Lisbon, treasure room of old grandeur as a former capital of globalization avant la lettre, always scoring high in the charts with most popular city trip destinations in Europe. But also a backdrop for plague and hunger, of earthquakes and tsunamis, nowadays one of the epicenters of the economic shockwaves that rock the continent. A pigg capital, a laboratory for new socio-economic realities. An ethnic melting pot in Southwest Europe -or was it North Africa, or maybe Northeast Latin America? - where racial and ethnic tensions seem less present (at least less visible) than in other western urban agglomerations. Where community perhaps still means something. A city of emigrants, immigrants and nomads, circumscribed by very volatile and porous borders: between nature and culture, between water and land, between modernity and tradition. A city of poets and surrealists, where the revolution bears the name of a flower, the cemetery is called ‘Pleasures’, where the walls speak -more eloquently than anywhere else perhaps - of agony and dreams of then and now.
Welcome to the City Lab Lisbon
É este o preâmbulo que assinala a chegada do City Lab a Lisboa. É um projecto em rede, mobilizado peloFestivals in Transition que conta com a participação de várias estruturas e artistas de cidades europeias, e que dá conta da crescente importância do ambiente urbano e das cidades como espaço de manifestações do mundo contemporâneo.
Em cada City Lab, os artistas convidados propõem trabalhos baseados nas experiências vividas em cada cidade. Depois de Utrecht, Riga, Maribor, Munique e Derry-Londonderry; chega a vez de Experimentar em Lisboa com acolhimento do Alkantara.
Monday April 8 | The Insatiable Tourist. 07.30am
Meeting point at Metro Baixa-Chiado Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner together Sunrise and breakfast on the Castelo. Traveling via the highlights of touristic Lisbon through space and time. A relay race of guides, up to a point of touristic overdose, a sort of flip book of postcards. The full Lisbon in 12 hours, from the birth of a nation till the world expo 1998. Sunset on a boat crossing the river to have diner on the south bank.
Tuesday April 9 | Backyard silence. 11am
Meeting point at Metro Baixa-Chiado Lunch together in Bairro de Santa Filomena Night off. A walk through the hills on the backside of the city, starting with lunch in Santa Filomena, descending through the ‘non-lieus’ of suburban Lisbon to Amadora. The anti-tourist (or was it a slum tourist?), in a slow, strolling rhythm and no landmark in sight. We end the day in the late afternoon with a meeting with the company BERLIN. They already made a series of portraits of cities and are now working on a project about Lisbon.
Wednesday April 10 | City of Nomads. 10 am
Meeting point at the Parliament Off from 12pm to 6pm 6pm – Meeting point at Metro Baixa-Chiado Morning session in the fabulous Mãe d’Água water reserve with Urândia Aragão, a young artist working on the notation of movement, conceptual maps and scores, aiming to develop a ‘cartography of an experience’. Afternoon off, followed by dinner in a community house in the Curraleira neighborhood, and a meeting with representatives of the gipsy community. Fado.
