assemblage b

assemblage b A note on how to read this work: These images accompany the written work of reflections, voices and readings. 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.

The page numbers in this document, in the form iii , correspond to the equivalent numeral in the written document. Together, the documents are read as a two channel work.

1 2

1

2

1

Sonograph of Cante Alentejano performance by Cantadores do Desassossego.

Desassossego most notable in the Title of one of Fernando Pessoa’s seminal works Livro do Desassossego can be translated to Disquiet or a condition of unease or unrest and offers a poignant departure for an understanding of Cante Alentejano’s history (and possible future) within the context of political and social resistance.

2 Sonograph of a fully mechanised harvest of Olives.

The machine straddles the row of Olive trees and slowly moves forward. As the trees pass through they are stripped of Olives by brushes rotating at high frequencies. Despite its high level of automation ensured as a means of reducing human labour power requirements of the plantations, Benvindo Maçâs the director of INIAV’s (Instituto Nacional de Investigação Agrária e Veterinária) Elvas centre tells us that it, in fact, causes wounds to the trees. These wounds become infected and must be removed. The removal of targeted areas of infection, therefore, necessitates human labour.

i 1

3

3

3

osomdaterra radio broadcast Drawing on the specialised performances, formal and informal, of Cante Alentejano, the first broadcast of a sound piece investigating the sound of labour in Alentejo was designed so that listeners could interact with the radios receiving the broadcast. Both radio and listener are encircled within a rather small space so as provide the intimacy and conviviality central to the project’s conceptualisation in radio.

ii 2

4

4

2

Still of research film investigating polyphony in testimony. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEAM2DKF8bY Notably the film ends with the sound of Nepalese music from a performance at Festival ImigARTE, 2011 in Lisbon. The music is then interfered with building into a cacophony of voices. The Nepalese, voices, rhythms and sounds blur the conceptions of Portuguese labour in the context of the film’s research that now consists of a globalised workforce. The festival is a celebration of this international community and sound.

4

iii 3

5 6

5

6

5 Archipel Stations Community Radio The first example of an international radio platform that we have reached out to and are in conversation with and with whom we are aiming to broadcast osomdaterra to their community. Stating that their “focus is on sound and narrative, finding in these two realms strong foundations for emancipation and encounters of the personal and the political…” it would be well placed to broadcast our sound piece and to explore radio’s ability as a space of cross-border worker solidarity.

6 Radio Campus Paris A local radio station in Paris, broadcasting to Ile-de-France region and part of the Radio Campus network. In communication with the radio through Carlos Balbino, a member of Cantadores de Paris we are speaking with them in the aim of broadcasting osomdaterra to their community.

iv 4

7

7

7

Testimony A definition of testimony used within a performance/film investigating ideas of scarcity and abundance as a result of metabolic rifts in Alentejo. https://youtu.be/4_QeuFTBmf4 This definition was workshopped amongst the RS3:Liquid Deserts Studio as a means of collectively discussing key themes across the whole studio.

v 5

8 9

8

9

8

Four stills from Cacheu, Filipa César The film is a single shot of a science fiction lecture investigating Portugal’s lasting colonial legacy in Guinea Bissau.

9 Still of Machinic Abundance The film investigates scarcity and abundance as a result of metabolic rifts in Alentejo. https://youtu.be/4_QeuFTBmf4 It draws on the machinic assemblage ideas and tools used by Filipa César in the combination of projection, performance and writing.

vi 6

10

10

10

osomdaterra archive Wall of archived research and communications between us and people we have spoken to in person, over email, zoom or Whatsapp, and those we have reached out to for further contact. Due to some of the sensitive nature of some of the conversations and the precarity of some of people we have interacted with, we have used tools such as redacting certain names as well as presenting a collective mass of interactions without singling any particular actor in isolation.

vii 7

11 12 11

12

11

Still of research film investigating polyphony in testimony. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEAM2DKF8bY In conversation with Alberto Matos at the Beja office of Solidaridade Imigrante “Now they've created a sort of - discrimination visa - to CPLP (portuguese community language) - portuguese ex colonies, Brazil and Africa, Timor also positive discrimination it's sort of a fraud, that's a paper we can register online, OK? you are legal in the country, but you have not photo, no finger, nothing, no biometric code. It's a paper online, you can only stay in Portugal.

That's not bad, but some of the ex colonies just migrate to CPLP, discrimination even in prices, for instance, for ex colonies (it's about 54 euros), but if you get CPLP it's 15. But if you are sénégalese, you pay 150 something.”

12

Image of Solidaridade Imigrante’s flag The Beja office is led by Alberto Matos whose work involves helping migrants navigate Portugal’s legal and bureaucratic systems as well as being a vocal and visible face of the defence of migrant rights in the region.

viii 8

13

13

13

Stills from the film of osomdaterra’s Hyde Park broadcast https://youtu.be/Y2Hw5DoPEyk

ix 9

14

14 15

15

14

Still of research film investigating the theme of polyphony in testimony. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEAM2DKF8bY Fully mechanised Olive Harvest.

An employee of Oliveira da Serra’s facilities in Ferreira do Alentejo describes the following: “[The high density plantation is] not 100% efficient. So we need people to do this job. So manually, with sticks they will remove the rest of [the olives]. So imagine, we need the machine, around 20 persons to do this job and the maximum that we can collect per day, in this system, it’s only 1 Hectare. The super high density, on the other side, in 1 Ha we can plant 2000 olive trees. The distance between each one, it’s only 1m so we can plant more and all of them are very pruned and small for the machine that does the harvest. We only need 1 person driving the machine for the collection. We have better quality and in 1 day we can collect, per machine, 6 Ha of olive grove. It’s a big difference.”

