues that radio can be seen as environmental media; a continuous dialogue between emitter, environmental condition and receiver. Radio waves are not simply ‘ether’. They react to solar cycles, atmospheric particles, topographies, infrastructures, territories and stories (competing electromagnetic emissions of information). An international transmission may use upper levels of the atmosphere such as the ionosphere to reflect a signal, thus, bypassing infrastructural requirements of shortwave ground to ground transmissions in the form of radio towers for example. A well executed transmission requires a dialogue between radio wave frequency and electron concentration which in turn requires an understanding not only of climatic conditions such as temperature or electromagnetic storms but also of solar conditions like solar cycles or the interplay between the two; auroras. J.A.Ratcliffe in Sun, Earth and Radio describes the specific condition of ‘equatorial spread’ that creates severe distortion due to ionospheric disruption over the tropics after sunset46.

40

Ana Ademar, owner of Bar Infantes that hosts Portuguese Language classes for migrants and member of social organisation Ressurrectos who organise community events for migrants in Beja 41 Pinkerton, Radio: Making Waves in Sound, 39.

42 Martin Stokes, “Introduction” in Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place ed. Martin Stokes, (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1997), 17.

43 Stokes, “Introduction”,12.

44 Pinkerton, Radio: Making Waves in Sound, 115.

45 Pinkerton, Radio: Making Waves in Sound, 115.

46 John Ashworth Ratcliffe, Sun, Earth and Radio: An Introduction to the Ionosphere and Magnetosphere. (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970), 212.

Thus interference can be understood as bearing witness to the environment over, through and within which a signal travels. This witness is in some ways a counter to the homogeneity enabled by the compression of space and time.

“Photons, which are energy, do appear to process information and to act accordingly, and therefore, strange as it may sound, they seem to be organic.” 47 Control, which can be exerted through radio is equally environmental and furthers the claim of radio as climatic media. Yuriki Furuhata’s work on this in Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control looks at the conditioning of an environment (atmospheric control) as a means of social-conditioning. This is done through “governing, managing, regulating, and optimising the movements of elements and lives.”48 Radio is no different of course. osomdaterra’s Hyde Park broadcast was only made legal given the power of the FM Transmitter used. Its range was so minimal that it was not deemed a big enough interference to necessitate having to buy a licence and therefore space in the radio-waves. Many scholars before “have approached the question of atmosphere in relation to the juridical and governmental practices of partitioning space and instituting laws and civic norms.”49 Undoubtedly, in order to establish a functioning radio-space for the sound of labour there are infrastructural, bureaucratic, technological and financial barriers to tackle. Appropriating Stokes’ assessment of Afghanistani radio: “...for music to fulfil its potential for reconciliation there must be a revival of musical patronage…”50 Such patronage is available and work is already being undertaken to establish these spaces. xviii “We were trying to get them here also so they can, we will give them a programme and podcasts so they can work here and communicate and some stuff but we are not yet, we didn’t get maybe to the right person because they are very shy and they are you know, I guess they are not even… How can I say this? Because they don’t stay here for a long time. They are always changing. I don't know. They come here. They work for a few months maybe and then they go away. And we are all the time seeing new faces, you know. Maybe just a few, not very much people are staying…”51 Herein lies the problem and the necessity.

— Frequency — — Frequency — — Frequency — — Frequency — — Frequency —

“[Farocki] didn’t think according to a logic of binarism and opposition but rather in terms of a logic of difference…”52

47 48

Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, (New York:Bantam, 1979), 63-64.

Yuriko Furuhata, Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2022),

8.

49

Furuhata, Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control, 7.

Stokes, “Introduction”, 59-60.

51 Pedro Frazão of Rádio Voz de Planicíe 52 Alexander Alberro and Thomas Elsaesser, “Farocki: A Frame for the No Longer Visible: Thomas Elsaesser in Conversation with Alexander Alberro,” e-flux, November, 2014. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/59/61111/farocki-a-frame-for-the-no-longer-visible-thomas-elsaesser-in-conversation-with-alexan der-alberro/ 50

And so to a note on the method. One word, as a result of an unconscious set of decisions in editing the initial research film after the first trip to Alentejo, has become central to the subsequent types of ‘images’ created in the project; machinic.

Two questions arise.

How has the machinic been understood and therefore used as a methodology within the project?

How might this understanding be expanded as a means of reflection upon the works?

First, the research line, machinic ecologies. It describes a situation wherein many actors amount to a network of interconnected relationships, interacting in such a way to generate something new that is independent and wider than its individual components. This idea has been applied to the works through the collaging, montage and assembly of a variety of media that includes video, audio, photography and poetry. The various relationships that are formed by the placement of these media alongside each other, chronologically or superimposed on one another for example force the viewer to engage with new realities in front or around them. In so doing they become part of this machinic ecology xix being changed by and, in the latter case of osomdaterra, actually altering the work (the adjustment and tuning of a receiving radio).

