Short abstract:

This multimodal ethnography of the soil focuses on eroded lands of southern Portugal, where innovative soil regeneration projects are taking place. By combining artistic and anthropological approaches, it unveils a complex assembly of past, present, and future worldmaking practices.

Long abstract:

This paper presents the preliminary findings of an ongoing multimodal research project focusing on soil-making and land occupation political experiments in the southern drylands of Portugal, particularly in Alentejo. Despite facing challenges such as drought and soil erosion due to historical and contemporary monoculture practices, this region is notable for its history of sociopolitical revolutionary experiments in land collectivization during the 1970s, as well as for contemporary innovative soil regeneration projects and pioneering agroforestry experiments like syntropic farming.

The research integrates artistic and anthropological approaches to understand biosocial practices and onto-epistemologies surrounding Alentejo's soil. It examines its past, present, and future, along with the intricate web of multispecies relationships it sustains. Drawing inspiration from Verónica Gerber's concept of "Escritura Compostaje" (compost writing), it aims for an “Etnografia-Compostaje” by blurring the boundaries between archive and fiction, past and present, language and materiality. The current multimodal approach seeks to delve into the soil's past through the retrieval and reappropriation (via drawing, phytography, and experimental eco-cinema) of previously overlooked visual archives documenting the land occupation in the 1970s revolutionary period. Simultaneously, this study involves hands-on ethnographic research with agroforest human and non-human actors engaged in present-day transformative practices that nurture and regenerate soils affected by intoxication and erosion. By combining artistic methods and ethnographic inquiry, this case-study aims to reveal a complex assembly of past, present, and future soiling and worldmaking practices.