All Islands Are Mountains

We live in the age of multi-tabs, binge-watching, and immediatism. We have instant coffee, instant messaging, expressways, and speedy boarding. There is something to be said about the questions that can arise from the discomfort of a long drive, and I’m afraid that today, with all the shortcuts that allow us to travel and arrive faster than ever, we no longer have the time to understand what we are slowly losing along the way. I faced this while observing the contrasts of the gradually evolving Portuguese landscape, where natural and constructed spaces are progressively being transformed by a new Europe attempting to keep up with modern life. A dichotomy most evident in the rural areas where, for instance, at the base of the new brutalist express-ways whose speed prevented population exodus, we find old roads that wind around the same landscape slowly and sinuously, keeping tradition in.

Knowing that I could be facing a perspective bias resulting from the correlation between depth perception and the speed we travel through time, I decided to slow down and equipped with a medium-format analogue camera, wander and wonder about the power of stillness and boredom.

The result is a project that invites the audience to slow down and reflect on the human condition and the impact of speed and progress on our environment and humanity.