When time lasts a ton, 2021

Mobile Landscapes Duo: Bárbara Lissa and Maria Vaz

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The work "When time lasts a ton", developed in the municipality of Brumadinho-MG, began in 2021, two years after the collapse of the Córrego do Feijão dam, controlled by the mining company Vale S.A. Some questions prompted us to think about this environment toxic and present, even if invisible, through photographs: “What still reverberates, even if invisible, in the place?”, “What other ways of creating an archive, documenting an event not only on the date it occurred, but in an expanded time ?”. After this time had passed since the date of the disaster, our proposal was to photograph, in a sensible way,yesvel, what remains of the event in the local landscape, in 2021, two years after the event. What was still to be seen, that persists, would have to be photographed subtly, almost blindly, like a desolate horizon and abandoned houses covered, intentionally, with low plants and grass that hide the mud.

Using  a   camera   Zeiss   Ikon   and   a   negative   120mm,   We produce combined images, without separation by frames, giving materiality to  multiplicity  of  dimensions  temporal  in force.  As  images,  built  in layers, they both reconstitute and create different possible landscapes through a technique that allows a partial overlap of images to be produced, where one frame invades and recomposes the other. The combined landscape is sometimes invaded by the grass that invades the houses, or by the train that carries the mountains. In the development process, the negatives developed together with chemicals, local water contaminated by heavy metals and iron ore dust reveal not only images of the place, but the materiality of Córrego do Feijão itself, printed on the film. In addition to a representation, a testimony. The images therefore speak of this invisible landscape, imagining the unimaginable, trying to capture something as if it were “hovering in the air” or beneath our feet.

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