Human impact on soil is the focus of Artistic Residency

26 Dec - 16 Jan 2025

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Born and raised in Lima, Peru, Sebastian Alvarez is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker working on cultural and social development projects. He currently lives in Monte Sirente, Italy. Previously, for four years, he lived in a medieval village in the Abruzzo region, whose capital, L'Aquila, was the epicentre of an earthquake that devastated the city in 2009 and impacted the entire region.

“By facilitating community development between long-time residents and newcomers and exploring the mountainous terrain in the region, I noticed the omnipresent mix of earthquake debris with the soil. The interaction of human and organic layers inspired me to study anthrosols — soils deeply altered by human activity, often found in industrial, urban and extraction landscapes,” explains Alvarez.

Video still by Sebastian Alvarez

The project presented by Alvarez and selected by the KEF Artistic Residency programme involves the creation of digital and hand-drawn illustrations of these altered soils. During his residency, from 26 December 2024 to 16 January 2025, he intends to photograph, draw and trace patterns inspired by wall surfaces, the geodiversity of the Portuguese pavement (calçada) and the marks of the 1755 earthquake.

According to Alvarez, these observations will serve as the basis for monochromatic illustrations combining 16th-century naturalist styles with modern architectural designs. “The created images will resemble 'scrapyard stratigraphy', portraying the soil as a cosmopolitan archive that reflects the multi-temporal composition of our strata — from deep to shallow time, thus illuminating our locus in the biosphere and questioning our intoxicated views of progress and destiny,” he adds.

Alvarez's research-based work also manifests in films, infographics, performance lectures and sonic compositions. He is the producer and co-author of A Machine to Live In (2020), a scientific documentary about the imaginative and material processes of building transcendent and utopian communities in Brasília, Brazil. This film recently premiered at the True/False International Film Festival and the Visions du Réel Film Festival. As a performer or curator, his work has been presented at institutions such as the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago Cultural Center, Whitney Biennial (NYC), Postgarage (Graz, Austria), Townhouse Gallery (Cairo, Egypt), the Barichara International Film Festival (Barichara, Colombia), the École Nationale Supérieure d'Art Bourges (Bourges, France) and the Wiener Festwochen (Vienna, Austria). Currently, he is producing a hybrid documentary in the Peruvian Andes about extractivism and its socio-environmental effects.