Before we came to Mina de S. Domingos we each put together some creative exercises to do during the residency. The exercises could either be playfully collaging and mixing words to trace associations, collecting field notes, sound recording, or drawing.
The following poetic impressions of the town are the outcome of a collective writing exercise. Inspired by a technique called «cadáver esquisito», we each wrote a story of a maximum of 50 words. After that, we collectively re-organized the sentences to assemble a final text based on the three different narratives.
From the shade, we step out into the warm air, looking at the remains of a basement and what seems to be the leftovers of a train stop.
After the extraction finished,
the guts of the earth lay down exposed.
Scrap metal pieces,
long bygone relics of the site.
Orebody
If the mine could talk, what would it say?
Up in the clear sky, the red sun is burning.
Patches of red soil cover the roads.
Layered sediments flank the deep-red waters.
Turning the rocks soft as oranges.
Every day from midday till sunset, we pant like dogs along with the abandoned mine.
The circles of acidic rainwater swallow the copper-colored soil and create the illusion of a sunset boiling up from beneath the earth.
Orebody
Up in the clear sky, the red sun is burning.
Red roof tiles cover the top of the houses.
Sunsets made of an intense red light foreshadow the hottest days yet to come.
Changing our skin from pale to pink.
Underneath all that warmth,
a colony of ants tickles the roots of the village.
Ana Brotas, Karina Sletten e Viviana Cárdenas
© Ana Brotas, Karina Sletten e Viviana Cárdenas