Measuring the Earth with Asunción Molinos Gordo
Asunción Molinos Gordo sees the world from a bird’s eye view. Viewed from above, landscapes become a series of patterns that help Asunción understand how the earth is used; a visual geometry that has shaped her practice. Yet, in spite of this lofty vantage, her perspective remains decidedly grounded.
The term ‘geometry’ comes from the Latin geometria: an amalgam of the Greek gē: ‘earth;’ and -metria, from -metrēs: ‘measurer.’ Geometry is, quite literally, the practice of measuring the earth. This is something that resonates deeply with Asunción’s practice, which uses agricultural patterns on the land to measure wider socioeconomic and ecological impacts. In her lecture for The Gramounce, Asunción explains how her 2018 project, Ghost Agriculture: Unlimited Resource Farming, uses this geometry to turn the complexities of Egyptian agricultural systems into quantifiable designs.
Most of Egypt’s agriculture occurs along the fertile banks of the Nile, a thin ribbon which has upheld millennia of civilisation. Webbed across this landscape is a latticework of earthen dykes and gullies, an irrigation network who’s practice dates back over 5,000 years. The myriad smallholdings that this network waters are tended by over 4 million ‘fellahin’—Egyptian peasants—50% of whom are female. The channels are often communally maintained, and the land is respected through companion planting to benefit both crop yields and soil fertility.
The intricate patchwork these smallholdings make up is clearly visible from space; a seam of green that cuts through the Egyptian desert, marking a thread of life in a largely lifeless landscape. A map of the population density of Egypt reveals the same thread in red, quantifying the Valley’s demographic vitality. During her lecture, Asunción quotes the traditional Egyptian idiom that “the best fertiliser of the land is the shadow of the farmer;” it is in working with the land that generations of fellahin have maintained the Valley’s agricultural fertility for so long.
One might not think the lands outlying this fertile seam could yield much life, yet upon inspection this peripheral desert reveals a series of ghostly scars that pock the earth. Perfect circles of discoloured sand, almost like the marks of an ancient civilisation; these are the remnants of large industrial monocultures. Still further into the desert, newer iterations show up bright green on beige. These fields are operated by agribusinesses on government-owned land—often confiscated from citizens. Their shapes are drawn by long pivoting arms, which feed the desert soils with water from nonrenewable aquifers; as well as fertilisers, and pesticides. Green for half the year; the other six months they become untenable in the desert heat. In spite of their maximal output, they have minimal local benefits; their produce—usually fodder—being sold on the international market.
This is what Asunción has coined ‘ghost agriculture:’ a practice with no futurity; it is pure extractivism. After a mere 20-25 years, when their productivity—ergo profitability—declines, they are abandoned, and new ones are made. This form of farming is as notionally centralised as it is physically, with profits being funnelled directly back to the government. By contrast, the fine filigree of farms that fill the Nile Valley are run by the local population and, though yields are far smaller, they directly feed the people.
To communicate these different agricultural practices, Asunción worked with Egyptian artisans to commission a ‘khayamiya.’ This is an Egyptian style of quilting, the practice of which dates back to the pharaonic era, which is used to depict agrarian scenes and Quranic motifs, using distinctive geometric designs. Using this technique, these craftsmen—khayamiya is a traditionally male craft—created a quilt of different quadrilateral green patches, over which they stitched large, white circles. The negative space of these circles represents ‘ghost agriculture.’ Through this negative space, Asunción’s khayamiya reveals the diversity of smallholdings that can exist within the single circular footprint of one monocultured field.
The piece shows the juxtaposition of the two geometries, allowing a visual comparison of the proportion of land used by the circular fields and the size of the fields used by the farmers.
The juxtaposition represented in Ghost Agriculture highlights the contrast between these two farming practices, and reflects the correlation between scale and power that they measure. As such, the isolated dominance of the circular monocrops becomes both physically and notionally representative of the economic oligopoly of agribusinesses. By contrast, the vast patchwork of smallholdings, and their intricately interconnected irrigation system is indicative of the interdependence of the 4 million fellahin who tend them, and the population they feed.
From Asunción’s macroscopic vantage, we can better understand the microcosmic intricacies of traditional land management practices, as compared to the maximalism of industrial agriculture. Through Ghost Agriculture, we can begin to comprehend the invested longevity of the Nile Valley’s irrigation systems, and the socioeconomic and ecological diversity it facilitates. When measured against the obsolescent extractivism of agribusiness, this difference shows up as stark as a green field in the desert.
The piece displays an average amount of peasant’s fields that could fit inside one of the circular lands