These works have referenced and should, therefore, be understood in the context of montaged filmic works, among other typologies, with various notable examples. Xaraasi Xanne – Crossing Voices by Raphaël Grisey and Bouba Touré, Arcadia by Paul Wright and Images of the World and the Inscription of War by Harun Farocki.xx We delve into the late, Harun Farocki’s montage work par excellence drawing on the voices within e-FUX Issue #59 that is entitled and unsurprisingly consists of writing surrounding, “Harun Farocki”. In a conversation between Thomas Elsaesser and Alexander Alberro they discuss Farocki’s work as “”writing” in the largest possible sense” that are “form[s] of intelligence.”53 This can be seen in the machinic nature of Farocki’s narratives that are formed through a literary understanding of juxtaposition; a tool used to exemplify difference between two or more objects.

In fact, their inclusion of the word ‘intelligence’ points towards a cybernetic understanding of these works that includes not only the relations between material within the works but also the onlooker, the creator and the space in which they exist. This was especially prominent in Farocki’s transition to exhibition work whereby “he challenged visitors to experience the separating and connecting in their own bodies’ peripatetic trajectory.”54 ii It is clear that through its placement within an installation a work’s environment is consciously engaged with rather than simply being a film watched anywhere. Much like a cybernetic understanding of mind that expands beyond the individual to incorporate immediate relations and also ecological relations of an environmental system in which the being lives,55 images, when placed spatially, are able to engage similarly on various scales and to various extents.

However, perhaps most striking is the simplicity of Farocki’s style. Both Ute Holl and Hito Steyerl make a point of highlighting this. “In all he did, he kept it simple, clear, and grounded. In cinematic terms: at eye level.”56. His works “[point] towards the visible…opposing the visible and the obvious… [they] do not deal with ideological mist or the ontological mysteries of an image, but with the inertia of our perceiving eyes…”57. This use of montage’s juxtapositional qualities enable such a style of image to present the seemingly mundane whilst drawing out important narratives and questions.

53

Alberro and Elsaesser, “Farocki: A Frame for the No Longer Visible” https://www.e-flux.com/journal/59/61111/farocki-a-frame-for-the-no-longer-visible-thomas-elsaesser-in-conversation-with-alexan der-alberro/ 54 Alberro and Elsaesser, “Farocki: A Frame for the No Longer Visible” https://www.e-flux.com/journal/59/61111/farocki-a-frame-for-the-no-longer-visible-thomas-elsaesser-in-conversation-with-alexan der-alberro/ 55 Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and Epistemology, (St Albans: Paladin, 1973) 437.

56 Hito Steyerl, “Beginnings,” e-flux, November, 2014, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/59/61140/beginnings/ 57 Ute Holl, “Farocki’s Cinematic Historiography: Reconstructing the Visible”, e-flux, November, 2014, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/59/61118/farocki-s-cinematic-historiography-reconstructing-the-visible/

The machinic as process and the assemblage as object. They are terms, as understood here, conceptualised by Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze. They draw on the linguistic framework set forth by Louis Hjemslev in understanding the realisation of language,58 which sets an interesting foundation for the terms’ usages as literary and narrative tools. Hjelmslev uses ‘planes’ of cognitive progression that are passed through in order to articulate content or material as form and then of form as expression of idea.

Deleuze and Guatarri complicate this with the addition of partially realised articulations. These can be seen as connections between material and form but that are not fully expressed. Nonetheless their presence is generative in that they continuously de- and re- territorialise a flow of never-quite-articulated matter. They define and redefine material, forms and ideas generally grouped in a single category. The assemblage then is the form given to these almost-articulations “deducted from the flow - selected, organised, stratified - in such a way as to converge (consistency) artificially and naturally; an assemblage, in this sense, is a veritable invention.”59 This constant flux in territorialisation is the machinic process and is “the fundamental characteristic of a working machine”60. Katarzyna Szafranowska’s appliction of the machinic as literary tool to Kafka’s Metamorphosis provides a lens into understanding the machinic image used throughout the project and its ability to create ‘fictional’ realities and spaces of speculation. Szafranowska isolates the following from 1000 Plateaus. ““The machines of writing are treated as an experiment on actuality, an apparatus capable of producing deterritorialization, a disruption in the order of reality. The machine launches a deterritorializing movement of a territorial assemblage. The “line of flight”, namely the process of a machine entering into movement, leads to a new territory.”61 In this way the Deleuzian Machine can be seen throughout the works in the project. The research material is ordered according to a certain narrative that is formed through the juxtaposition of various media. These juxtapositions form a series of partial articulations of expression that de/re-territorialise ideas, assumptions, thoughts and understandings of ongoing realities. The imbalance and distortion produced gives space to the “[proposition of] radically different form[s] of organisation”62 and “[enable] all sorts of other intersections.”63 Although the works at certain times came about as a result of unconscious decisions, understanding this in the context of the machinic leads us to Guattari’s machinic unconscious and simultaneously to Farocki.

