Quarry Sonnets is a research project led by Miguel Santos to develop novel artistic methodologies for a multispecies societal change. The focus is on the Vale de Meios Quarry in the Natural Park Serra de Aires and Candeeiros, Portugal. The area has been a source of limestone extraction for hundreds of years, literarily paving the way for many Portuguese streets.

In 1998, dinosaurs’ footsteps were discovered on site, tentatively from around 168,000,000 years ago. These distinct temporal dimensions remind us that humans are a minor footnote in the earth’s history: different times and assemblages, coexistent temporal fictions narrated in a more-than-human history.

Contemporary quarries are often hidden from public view but entangled in local heritages and their ecologies, including distant stories and uses of a globalized economy. At the confluence of this environmental, temporal, and societal conversation is an economic and metabolic exchange that co-exists and co-evolves with multiple species and across times.

Quarry Sonnets thinks with and through these complexities to tease the potential contribution that art practices can make to the discussion in the environmental humanities: how can artists, designers, researchers, stakeholders, and local communities learn, develop, and implement methodologies in collaboration with the biological, mineral, material, historical and societal more-than-human world of a quarry?

Quarry Sonnets combines artistic research, collaborative practices, design research, ecology, philosophy, and storytelling to address the value of site-specific inquiries that compost dominant discourses in quarry rehabilitation practices and contribute to societal change.

Participants:

Escola Superior Art Design, Caldas da Rainha (Portugal): Miguel Santos, Maria Ribeiro Fradinho, Helena Valsecchi,   Alice Almeida, Francisca Neves, Joana Martins, Luís Silva, José Azevedo, Ana Lua Caiano, Irina Oliveira, Isa Araújo.

Limerick School of Art and Design, Technical University of The Shannon (Ireland): Magdalena Biedka, Lynda Horgan, Adela Passas, Grace Wallis, Shane Malone-Murphy, Katie Lynch, Sarah Kinnean, Fíne Holohan, Cadhla Forde, Michael Minnis, Michael McLoughlin

Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Media Art and Design (Germany): Benazir Basauri, Sophia Amelia Eickhoff, Cosmo Schüppel, Nicolas Krewer, Tan Oktik, Weiru Tai and Ursula Damm;

Lucerne School of Art and Design (Switzerland): Kateryna Beizym, Eva Maspoli, Sania Nascarella, Allegra Zimmermann, Theres Waeckerlin.

Vilnius Academy of Art (Lithuania): Marius Kavaliauskas, Linas Gabrielaitis, Martyna Kairaitytė, Kotryna Kvedarytė

Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences, Department of Design (Austria): Mirjam Domig, Margarita Köhl, Magdalena Haidacher

Internacional Presentations:

Miguel Santos, Art For Nonhumans: Quarry Sonnets, Reflections on Transformation: Shaping the Future, Transcending Disciplinary Silos and Exploring ‘Lived’ Knowledge Systems, International Conference, University of Graz, Austria, 18th-19th September 2023.

Miguel Santos, Quarry Sonnets: A Multispecies Question, II International Congress Aie (Art, Research and Education), Online, Madrid, Espanha, 16-17 Novembro 2023.