Although depleted of the colossal perspective lent to it by space navigation in the 1970s, the idea of humanity as a species was progressively turned into an immanent geological colossus capable of influencing the world’s cardinal rhythms – or at least such has been the description of its reach. Anthropocene is the geological epoch of the human species, it is said, and the proof lies in the sedimentary deposits that originated in the first nuclear experiments held in the 1950s. What is of course ignored is that this idea of “species” was artificially inseminated by the normative and cisgender marriage between modernity and colonialism, and that the colossal perspective is still believed to stop and stand outside motionless in front of the globe...
Mukanda
08.10.2019 | by
Pathological states such as ‘land disease’, ‘tired head disease’ and even ‘disease caused by the hand’ allude to the states of anxiety, instability and vulnerability suffered by these communities, but also the loss of location in relation to the cultural and geographical space occupied by the subjects. They also convey the state of intense negotiation that exists between ‘negative supernatural forces’ and unequal social and political structures, in a place halfway between the land of origin and the land of arrival.
I'll visit
04.10.2019 | by Rita Fabiana
A bridge in Paris... Some dance on it, some watch them, smiling. Some are recording it on their phones, some timidly step forward and leave a little change on the guitar case. Wallace and Youmi continue singing their songs in the best office in the world...
Face to face
02.10.2019 | by Sinem Taş
One that stands in contrast to the government’s disregard for democratic procedure – even as it claims to be pushing on the “people’s will” – was the publication of a book by University College London’ Press, with the title of The Responsibility of Intellectuals: Reflections by Noam Chomsky and others after 50 years.
To read
01.10.2019 | by Paulo de Medeiros
These visible and invisible movements, transparent or subterranean, brought a new vision of black cultural presence to the world in places far beyond Africa. They brought, too, a new perspective on an African continent. Portugal, which had historically opened its doors to the first waves of globalization, was looking to the future with realism and with desire.
To read
01.10.2019 | by Margarida Calafate Ribeiro
Next Future ended by opening up to the future, with a nod towards a Europe and a Eurocentrism which has hardly considered African and Latin American comic books, crime writing, science fiction or visual animation. A challenge to museums and virtual exhibitions was launched with the project-exhibition Unplace – Networked Art: Places-Between-Places.
To read
01.10.2019 | by Margarida Calafate Ribeiro
What we are looking for is a critical conscience for representations that are calcified or absent from the archives, building a debate about the modes of reimagination and ethical approaches – not only to those images that become archive-image but also to the image archives in their materiality.
Afroscreen
18.09.2019 | by Maria do Carmo Piçarra
The mission of the EXCHANGE project (2015-2020) (2) is to reflect critically on the perpetuation of the “European dream” of a community of solidarity in which national, linguistic and cultural differences are overcome to produce a space in which citizens can move freely and safely. The surveillance technologies that the project studies have a shared feature: they are genetic machineries that seek to identify individuals for the purposes of criminal prosecution.
Games Without Borders
07.09.2019 | by Sheila Khan and Helena Machado
Yonamine has theatrically composed the gallery walls with posters made out of a selection of articles from Zimbabwean newspapers, paintings and video animations, showing several graphic references of power such as Napoleon figure and the Ku Kux Klan uniform presented in a navy blue adulterated version colour that evokes the uniforms of Zimbabwe's workers. All these elements are presented as political propaganda in the eve of an election, personifying the conqueror's evil thirst to reach power and control by keeping the opposition voiceless.
I'll visit
26.08.2019 | by Cécile Bourne-Farrell
The regenerative pillars of society: in order to regenerate, to ill, to let something healthy grow again, we need democratic participation, environmental sustainability, social inclusion, and cultural diversity. These would be the main political goals. The cognitive tools to walk this way are critical thinking, artistic creativity, ethical technology and… that’s my point, the transformative power of media.
