Zahori
Finding water in rural Andalusian lands is of great importance to sustain life. Traditionally, people with special skills called Zahori, were employed to find subterranean water by means of a Y shaped twig with which to ‘sense’ the land while walking. This research project intends to analyse processes of perception through objects as indicators of the separation and mediation of the land and its people and how these processes may influence the way people organise themselves socially. The aims of this project are:
To highlight the idea of objects that aid people's development of 'new organs of perception'.
To spell out the objects's merits, its value, its power of creativity, connectivity and attachment.
To investigate the object's role in developing what Capra calls eco-literacy.
To add or change the value of the profession of Zahorí, and by extension to legitimise popular knowledge of the underestimated profession of cultivating the land and the overlooked connection between what we need in order to stay alive and where it comes from.
This project could not have been possible without the generosity of Antonio Molera García and his family.