The seaquake breeze  
2021

      “A brisa do maremoto” [The seaquake breeze] is a space of instability, which finds its source of research in the lioz [fossiliferous limestone] and its relationship with the city of Lisbon: from the natural history of the formation of the lioz (which dates back about 97 million years, when the territory of Lisbon was submerged in a sea - as witnessed by the fossil presence of the Rudists), to its history of extraction and application in the city (in which it becomes a noble material, symbol of ostentation and power), to its role in the reconstruction of the same city, after the earthquake, tsunami and fire of 1755. The sedimentation, the use as an ornamental stone (which continues until today) and its consequent erosion, denote the multiple conflicting forces present in the lioz, which are worked on in this installation.
      The video’s constant tremor is the result of the instability of the handheld camera, wandering around several lioz stones in the city, and it is combined with the editing process, which considers time as a sculptural material. Among dissolutions, cuts, and modelling, the temporal and physical mutations of the lioz are suggested —sedimentation, fissure, erosion.
In its turn, the sound is built through the manipulation of failures, hesitations, breathing and silences present in the recordings of texts read out loud (coming from excerpts, notes and references, which were accumulated throughout the construction of the project).
      These formation and manipulation processes seek to bring body faults closer to geological faults, opening up the possibility of speculation and immersion in these interstices.
      Paradoxically, it is the reflection on geological time, which locates us in a time much greater than our scale, that becomes fundamental for redimensioning our relationship with the places we inhabit.
     If, on the one hand, the fossils we step on remember through their formation the threat of rising sea waters, on the other hand, their fossilization recalls the disappearance of the Rudists as a result of the last great mass extinction. Invoking this unstable ground, “A brisa do maremoto” is a reflection on the past, in an anxiety for the future.