GRANDEZA STUDIO + LOCUMENT
STRATA INCOGNITA
2023 |Documentary| Portugal and Spain|16m
STRATA INCOGNITA is a short film commissioned for the Spanish Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2023: “The Laboratory of the Future” and developed as a collaboration between Grandeza Studio and Locument that looks at the soil as an infrastructure for the production of food, but also, as a somatic archive of crimes, memories, and mythologies.
Just a few centimetres under your feet, millions of creatures kill each other, eat each other, fight, reproduce and establish alliances with one another – implementing the myriad processes that recompose death into life while purifying the water you drink, making the air you breathe breathable, and growing 95% of the food you eat. You are digested soil. Any time you eat, the substances that compose soils reconstitute into the matter that shapes you. Nevertheless, many of the creatures and ecosystemic processes that make soils function resist being captured by knowledge production methods firmly bound by the regimes of the visible. Indeed, it is estimated that in a tablespoon of soil there are more living organisms than human beings on Earth, but only about 10% of small soil animals have been identified by humans. Soil is our closest alien world.
Followed by an online conversation with Francisco Lobo and Romea Muryń of LOCUMENT
The event takes place as part of the AATE 2025 Film + Architecture workshop supported by Screen Ireland.