6. Clear the path!
2014–
#magazine #conceptual #feminism #activism
Madrid, SP
Clear the path! it is a photo-archaeological investigation about History –and stories– buried under sand. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, almost twenty villages were swallowed by the dunes of the Neringa Peninsula (Lith- uania) due to deforestation, caused by the inhabitants of the isthmus. This allowed the dunes to move fast enough to bury villages in a time less than a human generation.
Through exhaustive research on these towns and the whole Curonian Spit, my work recovers these memories finding not only the stories but also the places where the cities rest.
Working based in one of these cities, Nida, the project consists then in find- ing the roads of the new Nida (the third version of the city, moved in 1730 to 3.5 km south of its original place) and transfer them to where lies the old ver- sion of the city: a restricted area, “not trespassing area”, almost on the border with the Kaliningrad Oblast. Or where we believe they are, because no proper archaeological prospecting has been conducted. As indicated by one of the historical maps of the area: Sagenhafte Dorfstelle, literally in German, “where they told us that there was a city”.