To read
25.08.2019 | by Carla Baptista
‘openness’ means listening to the language of a given community and the commitment to reproduce it in a textbook format. Inclusion of minority groups in the textbook is perceived not as ‘curiosities’, but as an integral part of the cultures being represented so that a wider range of communities and language registers (from formal to informal) is portrayed. In addition, openness applies to the articulation of gender narratives in an inclusionary format. For instance, the masculine gender is supplemented with female and other non-binary genders.
To read
23.08.2019 | by Carlos Pio and Eduardo Viana da Silva
This space, therefore, has huge symbolic significance as a place to host an exhibition about contemporary prisons, and it matters that the two distinct narratives are not confounded. The Portuguese Prison Photo Project invites its viewers to consider the work of two photographers on regular prisons in Democratic Portugal of the 21st century, accompanied by other photographs of prisons selected from diverse national archives.
I'll visit
19.08.2019 | by Fátima da Cruz Rodrigues
"This isn't the type of thing you want to talk about" she starts, not really interested in sharing the details, but everyone would point to her door whenever a traveler or a stranger showed up in town.
"I'd take them in and feed them. Prepare their beds and listen to their sufferings. Then they would leave" says Grandma Cane.
Face to face
14.08.2019 | by Sinem Taş
Continuing to insist on a colour-blind policy, ignoring the voices of Invisible Portuguese, will only maintain the ‘specific and extremely dangerous delusion made possible by the wilful forgetting, and negating, of Europe’s imperial past.
To read
29.07.2019 | by Hélia Santos
Some of these stories also show that such ‘returns’ to Angola by people of Nuno’s generation may actually be critical detours, when they give rise, upon returning to Portugal, to critical postures on the colonial persistence within Portuguese society. In this European context, could the Portuguese case represent an alternative: something that, through a post-colonial journey, may lead to a more egalitarian society that accepts a plural public retelling of the past?
To read
29.07.2019 | by Irène dos Santos
the so-called “international community”, which dedicated to the events in Sudan not even one-tenth of the attention given to the Venezuelan or Algerian crises, was awakened by the rumble of the fall of the dictator of Khartoum. It was as if Western, Arab and African governments understood suddenly that a democratic revolution in Sudan may have devastating effects on the stability of neighbouring countries and on the regional balance of power, entailing feverish political and diplomatic agitation.
Games Without Borders
15.07.2019 | by Nicole Guardiola
Reflecting on glotophobia also allows us to question the linguistic and cultural imaginaries of a
post-colonial or decolonial perspective. We must rethink, again, discourses that rely on a political or
ideological territorialisation sustained by references to the purity of origin, of language, of religion, or of
ideological dogma.
To read
13.07.2019 | by Graça dos Santos
The authors were confronted with the lack of information on the representation of black men and women in European painting, which led them to very direct and immediate questions: who were the people represented? What were the motivations for representing them? And why did black people in European painting rarely have individualized identities?
To read
10.07.2019 | by Ana Paula Rebelo Correia
What remains of the Hotel Império, beyond an Asian allegory of Portugal? The clustered ruins of a building evoke the memory of an ancient, faded splendour which survives only in residues. But it is more an aesthetic image than a documented, known fact. Haunted ghosts survive of a house, more imagined than real, that never fully belonged in a Macau now disputing its precarious future through an iniquitous debate with a crushing and soulless modernization. The ideal conditions, then, to open up space for a pungent and inexorable nostalgia. It is destined to be the only thing to remain.
Afroscreen
09.07.2019 | by Roberto Vecchi
My talk will discuss the altered ecology of belonging that has emerged into Africa’s diasporas during the decades since “Black Atlantic” was published. My discussion of the problems that this has raised will centre on several key themes. They include the fortification of the overdeveloped countries, the impact of new communicative technologies on conceptions of solidarity, relationality and mutuality, the resurgence of extractive capitalism, and the export of generic racial identities from the USA to the whole world.
I'll visit
08.07.2019 | by vários
