THREE MOMENTS OF A RIVER,2017-20
duo Paisagens Móveis: Bárbara Lissa and Maria Vaz
 

In 2025, the city of Belo Horizonte is taken over by a flood resulting from the neglect of its urban rivers. Rivers that overflow the asphalt, cross time, transport the city, dream of boats. He insists. Three Moments of a River is a poetic and photographic fable of the urban rivers of the city of Belo Horizonte, in a profusion of times that look at their past, present and possible futures.

Amid the dystopian narrative, a man builds a boat. Not ignoring the waters that submerge the city, he is now able to navigate towards another possible future. 

Concern about developmental and predatory political decisions accompanies our work, which began in 2017, when we began researchthe history of the rivers in the city of Belo Horizonte and their canalization and closure process, which culminated in 208 KM of invisible rivers under the avenues. In addition to historical research, we annually record periods of rain that cause flooding due to lack of drainage, which led us to create a dystopian future for the city, dated to 2025, when the city ends up flooded and submerged after a major storm.

In 2020, Brazil, and the world, witnessed the catastrophic consequences of the volume of rain in Belo Horizonte, which was the highest in 112 years. The pipelines began with the justification that industrial progress would put an end to open sewers and that it would contain flooding, but what we saw over the almost hundred years of pipelines was that every year the floods increased and more rivers died in the river. landscape. 

The work unfolds in photographs, videos and a book, which deal with the threshold between reality and fiction, in the quest to rescue the blue and its affects back into the urban landscape.