Into the wilderness
“Air, water, wood: All are enhanced to produce Hyperecology, a parallel Walden, a new rainforest. Landscape has become Junkspace, foliage as spoilage: Trees are tortured, lawns cover human manipulations like thick pelts, or even toupees, sprinklers water according to mathematical timetables…”
Junkspace (2001), Rem Koolhaas
From the diverse landscapes I ventured into, one element kept appearing, by repetition gradually becoming a pathogen that had been extracted from a different context and finally inserted in the landscape. No matter how deep we ventured into the wild, traces of this element were present. Ecologies are not always made up of positive elements, and though this element may be seen and deemed as a negative element in many other contexts, the ecologies that emerged from the site had been transformed into a second nature.
What happens when a pathological element impregnates the ecology of a place to the extent that it creates a second nature and therefore a new ecology?
The Tributary of São Raimundo is located in between the three neighborhoods of Glória, São Raimundo and Nossa Sr. Aparecida, around the bridge on Rua 5 de Setembro. With close surveillance by the Brandão family due to security reasons, it was possible to approach the riverbed and surrounding wasteland. The need for a detailed view of the landscape, was necessary to map the actual state of pollution and accumulation of the plastics on the site.
With my device, I mapped the accumulation and placement of the plastics and waste found on the site, affecting the ecology of the riverbed. The plastics are in some areas so dense and stacked, that they start creating their own topography, making an artificial landscape that suffocates the existing one. Plastic and waste have become a part of the ground, infiltrating the waters, merging with the soil and attacking the existing vegetation.
A wasteland converted into landfill proved to be difficult to navigate. What from previous inspections on site could seem like a landscape you could easily cross and navigate, turned into a landscape with a huge restriction in areas to move on.
The invisible marshlands covered by vegetation, in addition to the large extents of water and sewage that was continuously being poured into the main water flow, had wounded the wasteland to such a degree that it was no longer contained and the erosion and displacement of the soil was in permanent flux. A current event that was repeated several times along the field navigation, was the act of stepping into swamps that were up to 1 meter deep, without being able to anticipate or predict their position.
The mapping exercise had to be extended over several days, where the status of the soil changed, and sometimes made it easier to navigate locations on site that had been deemed unnavigable during previous days. Along with the overview I was receiving from my device, physical evidence in the shape of soil samples were collected from several locations.
The landfill emerging as an infinite Wonderland
The waste objects, found in the tributary have a potential of transforming into a different ecology. How can these landscapes of waste be reflected upon? There is a need to raise awareness towards this issue in the communities that generated the waste. Besides having a precarious waste management policy given and enforced by the government, the population living besides these tributaries lack information on recycling procedures. This could be put into test, by giving the inhabitants a responsibility towards this current landfill.
To assign a new meaning to this landfill, left without a culture of care. In order to achieve this care, the sites status could be freezed as a current status quo, using memory as a changing action, to activate and create a new strategy from a possible emerging landscape in constant flux. To adopt the principle of transformation as a tenet.
Maybe then, when some years have passed, this landfill will have turned into a Wonderland…
