Modelling the air
1 November 2022 – 31 July 2023
Modelling the air is the winning project of the second call (2022) for internships. KNOT/KNOT, jointly promoted by the Cerezales Antonino y Cinia Foundation and the Diputación de León.
It is a project developed by the Bartleby platform that raises the need to rethink the relationship between air sovereignty, the resources extracted from it, and their visibility.
Air cannot be represented solely as empty space, as an ethereal and intangible agent, but must be understood as a medium laden with materials, information and energy. Except in rare exceptions and atmospheric conditions, we find it difficult to perceive the materiality of this medium with the naked eye. A medium that, today, is replacing extractive focal points under the paradigm of a new green economy. The same territories that a century ago were besieged by unprecedented drilling and emptying, are today once again the centre of attention, seeking in this longed-for renewable gold a new focal point for extraction.
Modelling the Air is a field investigation into the territorial richness of the Central Leonese Mountain range, a region of extraordinary diversity and yet haunted by the spectre of wind energy. Four wind farms are being planned for this area, aiming to transform the ruins of coal mining into a new energy hub. Green hydrogen is set to replace the constant combustion of mineral coal; the evacuation lines and electrical corridors will continue to operate with a new engine that has swapped fossil materiality for the promise of constant, clean, and inexhaustible energy. Is this truly the case? What realities are experienced, operated, and inhabited beneath the detectability threshold of protected zones and environmental impact reports? What non-human, non-sentient, or machinic voices are not being heard?
Modelling the air approaches this territory through formal and informal conversations, fieldwork, and archival material of various kinds, to create a heterogeneous record of agents involved in the ecosystem surrounding this issue. Moving away from the supposed technocratic rigour that privileges the voice of the expert over others, but rather from direct experience and testimony, to bring legitimate desires, fears, and lurking threats to the table. A speculative assembly will travel from the immediate present to different temporal pasts of the Central Mountain to collectively reconstruct more desirable futures.
