SUBMERGED DATA IN SPIRALING TIME
PAVUNA DATA CENTERS
MICROFICÇÃO
MICROFICTION
In Pavuna, the area surrounding the data center is flooded, and several pieces of piping are floating, making strange noises as they collide.
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INFRASTRUCTURAL TERRITORY
Located in the northern zone of Rio de Janeiro, Pavuna is today a densely infrastructured territory, traversed by flows of energy, data, goods, and people. This condition, however, is not recent and results from a long history of territorialization of technical systems that shaped the neighborhood (as well as part of the Baixada Fluminense, in its surroundings) throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries.
Historically marked by industrial and logistical uses, the area around the Pavuna River began attracting large-scale equipment in the 1940s and 1950s, driven by its proximity to Avenida Brasil and the railway lines that cross the region. The installation of warehouses, depots, and electrical substations accompanied the city's expansion towards the Baixada Fluminense, positioning the area as an interface between Rio and its metropolitan surroundings.
In recent decades, this vocation has intensified. The construction of the Metropolitan Ring Road and its integration with regional logistics corridors have expanded the connectivity of the Pavuna River area with production and consumption centers throughout the Southeast region. More recently, the arrival of large-scale data centers – driven by the demand for digital services and the presence of robust electrical and telecommunications infrastructure – has consolidated a new technical layer over the territory. Today, Pavuna actively participates in the circulation of information that supports everything from financial operations to streaming platforms.
This technical-spatial transformation has made the neighborhood a true ecosystem of mediation, in which different types of infrastructure overlap: underground data networks, power towers, pipelines, expressways, substations, and automated warehouses. However, this density also reveals its weaknesses. Frequent flooding, aggravated by changes in rainfall patterns and the increasing impermeability of the soil, compromises the operation of essential equipment and directly affects the residents of the region.
To consider Pavuna as an infrastructural territory is to recognize its silent centrality in the urban and digital dynamics of the metropolis. It is also a call for the construction of public policies that articulate urban planning, climate justice, and care for the territories that, although invisible in the dominant imagination of the city, sustain its daily operation.
EMBODIED EXPERIENCE
POROUS READING OF TERRITORY
This project, carried out in the first semester of 2024 as part of the external activities of the course "Forces of the Earth, Artistic Practices and Infrastructures," consisted of walks around the Pavuna River and the Ascenty data center. The walk was accompanied by an in situ reading of Robert Smithson's text "A Sedimentation of the Mind," fundamental to understanding the connections between art and geology, and art and the Anthropocene.
"The surface of the earth and the inventions of the mind have a way of disintegrating into discrete regions of art. Various agents, both fictional and real, somehow exchange places with one another – one cannot avoid muddy thinking when dealing with earth-projects, what I will call 'abstract geology'."
"The manifestations of technology are sometimes less 'extensions' of man (McLuhan's anthropomorphism) than aggregates of elements."
"People's minds and the earth are in a constant state of erosion; mental rivers wear away abstract banks, brainwaves undermine cliffs of thought, ideas decompose into stones of ignorance, and conceptual crystallizations shatter into deposits of sandy reason."
"The strata of the earth are a confusing museum. Embedded in the sediment is a text containing limits and boundaries that escape rational order and the social structures that confine art. To read the rocks, we must become aware of geological time and the layers of prehistoric material that are buried in the earth's crust."
"Excavating machines and other crawlers that can travel across rough terrain and steep gradients. Drills and explosives that can produce tunnels and earthquakes. Geometric trenches could be dug with the help of 'gutted' machines – toothed steel rakes mounted on tractors. With this equipment, construction takes on the appearance of destruction; perhaps that is why certain architects hate crawler tractors and steam excavators. They seem to transform the terrain into unfinished cities of organized rubble. A sense of chaotic planning engulfs site after site."
"The view's climate changes from humid to dry and from dry to humid according to each person's mental state. [...]
THE MUD POOL PROJECT
1. Dig up a 100-square-foot area of ​​earth with a pitchfork.
2. Have the local fire department fill the area with water.
3. The area will be complete when it turns to mud.
4. Let it dry in the sun until it turns to clay.
5. Repeat the process as desired."
Vídeo elaborado pela bolsista de Pibic Laura Lanziero (Cinema - UFF)
STRATA OF THE EARTH
LOGISTICS LOGISTICS L
CHOKEPOINT
MENTAL RIVERS
MUDDY THOUGHT
CLIMATE'S VIEW
EMBODIED EXPERIENCE
Vegetable garden abandoned by floods.
This proposal, carried out in the second semester of 2024, consisted of a meditative walk along the banks of the Pavuna River towards the Ascenty data center. We stopped at various points to perform meditation exercises, as well as visiting the backyard of a resident living near the Pavuna River.
The resident had dedicated several years to planting seedlings in his backyard, but after the flood of January 2024, he became discouraged, gave up planting, and began a movement to relocate the area.
We discussed the history of the Pavuna River (which, as the resident himself witnessed, was still navigable a few decades ago) and its rapid transformation and pollution.
The Pavuna River, with its 14 kilometers of length, has been historically impacted by environmental degradation processes. Since the mid-20th century, the waterway has received untreated domestic sewage and industrial waste, resulting in siltation and loss of biodiversity. The straightening of its riverbed and the disorganized urbanization along its banks exacerbated these problems, transforming the river into a compromised drainage channel, especially vulnerable during intense rainfall events.
In January 2024, extreme rainfall hit Rio de Janeiro, accumulating volumes of up to 400 mm in 24 hours in some areas. The overflowing of the Pavuna River resulted in significant flooding, affecting residences, critical infrastructure, and essential services. This event highlighted the urgent need for structural interventions and public policies aimed at revitalizing the river and mitigating the impacts of climate change in the region.