L'oreneta sempre torna
L'oreneta sempre torna [The Swallow Always Comes Back] is a publication containing fifteen short narratives based on the results of ethnographic research. At the same time they're all a single story, one that affirms the relationship between the physical landscape and the society of Riba-Roja, a small town in the Ribera d'Ebre area. The collection aims to document, raise awareness of and highlight the value of a whole heritage, to ensure its survival over generations. The project is structured around Mafe Moscoso's theoretical notes in "Sobre etnografias experimentales y sensoriales" ["On Experimental and Sensory Ethnographies"]. She proposes taking social science methodologies and using them for research in design. Experimental ethnographies are characterised by including the sensory angle, considering the senses as ways of transmitting cultural values. They are also concerned with imaginary worlds, they play with science and with fiction, they use rhetoric as well as subjectivity, so giving rise to the fashioning of creative artefacts.
176 pages
Size: 150 x 230 mm
Typefaces: Reckless, Neue Montreal
Thanks: Xavier Alamany, Cobalto Studio
Awards
Media
The result is a creative publication, one that aims to sensitively pass on the field work done, as well as offering the added value of a sustainable graphic production. It is inspired by old notebooks, with a stitched binding and hard covers, printed on the spine and covers. Inside it contains a whole graphic collection, aiming at a range of visual and narrative languages to present different ways of understanding the landscape and its influence, whether physical, ethno-poetic or industrial.
The project is a response to the different threats currently faced by this collective heritage and shared with other rural areas of Catalonia. La Ribera d'Ebre is a peripheral comarca [county] that has faced challenges ever since the 19th century: big changes, new ideologies, the industrialisation of the countryside, the phylloxera wine plague, the mass exodus from the farms, the battle of the Ebro and now globalisation, among others.
This then is an attempt at decentralised design, giving a voice and visibility to a peripheral region. With the aim of breaking down cultural barriers and prejudices about the countryside.
