Ecological memory is a component of political agency. This was already explained by the influential book Ecología y lucha de clases (“Ecology and Class Struggle”, 1978) by the historical activist Josep-Vicent Marqués. This exhibition is based on the work of Marqués and other environmental activists, such as Alejandro de la Cueva and Ferran García. In 1982, they promoted La Casa Verda’s Fons de Documentació del Medi Ambient, which is the most extensive archive on environmental issues in Spain. Its documents were deposited at the Universitat de València in 2010.
The exhibition takes visitors on a journey through the audiovisual and material memory of the environmental movement in Valencia, using this documentary repertoire as a foundation. The exhibition has a triple objective:
Address the limited attention given to environmentalism – particularly in its visual dimension – in historical discourses on contemporary Spain, specifically those related to the Transition to Democracy period.
Re-examine the recent history of social mobilisations in Spain by analysing a selection of materials produced by eco-social activism and critique, taking into account ecologism.
These reflections will be added to the proposals made by institutions in recent decades for the revision of archival technologies and the material and epistemological status of documents.
For this purpose, the selected documentary, graphic and audiovisual materials from various archives produced and located in the Valencian Community from the 1970s to the present day are arranged in five nodes: ‘Agents of environmentalism’, ‘Nuclear power plants? No, thank you’, ‘From Albufera to the Valencian countryside’, ‘Save the planet’ and ‘Urban ecology and energy alternatives’.
This exhibition is part of the R+D+I project “Energy humanities: energy and socio-cultural imaginaries between the industrial revolution and the eco-social crisis” (PID2020-113272RA-I00, HUMENERGE).
Defensem. Anaïs Florin
