O Raio da Raia, Uma Topia em Curso
20th October – Ecologies, art and territory
16H30 – 18H30 Assembly – Art, Mines and Quarries, with Bruno Caracol, Alexandra do Carmo and Carla Magro Dias. Accompanied by Rita Barreiro (IRI)
Venue: Sociedade Harmonia (SHE)
Mines and quarries are sites where extraction operates simultaneously on a geological and a social scale, cutting into strata formed over millions of years while also shaping the communities, labour, and living beings that inhabit the surface, leaving craters and valleys in the place of the hills that were excavated. In their presentations, Bruno Caracol, Alexandra do Carmo, and Carla Magro Dias will address these and other questions from their distinct artistic works.
These presentations will be the starting point for an open assembly on ecologies, art, and territories.The assembly will focus on these intersections, foregrounding the possibilities of art and cultural work to participate in environmental struggles, and to contest territories through the potencies of the radical imagination, thus unfolding intertwined movements: new belongings and subjectivities against the sedimented identities that circumscribe territories and borders; making visible and inquire power structures; mobilising bodies, positions and actions towards the production of fair territories for plural lives.
20th October – Ecologies, art and territory
16H30 – 18H30 Assembly – Art, Mines and Quarries, with Bruno Caracol, Alexandra do Carmo and Carla Magro Dias. Accompanied by Rita Barreiro (IRI)
Venue: Sociedade Harmonia (SHE)
Mines and quarries are sites where extraction operates simultaneously on a geological and a social scale, cutting into strata formed over millions of years while also shaping the communities, labour, and living beings that inhabit the surface, leaving craters and valleys in the place of the hills that were excavated. In their presentations, Bruno Caracol, Alexandra do Carmo, and Carla Magro Dias will address these and other questions from their distinct artistic works.
These presentations will be the starting point for an open assembly on ecologies, art, and territories.The assembly will focus on these intersections, foregrounding the possibilities of art and cultural work to participate in environmental struggles, and to contest territories through the potencies of the radical imagination, thus unfolding intertwined movements: new belongings and subjectivities against the sedimented identities that circumscribe territories and borders; making visible and inquire power structures; mobilising bodies, positions and actions towards the production of fair territories for plural lives.
Counter Image International Conference, University of Algarve, 18 November 2026
The conference explores the relationships between territory, ecology, colonialism and representation, bringing together situated knowledges, methods of unnaming and artistic practices that challenge extractivist regimes. The programme includes presentations, artistic interventions and other formats for exchange and experimentation, with contributions from researchers, artists and activists.
The Glow on the Marmorarius’s Table: The Alentejo quarry, from the open-air Roman workshop to the excess of the waste heap.
In the case of Hermes’s inscription, the self-designation as servus is coherent with the putative condition of a servant of the Imperial household, working in a workshop as a Marmorarius, that is, a skilled sculptor who could function as a supervisor or conductor of the operations. (Carneiro, 63)
Artistic research on the extractive dynamics of the quarry, linking two distinct temporalities: the period of the Roman Republic and current labor processes in the Estremoz Anticline (1st to 4th century) . Territory of continuous extraction for two thousand years, an object of study for geology and archaeology, it gathers diverse social experiences within its materiality; uses and symbolisms linked to spirituality, religion, and notions of luxury and opulence in both the public and private spheres . As raw material for art and architecture, stones embody the lives and labor of those who prepare, separate, drill, and collect; within their glow remains camouflaged the colonial extractivism of land mining (K. Yussof) and the landscape alterations in a geographical time that is understood as social (A. Domingues). Situated within the minute temporality of the human/mineral relationship, this research focuses on the sociabilities and memories of marble extraction, processing, and transport. However, it is the artwork and the human relationships established during the making processes that will allow us to recognise the geodynamics of the earth/matter in its state of turmoil and fluidity—opposed to the inert and passive, averse to the power of authority, and resistant to realisation. In this sense, understanding what is seen not as the action of the subject examining and evaluating the object, but as the movement that places us in a zone of blending (G. Tusa). To speak with the earth/stone in this reflection is to study the memory of this relationship, committed to the life of stones, and to look at the matter of art before it becomes an object on the marmorarius’s table.
The conference explores the relationships between territory, ecology, colonialism and representation, bringing together situated knowledges, methods of unnaming and artistic practices that challenge extractivist regimes. The programme includes presentations, artistic interventions and other formats for exchange and experimentation, with contributions from researchers, artists and activists.
The Glow on the Marmorarius’s Table: The Alentejo quarry, from the open-air Roman workshop to the excess of the waste heap.
In the case of Hermes’s inscription, the self-designation as servus is coherent with the putative condition of a servant of the Imperial household, working in a workshop as a Marmorarius, that is, a skilled sculptor who could function as a supervisor or conductor of the operations. (Carneiro, 63)
Artistic research on the extractive dynamics of the quarry, linking two distinct temporalities: the period of the Roman Republic and current labor processes in the Estremoz Anticline (1st to 4th century) . Territory of continuous extraction for two thousand years, an object of study for geology and archaeology, it gathers diverse social experiences within its materiality; uses and symbolisms linked to spirituality, religion, and notions of luxury and opulence in both the public and private spheres . As raw material for art and architecture, stones embody the lives and labor of those who prepare, separate, drill, and collect; within their glow remains camouflaged the colonial extractivism of land mining (K. Yussof) and the landscape alterations in a geographical time that is understood as social (A. Domingues). Situated within the minute temporality of the human/mineral relationship, this research focuses on the sociabilities and memories of marble extraction, processing, and transport. However, it is the artwork and the human relationships established during the making processes that will allow us to recognise the geodynamics of the earth/matter in its state of turmoil and fluidity—opposed to the inert and passive, averse to the power of authority, and resistant to realisation. In this sense, understanding what is seen not as the action of the subject examining and evaluating the object, but as the movement that places us in a zone of blending (G. Tusa). To speak with the earth/stone in this reflection is to study the memory of this relationship, committed to the life of stones, and to look at the matter of art before it becomes an object on the marmorarius’s table.
