The ground we walk on is composed of layers of history buried over time: infrastructures, vegetation, animals, and human beings who inhabited these territories form a collection of sedimented layers and historical deposits that combine with geological layers from deep time. This interrelation between the artificial and the geological is especially evident in the forgotten infrastructures buried beneath our cities. How can we unearth both the memory and the material evidence of these? And what does this tell us about what we have collectively forgotten?
INVISIBLE INFRASTRUCTURES takes the case of the Acequia Madre de Querétaro—a buried 16th-century hydraulic infrastructure that provided drinking water to the city for nearly 200 years—to approach some potential answers to these profound questions. Furthermore, it seeks to bridge art, science, and technology to examine the elements that have shaped our landscape and daily life throughout history, and to ask whether these buried layers are also part of the density of what we call heritage.
