Ana Laura Cantera 

We are going through a period of constant asymmetrical assemblages between human and non-human entities because of anthropocentric economic activities. Humanity is transforming bodies of water, soils, as well the way other beings and entities interact and create associations with their territories.  These artificial environmental changes are called slow violences by Rob Nixon, to mean the violences that occurs gradually and out of sight, violences of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space.

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When forces meet (or how slow violences sculpt territories) is a performative installation that evolves over time, which implies symbolic gestures of current territory transformations mediated by humans. The aim is stimulating entanglements in real time between artificial and natural materialities from the Atatürk Dam through the action of technical devices, symbols of human activity.  It is carried out through magnifying glasses placed in stone cracks on one of the islands of the dam, which use sun's rays to create poetic actions or small slow violences over the territory and its compounds: On one hand, under each device there are some materials collected in situ, such as rocks, seeds, rest of fishing nets, plastic waste, and beeswax, the only added material to speed up these assemblies. When the time passes by and the sun starts moving through the devices, the materials start to burn, cut, melt, and glue together, creating dynamic and spontaneous associations that are considered ephemeral sculptures made by the different forces and agencies. On the other hand, one of the magnifying glasses heats some rocks inside a metal container with water, causing evaporation and loss of the liquid, symbolizing the artificial drying up of rivers and wetlands in the region.