15 Still of research film investigating the theme of polyphony in testimony. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEAM2DKF8bY In a clip taken from the documentary, Verde Que Mancha, ZERØ – Associação Sistema Terrestre Sustentável. Pedro Horta of Alentejo Vivo speaks about the inability of smaller traditional Olive groves to maintain viability in the face of large scale super-intensive plantations.

x 10

16

16

16

Samuel Melro We speak to archaeologist Samuel Melro at the Roman Vila in Pisões. Here he describes the changes in Alentejo’s land-use beginning from the earliest colonial exploitation of the land by the Roman empire. Despite undergoing many changes in this history, at no point has it changed more dramatically than since the completion of the Alqueva Dam and Irrigation Project.

Indeed, the land-ownership of Alentejo’s latifundio system and its relationship to land-use is unpacked and articulated very interestingly in Tiago Saraiva’s Facist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism.

xi 11

17

17

18

18

17

Ana Carla points at an aerial photograph of a earlier iteration of her family’s Quinta In conversation with Ana Carla regarding her practice as an organic farmer she describes the development of the farm into intensive pork production under her Father during the 1980s. This change came about at a similar time to the clear-cutting of Montado on the land in order to intensify the production on the land. In the context of increasing climate instability this is regrettable, she says, as diversity in a farm’s production is a form of resilience.

18 Still taken from Terra de Pão, Terra da Luta, 1977 by José Nascimento In the wake of the overthrow of the Dictatorship, the film investigates the agrarian reform movement in Alentejo. Ana Carla’s family’s over 200 Ha Quinta was taken over during this time by rural workers.

xii 12

19

20

19 20

19

Field layout of Olive varieties optimised for greatest statistical robustness.

On a visit to the INIAV (Instituto Nacional de Investigação Agrária e Veterinária) Elvas Station we are taken around various experimental plots. Their job is to breed plant variants optimised for certain conditions such as climatic, yield and input levels.

Certain varieties such as the vigorous Galega are unsuitable for super-intensive plantations as their branches and trunk are too sturdy for mechanised harvest. The Arbequina’s slight frame and high yield, on the other hand, have been specifically bred for this type of production 20 Juvenile greenhouse - Image taken by Isabel Palacios-Macedo Olive seedlings are kept under 24 hour light conditions so as to force them through their juvenile stage in as short a time as possible so they are able to be planted into the ‘the immensity of the grid’ and begin producing as much as possible. As noted in a review, these trees are perhaps the plantations most numerous labourers.

xiii 13

21

21

21

Still of Machinic Abundance In its investigations of metabolic rifts, the film/performance features the sound and image of a woman sweeping mud from her doorway in the aftermath of heavy floody in the Campo Maior region of the Alto Alentejo. In so doing it makes of point of drawing the viewers attention to an expanding idea of labour that is associated with the contemporary hegemonic system and is increasingly strained due to environmental breakdown such as these unseasonable floodings.

xiv 14

22

23

22 23

22

A worker’s head is visible amongst the scrub (o mato) that surrounds the Holme and Cork Oak trees of a 1000 Ha Montado 23 Workers in a semi-mechanised intensive Olive plantation. They use machines that vibrate the tree’s branches, shaking the Olives to the ground. They are collected on long nets that are gathered as the workers move along the row.

RS3: Alentejo Research Unit shared archive

xv 15

24

24

24

A TUA VOZ. We want to listen to your voice and experience on the land. We are looking for audio recordings of personal reflections, the sound of your work, stories, poetry, music, singing... to be broadcast on radio and create a collective sound of labour. If you want to contribute to the radio send your send your audio recordings to Whatsapp: +44 7426 482 170 These flyers are written in 6 different languages reflective of Alentejo's contemporary population with a focus on migrant communities: Hindi, Portuguese, French, Arabic, English and Spanish. The open call was intentionally broad in what it refers to as the sound of labour. It expands its definition beyond the extent of the field and into what can be deemed socially necessary.

The flyers have been distributed in collaboration with partners in Alentejo, who are engaged with ongoing labour-relations in the region.

xvi 16

25

25

25 Bandstand in Jardim Público de Beja As we passed through the park, a conversation between two people on the radio was being projected on speakers from the bandstand to the park. A few benches are placed within its range and some were occupied by people sitting there. A couple of people walking through stopped briefly to listen and then carried on their way.

xvii 17

26

26

Sign at the entrance to Rádio Voz de Planicíe Rádio Voz de Planicíe, broadcast on 104.5FM to the surrounding Beja area. We spoke to Pedro Frazão who leads the radio’s music work about Cante Alentejano and his experience witnessing the dramatic land-use, social and economic changes that have occurred around Beja. Translated to Radio Voice of the Plain. Voice of the land. People of the land. Radio’s role in creating a collective voice and amplifying the community it represents is clear.

26

xviii 18

27

27

27

Graphic Score A machinic ecology composed of the testimony and sound of an existing ecology of beings can be seen narrated through the graphic score and method of working in order to achieve forms of polyphony within the broadcast itself.

xix 19

28 29

28

29

28

Xaraasi Xanne – Crossing Voices, Raphaël Grisey and Bouba Touré, 2022 https://raphaelgrisey.net/works/xaraasi-xanne-crossing-voices-in-production/ The film draws on the extensive archive of Bouba Touré and assembles a sprawling network of narratives that dissect the social and colonial histories and contemporary realites within which the Soumankidi Coura Agricultural Cooperative in Mali was created 29 Arcadia, Paul Wright, 2017 The film creates a machinic image of Britain through its use of archival footage from the British Film Institute. In its machining, a set of narratives intertwine complicating conceptions of what Britain was and is. Beauty becomes mythology becomes horror becomes beauty becomes mythology…

xx 20