CURRENT FUTURES is an immersive environmental and art research project that explores processes of desertification in connection to migration, water and people -

Desertification is defined by the process where fertile land turns into desert due to factors like drought, deforestation, and inappropriate agriculture.

This process differs from the naturally existing rich and beautiful deserts, which now threatened by climate change, military activism and extractivism face extreme decreasing processes in their vital functions even showing in some parts of the world signs of decrease in size.

In contrast, the expansion and increase of so called man-made deserts is marching ahead - with drastic effects on water use and availability, often linked to military actions and events, creating vast, ghostly landscapes with often likewise hidden, ghostly narratives.

The Tabernas Desert in Andalusia Spain for example, also known as the „salad bowl“ of Europe -due to the massive expansion of oceanlike greenhouse complexes, even visible from space- exemplifies the severe impacts of mega agricultural structures and their impact on the expansion of man-made deserts. These developments not only deplete natural resources but also drive the migration of laborers from Africa, who work in these places deprived from, homes, human right and suffer health impacts from working in pesticide-laden greenhouses.

Deserts, the origin of nomadic life, are now being transformed into static agricultural zones of extractivism.

Seeing these movements of land, water and people and the intersections on the internal and external landscapes we could ask:

Which effect does desertification has also on our inner landscapes?

In many cultures, pouring sand and drawing patterns with it in symbolic forms through movement and dance is an act of drawing protective lines around a home.

What if pouring sand becomes a constant state of mind and action of transformation? What if our future will be ancient?

FOTO: taken by the artist during her research ion desertification processec and indigenous knowledge of the Likan Antay in the Atacama desert

CURRENT FUTURES is a collaborative project of the artist with the marine NGO monte.mero.