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Rejeitorio is an interactive video installation mediated by digital technology in which different 2D animations are displayed depending on the absence or presence of the audience. Conceived in 2019 by the artist Inês Regina Argôlo, in the context of her doctoral research in digital media art at the University of Algarve, Portugal, and supervised by professors Bruno Mendes da Silva and Gabriela Borges, the artifact primarily aims to make the public reflect on how much human actions are contributing to the destruction of the São Francisco River.
The São Francisco River runs through five states in Brazil: it originates in Minas Gerais, crosses the states of Bahia, Sergipe, Pernambuco, and Alagoas, and then flows into the ocean. Several legends, beliefs, and myths occupy the imagination of the population in relation to São Francisco. Considered sacred by some of the communities residing in the cities where its waters cross, the “Velho Chico” has ecological, historical, economic, and social importance. Passing through many places with a semi-arid climate in the Brazilian Northeast, this river is the only source of water in several regions; therefore, animals, plants, and entire cities would succumb to its destruction.
In 2019, an environmental and human tragedy caused national commotion and generated panic in the residents of the cities bathed by the river: a tailings dam of the mining company Vale do Rio Doce collapsed in the Brazilian city of Brumadinho, located in the state of Minas Gerais. Tailings are solid mining waste without economic value, plus water. The toxic sludge from this dam dragged like a tsunami through several parts of the city, decimating many people (G1 Minas, 2019), animals (Diário Online, 2019), part of the local flora (Vegazeta, 2019), in addition to “killing” the Paraopeba River (Ribeiro, 2019), which is one of the tributaries of the São Francisco.
Residing in the São Francisco Valley, more precisely in the city of Juazeiro da Bahia, which is an extremely hot region that is totally dependent on the São Francisco River, the artist not only followed closely but also experienced the fear of possible contamination of that river. At the time of the tragedy, some media, such as G1, a portal belonging to the Globo group (G1 PE, 2019), and environmental entities, such as Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica (SOS Mata Atlântica, 2019), reported that the mud had already reached the mining part of the river and sooner or later it would reach the other states.
The seriousness of the situation worried the artist greatly, spurring the creation of Rejeitorio, a work of activism through art. The video installation is entitled Rejeitorio, partly because it alludes to the set of tailings but also because the two cells that make up the word (tailings + river, in Portuguese, rejeitos + rio) point to the action of rejecting the river, in the sense of despising it to the point of devastation. This apparent contempt reflects an attitude on the part of the mining company that generated the ecological disaster, in the deepest sense of the term: According to Capra (2006, p. 16), “deep ecology does not separate human beings—or anything else—from the natural environment.” The contempt began in Brumadinho and with effects that, even after two years, may still extend to other cities (Comitê da Bacia Hidrográfica do Rio São Francisco, 2021). It also demonstrates the contempt of the whole society, because at the moment when the economy is placed above possible environmental damages and deaths, in addition to the population justifying the “necessity” of the irresponsible work of the company in order to guarantee their jobs, it is also contributing to ecological destruction.