Within the scope of film projection practices that respond to the contemporary appeal of a reinvention of materiality, Mined Soil offers an essential contribution to questioning the excess of digital image through the affirmation of the expressive potential of the very surface of projection. Through a balance between documental recording and the use of archival images, Filipa César presents a critical reflection on mining extraction practices in Alentejo, recalling the Marxist thought of Amílcar Cabral and his thesis on the relationship between people’s liberation and the reclamation of its soil. This essay intends to defend that the auscultation of the soil in Mined Soil establishes a conceptual horizon in which the archeology of the surface of projection is also put into play, which ends up being unveiled as a zone of tension and conflict that questions and, consequently, frees the medium itself.
