Matter for Future Excavation

Curated by Ana Jara and Joana Braga, Matter for Future Excavation is a project that looks at the city and interrogates it, as a gesture of excavating the matter of which it is made, in order to reveal its different overlapping strata, the less visible configurations of its tracing and thus unravel the tensions that run through it. 

This artistic residency held at the Palácio Sinel de Cordes between March and April, 2019  proposes itself as a place of listening and paying attention to Lisbon, at a time when the city is transforming itself, integrating the need to create itself a recognizable and attractive image for global investment, where the real estate violence and the precariousness of everyday life affects the spaces that compose it and the lives of its inhabitants. This series of encounters is based on research and practice associated with the creation of two performance paths by Joana Braga.

The residency consist in exploring Lisbon’s east side, where we experienced walking tours as a form of situated research, and discussed three conceptual images, the «villa-façade», « city-image» and «threshold».

The « city-image» proposes a reflection on the way cities are recurrently designed and shaped to become images that represent the political regimes that govern them, but also on the way in which other imaginary, diverse and conflicting, always maintain their capacity to generate distinct images, visible in specific pieces of the urban fabric, in the memories and imaginary of its inhabitants and in multiple artistic practices.

The «villa-façade», defined by the surfaces and spaces of the roofs and terraces, proposes a reflection on this paradoxical object, exemplary of the tensions and contradictions that characterise the city.

The "Threshold" takes a look at the coexistence of various uses and modes of occupation of urban space, and on different, less visible ways of making the city. Contrary to what the dominant images seek to show, the city does not constitute a homogeneous system of functions and structures, but a network woven by discontinuities through which the presence of the other insinuates, expressed through different and often conflicting practices. 

Along a collaborative research process that takes the form of micro-residences aims to experiment and explores the city, to create a constellation of objects and artistic installation. The results will be showcased in the format of an exhibition (April 27 and May 22, 2021).