Sensing the Mountain City

Research/ installation
2022

Materials:
Wood, printed acrylic, steel, multimedia.

Project:
Academic project
MA GEO Design
Design Academy Eindhoven

Exhibition: 
Dutch Design Week, Grad Show 2022 - NL

Photography:
Nicole Marnati

Acknowledgments:
Nadine Botha, tutor
Els Woldhek, tutor
Giuditta Vendrame, tutor
Metahaven, tutor
Formafantasma, directors

Sponsors:
CONACYT
Secretaría de Cultura
Fundación JUMEX
Kwadraat Fonds

This project investigates the relationship between the city of Monterrey, Mexico, with the mountain range that surrounds it. Founded as a colonial industrial city, the population of Monterrey had seen the mountains as sites for resource extraction. For the sake of urban growth, rivers have been diminished and quarries excavated. But today, the city faces a socio-environmental backlash as a result of its politics of extraction.

Walking, sensing and thinking at the edge of the city could help shift the community’s gaze to the mountains. Through field research among the residents of Monterrey and interviews with experts, and through filming and material collection on the mountain trails, Gerardo Sandoval Osio has developed collective walks that open new spaces for a more sensitive, shared approach to the mountains.

 Outside the Momterrey context, as restitution, the project takes the form of a moving image installation.

 A looping projection on top of a 3D map of Monterrey shows the growth of the city from the first known map, from 1765, until today with Landsat imagery. Compositions were created with the botanical samples collected in the mountains at specific heights along the trails, starting from the city to the summit of the mountain. These compositions are standing on rib bars stands, representing construction and the steel industries, two of the main industries in Monterrey. The installation seeks to depict the biodiversity encountered in walks through the main mountains surrounding the city and to resemble the view from a mountain trail. The moving images, narrated by interviews with experts, depict encounters with people, natural elements, and non-human beings and their relationship with the mountain-city landscape of Monterrey.

Between the mountains and the city, new narratives arise, transforming the mountains into more than geological elements becoming full members of the community.