THE ISLAND WITHIN AN ISLAND
The Azores Islands differ from each other and the story of Santa Maria completely stands out. We talked to Giuseppe De Mattia who has recently completed a research project on the Island. A story about illusion, affiliation, temporality and memory as new dimensions of space. Here’s what he told us…
«A critical issue of the island: even though only traces remain of the American district, the memory of it is strong and it’s in everything! You can sense this in the parish near the airport on which my research was focused on; it was somehow an island within the island. By constantly seeing flights from all over the world and hearing about every language, these people were made to feel anything but isolated.
Today, only few people remain in this area, and since I wanted to work on traces left behind rather than human presence, I looked for layered human interventions. As a result of the airport’s location, the inhabitants of Santa Maria, generally very hospitable, are accustomed to welcome curious people like me, so I am proud to tell their stories. Perhaps the people are a little less hospitable in Corvo Island, the closest to the US, geographically speaking. Corvo is wonderful: a huge crater in the center of the islet sees hundreds of cars that travel around the same roundabout to go to one of the few cafes on the island. I easily fall in love with places bearing strong identities that didn’t undergo through excessive urban shaping.
I traveled to Santa Maria thanks to French director Marc Weymuller and his director of photography Xavier Arpino, to help research for a documentary film set on the island. I was invited to share my thoughts and the unexpected eyes of an atypical tourist attracted to “what remains” without necessarily putting it under critical light. My point of view is a simple observation, documental of what is there. The traces of what was and what might be in the future. I used different formats, each of them sought to reinforce this concept: with 35 mm photographs, made almost from “the car window”, as though they were annotations. With the 6x7 I allowed long pauses for observation, to secure the notes taken with the other format.
The island of Santa Maria is a huge space physically and geographically speaking, but anthropologically small and divided into quasi-autonomous communities. The sense of community at the base of the urban project, almost utopian, is destroyed by the way in which the districts have been fragmented. The only system that allows continuity to the series is the control center of Air Navigation (NAV) connected to the airport. In the present time, consciously or unconsciously, people are promoting tourism relying on the favorable climate, but the parish seems to be endangered, on the verge of turning into a new place influenced by the air traffic leaving behind the maintenance of the airport. At this rate, the rest of the island will inevitably be forced to return to agriculture.
It is hard to predict the future of the archipelago. Tourism is in their favor, but it’s only an economical niche. Fortunately, from a cultural point of view there are no theme parks and real estate upheavals. They have a willing land: sea fishing, diving suit bottoms, good wineries by the lava ground and a good temperature, a constant humidity suitable for the flowers and tea plantations».
Text edited by Steve Bisson and Bruno Zhu