We are determined to show you that this is extraordinary.

Dear readers,

We inaugurate our virtual blog sharing the learnings and details of Os contos do leite. In this space you will find, on the one hand, the keys and methodologies of the mediation process and, on the other hand, the knowledge cultivated by the participants. Thus, we want this testimony to fulfill a double mission: to relate the development of this comitancia and to give tools to future mediators who want to put into practice participatory artistic processes.

On October 15, we began the dairy journey that will take us through different areas, artistic practices and scales linked in some way to milk, until the selected artist begins the process of producing the work of art.

A few days before our first meeting we send a guide to the group of clients where we explain that throughout the time we will work together, we will work from different elements related to milk (earth - water - cows - yeast - digests -) using two types of meetings:

the "stories out loud" sessions, which consist of meetings where we tell stories and exchange opinions about a specific element related to milk. The objective of these sessions is to share information and opinions in order to gradually generate a common framework.

the “doing out loud” sessions, which consist of performing actions related to the milk-related element we are dealing with. The objective of these sessions is twofold: on the one hand, to test strategies and ways of doing that emerge from the artistic field to experiment with different formats and see which ones interest us more for the final commission and on the other hand, to generate media impact in the fight against Altri.

Thus, in the second week of October we held the first sessions, which were linked to the element “earth”.

DOING OUT LOUD. SOIL

To begin with, we thought it was important to face the terrain where Altri intends to install.

For this first session, we contacted Iván Orois, a biology graduate and a great connoisseur of this territory, to accompany us on our tour and help us better understand the specificities of this soil that make Careón such a special place. At the beginning of the session, Orois himself tells us: “I am determined to tell you that this is extraordinary”. The glow of the exceptional is installed among us from the beginning and accompanies us throughout the session.

We met in an area that the mediators called Careón with certain doubts, because comparing land ownership plans, soil types and level maps, things did not coincide: there seemed to be two Careóns, Careón mountain and the Serra do Careón ZEC.

This was the first thing we discussed with Iván. We then discovered that the people of the area only call the top of the Careón hill, while for the rest of the territory there is abundant microtoponymy. We thus discovered that the name “ZEC Serra do Careón” is somehow an invention, as is the term “os Ancares”, as Iván told us, to which the inhabitants refer to with specific names for each mountain.

Before leaving for our excursion we watched Landscape series #1, by Nguyen Trin Thi, a piece in which the Vietnamese filmmaker reflects on the idea of the landscape as a silent witness of history, based on a montage of slides in which people appear pointing to something we do not get to see. The landscape in which we see this video intrudes into it, incorporating its sounds to the images of Vietnam that we see through the screen.

Borrowing some of the techniques we identified in this piece, we propose to make our walk in performative mode but turning Nguyen Trin Thi's piece around: if Landscape series #1 seems to be talking about a dramatic or catastrophic past, we invite the group to point out, as we walk and talk, elements of the landscape that we want to preserve and protect against threats such as Altri's. We will point out and talk about the serpentine rocks with which the houses we see in the area have been built; about trees such as elms, which are in the process of extinction since the nineteenth century because of the guilt of the Altri's.

So we point out and talk about the serpentine rocks with which the houses we see in the area have been built; about trees such as elms, which are in the process of extinction since the nineteenth century because of a beetle; about how with climate change the notions of native and exotic species may become obsolete since, if we think in the long term, perhaps it makes more sense to plant cork oak and strawberry trees in Galicia than ash or oak. We also hear the buzzing of velutinas flying under some apple trees and see an old bee hive in the same area. We talk, walk, point and take pictures. The camera clicks, clicks, clicks. And we remember the sound of the slides of Nguyen Trin Thi's piece: clack, clack, clack.

When we reached the highest part of the route we took, we saw plants such as the only green flowering heather in continental Europe (Erica scoparis), which some people use to make sun loungers and umbrellas in Camariñas with a use of the resource that benefits the heather itself. Again, the cooperation of humans with their environment. Finally we see two of the media stars and endemics of the area, the plants Santolina melidensis and Sagina merinoi, which are a natural treasure of the Careón.

