What possibilities emerge when the excavation of a quarry is stopped? The film Gravera (2021) visualises such speculation in a quarry in La Plana del Corb, an industrial complex situated close to the city of Lleida, Spain. For the last twenty-five years, many types of gravel have been extracted from this location.

Once it has been selected and processed, the gravel is mostly used to make cement and asphalt. On February 19, 2021, the activity in the quarry was stopped and visitors were welcomed. Without the buzz from the machines, the dribble of the water streams, or the crunch and piling of the gravel, the quarry suddenly became a gritty landscape of rocky heaps and silent technology, a place stripped of noise for quiet contemplation. Overall, the film captures a stratigraphic imaginary dominated by the slow violence of the morphological transformation of the Earth in opposition to the temporary nature of the artificial constructions.

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