Cuando el Río Arde

Aconquija 2022 held in the context of the Raíces Residence
Edition: José Melnik
Camera: Gerardo Artaza
Photography: Cecilia Melnik
Location: Dry river bed/Aconquija

A problem that persists in our territories is the extractivist processes of forest cover and the expansion of surfaces intended for crops and urban projection in river basins, being one of the causes of the increase in their erosive processes.

We find territories that for years suffered strong anthropic pressure, and today present a notable decrease in their original power.

Faced with an immensity of aridity and desolation, where before there was a leafy riverbed of water, I propose a poetic action, where fire is presented as an element to transmute and heal an absent river, a sleeping river.
I light a fire that results in a 50 meter flame that burns for a short period of time. Fire is presented in its polysemic, plastic, dynamic value, of the past and present, with the intention of regenerating an absent cycle.
A fire-memory that comes to remember and propose a relationship with the world and life closely linked to the Earth, but, above all, to the territory.
Fire, as a door to time, as a vision of Mesoamerican ecosophy, which involves the possibility of invoking and summoning the wisdom of nature and the memory of the river.