Paper short abstract:

My communication deals with the everyday rhythms of water in the Spanish desert of Monegros through the practice of observational cinema techniques. The aim is to examine volatile water from a rhythmical and bodily perspective to gain access to the affective relationship of Monegros people to water.

Paper long abstract:

The uniqueness of the irrigated desert of Monegros in the North-West of Spain, does not only stem from the fact that is one of the largest irrigation grounds in Western Europe, but from its landscape having been dwelled for centuries before the 'man-made' advent of water. In appealing to quench the thirst of a cursed land, the Spanish State began to build hundreds of kilometres of canals and ditches in 1915, to bring water from surrounding rivers. Nowadays, water infrastructure plough not only Monegros landscape, but its socialspace. Thus, water scarcity, comparing to its actual relative abundance, has deep roots in Monegros lifeworlds. The volatility of water in Monegros does not only appear in the five rain-fed towns, but also from the legal, social and political tangle the other county's irrigated fifty ones have to face in their everyday struggle to compete for institutionalized water. With that in mind, examining the everyday rhythms of water from a sensorial, rhythmical and bodily perspective gives access to the profoundly affective relationship of Monegros people to water. And that is the aim of my intervention: to look at subjective temporalities, sensational and embodied experience of Monegros water expectants in their everyday relationship to water. In doing it so, I am arguing that text is not enough to express unsaid and indeed ineffable volatile experiences of water, but to complement it through the practice of a medium well suited to attend embodied consciousness, intentionality, and time. That is, the practice of observational cinema.