We also talk, on our walk, about the relationship between livestock and space: we talk about corn and how unsustainable its monoculture is, that in Galicia farmers have little territorial base and resort to this crop to meet market demands. Iván also tells us that many of the endemic plants that we see in this area “we disturb them”. These very hardy plants are able to thrive in areas trampled by large mammals, a condition that eliminates other competing plants such as pines. This whole area was more like a savannah in the 1950s, when the grazing of cows and sheep in the area favored the appearance of these types of plants and flowers, as these herbivores ate the competition posed by the pines. The use of the land for livestock was a way to replace the ecological services that wild herbivores such as deer used to provide. Now that these soils are no longer trodden and there are no longer animals grazing on them, the pine grows and there are fewer and fewer plants left. Thus, Ivan insists on the conservation of nature achieved from the coexistence between humans and non-humans in the territory.

Ivan tells us that his dream would be to buy the Quintas farm (which Altri wants to use to install macrocellulose) and put the cows out to pasture there. Quickly the whole group starts talking about the possibility of buying the farm as a whole, of crowdfunding to protect this territory. Even if Altri's proposal were declared strategic, they could expropriate the land, but expropriating 1000 owners would not be the same as expropriating 1! We talked enthusiastically about the possibilities of approaching the fight against Altri from land ownership.

The sun is starting to go down. We should head back.

We get to the cars and share one last reference: L'horta, ni oblit ni perdó, by Anaïs Florin. The clients connect a lot with this work, of which they especially value its public impact and the archival work. We will talk later about how we can appropriate some of these techniques.

STORIES OUT LOUD. LAND

For this session we meet at Eira da Xoana. Marcial, who manages it, joins the session.

We set the table and show the group the trousseau that we are going to build little by little as the sessions progress. The first pieces we have were given to us by Luis: some cloths that he uses in Arqueixal to absorb the whey from the cheeses, some ribbons with which he wraps them while they are curing and an old birch wood cheese making bowl. We talked a lot about the cheese-making trade and about some of the people who still make cheese in the area today.

Quickly all the other pieces that can be added come to mind, like some gauze cloths that Natalia uses to make vegetable milk. Today we drink Sen Máis milk. Marcial gives us a taste of honey and Vanesa brings homemade apple pie. We also explain that our idea is to try different milks in each session, to make it our inside joke: to bring a milk that is somehow related to the topic we are dealing with.

Esta vez seguimos hablando de la tierra, los suelos, los pastos... Compartimos algunas historias y referencias sobre este tema. Hemos traído algunos materiales impresos y otros se basan en la conversación. Leemos un extracto de Canto yo y la montaña baila, de Irene Solà, que nos lleva a hablar de las setas que abundan en la zona. Escuchamos y hablamos de Embolismo por soleá, de Paula Bruna y volvemos a hablar de diferentes acciones que podríamos llevar adelante. Discutimos diferentes enfoques artísticos insistiendo en la necesidad de hablar desde lo positivo en este momento de la lucha. 

Les contamos que la lectura del Manifiesto de la Plataforma Ulloa Viva nos recordó mucho a un texto de Emilio Santiago Muiño titulado Lujosa pobreza: retrospectiva de una revolución cultural. En él, Santiago Muiño escribe una carta a Jorge Rietchmann desde un futuro 2060 en el que una revolución cultural ha instaurado una utopía austera en la que las cosas no son tan terribles como nos pueden parecer desde 2024. Proponemos que cada una haga el ejercicio de escribir con una frase, y escribiendo en la voz de algún elemento del suelo, como hace Irene Solà en su libro, cómo imagina la vida en 2060. Cada sesión Contos finalizará con un ejercicio como este para ir, poco a poco, imaginando un futuro 2060 en el que Altri no se ha instalado.

De esta manera, Os contos do leite inicia su andadura fortaleciendo la resistencia, incentivando la lucha y celebrando nuestra tierra.