Luke Spence

For a period of one-week a large number of ceramic azulejo tiles were produced at an open ceramic studio in the town of Montemor-o-Novo using a terracotta clay from the Municipality of Vendas Novas. During this week the project could engage with a craft practice that recognises the role that the traditional Azulejo tiles have played in Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula for hundreds of years. These ceramic forms have been used to create depictions, mythical, biblical or cultural, of past events across various cultures. The Azulejos produced for this project are instead use to materially depict the environmental and chemical composition of the Alentejo Region.

Given the porous structure of ceramic works, the tiles are able to become tools for capturing particulate matter. The role of the tile in this project is to make a recording of the chemical and biological substances that are emitted from the intense agricultural practices that feature heavily in this region of Portugal.

The unglazed ceramic tile in this sense can allow the practice of citizen research and the collection of data to operate in a way that is not only free from the functional requirements that are associated with expert research tools, whether that be technical know-how or some prescribed operation, but instead be able to work so that the users of the tiles have full autonomy with how and where exactly these research devices will be situated, and for what reasons. This model of research isn’t just a practice of recording as a means of simply documenting particulate matter, but also as a way to bring forward a particular site or condition that should be made known to a wider population. 

The video below documents the production of two tiles whilst in residence at the convent workshops in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal.

In the town of Fortes Novo, not far from the city of Beja, is a factory that incinerates the olive bagasse once the olives have been pressed for their oil. Opposite this factory lies a property that is exposed on a daily basis to the soot and ash particles that are emitted from this factory. The health and wellbeing of property and its owner have deteriorated for as long as the factory has emitted these toxic substances.

The project allows those that are effected by any unjust agricultural industry to establish their own research practice. In doing so, a collective of effected citizens can start to jointly expose the industries that have little regard to the citizen groups that they inhabit the region alongside.

The project saw the placement of ceramic Azulejo tiles across the region of Alentejo in a number of varying environments. The images below document the various locations in which the first phase of Tile Recorders have been positioned. Their prolonged exposure to these environmentswill allow for a greater duration of time for chemical substances from agricultural practices to reside within their porous structure.

On the 26th of September 2018, a hillside plot, belonging to a Portuguese local named Luis, was intentionally burned in the Municipality of Vila de Frades, near to the town of Vidigueira. Those who set the plot alight hoped that Luis would put the piece of land up for sale which would allow for a monoculture to be established on this land. Luis retained his damaged plot of land and is now putting his energy into restoring this land and conserving the seeded plants he has introduced into the soil.

The new threat now considers a recently established irrigation perimeter not far from the boundary of Luis' plot that might later have a detrimental effect on the species that Luis has seeded as part of his conservation project. It may be that once the monoculture is in operation, the chemical substances that are emitted as part of its agricultural process later interfere with how Luis' conservation project develops. The tiles have been positioned on this plot to capture the possible substances that may transfer onto his land.

The images below document the conservation project and the placement of the ceramic Tile Recorders.