The 1967 flood in Buenos Aires showed how the climate crisis affects the poor more strongly than it affects anyone else – how ‘a rope breaks at its thinnest part’, as the proverb says; how environmental and socio-economic vulnerabilities are deeply entangled.
Focusing on this event as a way to unpack key political and spatial aspects of environmental injustice, Adriana Massidda and her Argentine research collaborators hosted two research exhibitions during March and April in Buenos Aires. These exhibitions shared material from the project '"Water Blew Up Everything:" An Urban History of Climate Disasters in Buenos Aires Informal Settlements', funded by the British Academy, and received complementary funding by a Grantham Amplification Fund. They involved high-quality historical photos, testimonies by residents of the affected areas, periodicals of the time, objects, maps and audio-visual material, as well as an exhibition catalogue. The openings also involved music and the recitation of poetry by residents, composed to capture their experiences flooding.
The exhibitions were set in areas severely affected by the flood including a self-run pensioners’ centre in an informal settlement and a community library. This was a way to both give back to the residents who offered their testimonies to the project, and to engage younger generations and a wider public. The flood is still an open wound in these neighbourhoods and the exhibitions raised an enormous amount of excitement, interest, emotions and critical discussions.