“In this theory, the unconscious is never a-social or a-political, but an otherwise imaginative processes to be unleashed by its liberation, and doing so exemplifies a non-totalising creative poeisis at the threshold of reason.”64 Farocki’s work simultaneously relies on a form of unconscious perception as his films and thus “vision is stratified by implicit historical structure.”65 Some of the most fruitful discussions around our work, often in reviews, have come through a result of unconscious decisions articulating ideas that connote certain implicit historical structures in the machinic images that resonate and are noticed by a given observer. In its practice, this methodology opens up an opportunity to explore how complex systems, ecologies and their rifts are discussed and researched. It points towards a collective practice of discussion of existing situations and, in turn, speculation on what alternative possibilities might exist beyond them.

58

Gareth Abrahams, “The Strata/Machinic Assemblage and Architecture,” Deleuze and Guattari Studies 14, no.4 (2020): 607.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 473 60 Katarzyna Szafranowska, “Metamorphosis: The Machinic Metaphor in Kafkian Animal Stories,” The Polish Journal of Aesthetics, 53, no.2 (2019), pp. 56.

61 Szafranowska, “Metamorphosis: The Machinic Metaphor in Kafkian Animal Stories,” 56.

62 Szafranowska, “Metamorphosis: The Machinic Metaphor in Kafkian Animal Stories,” 56.

63 Dave Harris, “Notes on: Guattari, F. (2011) The Machinic Unconscious. Essays in Schizoanalysis, translated by Taylor Adkins. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents,” Arasite, accessed 24 July, 2023, https://www.arasite.org/machincunconsc.html 64 Bradley Kaye. “Félix Guattari (2011) the Machinic Unconscious: Essays in Schizoanalysis, Trans. T. Adkins, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e)”. Deleuze Studies, 8, no.2 (2014), pp.307 65 Holl, “Farocki’s Cinematic Historiography: Reconstructing the Visible”, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/59/61118/farocki-s-cinematic-historiography-reconstructing-the-visible/ 59

The polyphony of ideas, semi/full articulations, propositions and unconscious additions that sit in the space between image creator and observer enable an expanded understanding of a specific condition not only in space but also through time that should be seen as vital in the process of establishing future conditions with environmental justice at its heart. Sound can be seen as another part of this milieu that is not secondary to visuality but proposes an alternative visuality and one, whose abstract nature is positioned well for the speculation that is required of us.

“Every work of art is an incarnation: an investment of matter with spirit. The term "assemblage" has been singled out, with this duality in mind, to denote not only a specific technical procedure and form used in the literary and musical, as well as the plastic, arts, but also a complex of attitudes and ideas.”

66

osomdaterra is the current iteration of a year long project consisting of a series of works that have machined research, heavily based in Alentejo, Portugal through a variety of inter-permeating media such as film, performance, photography, writing, and most recently as sound and radio. Within the work and more broadly throughout the overarching project two foci have developed. The first, is the project’s methodology, which draws on ideas of the machinic to create speculative places of conversation and dialogue between various distinct and seemingly unrelated actors; connecting existences. In so doing it aims to be generative of new understandings and ideas with regards to a variety of environmental conditions. This piece of writing should, therefore, be understood as one within the body of previous assemblages that draws on the research undertaken between Portugal and The United Kingdom. As well as providing a greater level of rationale to the design and manifestation of osomdaterra it enables a more direct level of criticality and reflection on ideas running throughout earlier works as well..

The second focus central to osomdaterra, is that of the contemporary sound of labour in Alentejo. Manifested through sound and radio the work positions itself as a collective sound indicative of various environmental ruptures constituting the larger metabolic rifts that exist throughout Alentejo, Portugal. Specifically, the research focuses on the relation between changing labour conditions and between historic and contemporary realities impacted by the intensification of industrial agriculture in the region. Its concentration on localised conditions enables an intimate understanding of labour-relations as inherently environmental concerns and far wider reaching than typically understood: extending beyond the confines of ‘the field’ and to the many non-human realities in their own right. The understanding of these specific conditions allows for an expansion and application on the global scale.

— Signal — — —

66

— —

—

William C. Seitz, The Art of Assemblage (New York: The Museum of Modern Art,1961), 10.

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Castelo Branco, Salwa El-Shawan. “Ecologies of Music Heritage in Alentejo, Portugal,” in Music, Communities, Sustainability: Developing Policies and Practices, edited by Huib Schippers and Anthony Seeger, 177-195. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022.

Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. A Thousand Plateaus. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.

Enes Pereira, Godofredo. “Towards an Environmental Architecture.” e-flux, June, 2018. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/positions/205375/towards-an-environmental-architecture/ Enes Pereira, Godofredo, Leigh Geros, Christina and Goodbun, Jon. “Take Back the Land.” Architectural Design 92, no. 1 (2022).

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Harding, Stephan. “Encountering another being.” Uploaded 22 April, 2018 by Mindfulness 360 - Centre for Mindfulness. Video, 4:33. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWdBDzwakds Harris, Dave. “Notes on: Guattari, F. (2011) The Machinic Unconscious. Essays in Schizoanalysis, translated by Taylor Adkins.

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