2021
Stereo 19'11"

Celtejo Walk

Walking across the length of the Celtejo factory in Vila Velha do Rodão, Portugal August 2021.
This is a topophonic exercise in capturing space in a time based medium. The purpose of the recording is to sonically reveal a machine in action and to open a listening situation.
Celtejo is a pulp mill that receives daily dozens of trucks with wood to be turned in to chips located at the start of the factory, and those chips are chemically processed using water from the river Tejo nearby, and obtaining paper pulp at the end - a machinic digestive system. Such industries control through economic dependence most of the people in the region, and owns land for wood and contracts others for the same purpose.

Celtejo has been implicated in waste water disposal to the Tejo river, and lately has attempted to greenwash itself. The factory also produces constant characteristic unpleasantly intense sulfurous smell in the town and environs.
A living machinic symbol of neoliberal industrial influence on landscape and society, Celtejo owns vast swathes of land solely dedicated to eucalyptus, and employs many people in the region. The basic logic economic values of extraction and profit dominate the psychological and ecological landscapes.
What other forms of socioeconomic life could be possible after weaning our dependency and reliance on the territorial industrialist logic that defines so much of the planet? What new forms of industry would be possible if the current ones were allowed to evolve beyond extremely limited and one sided notions of efficiency and the credo of maximum profitability?