News

Aforismos Espaciais (Spatial Aphorisms) is a radio show that crosses architecture and literature/poetry. The fourth episode counterpoints the poem Six Significant Landscapes, by Wallace Stevens, to six works of Portuguese architects, exploring the relations between man and nature (a theme so dear to Wallace Stevens).

Currently on view at Galeria Boavista in Lisbon is the exhibition Radial body by Portuguese artists Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela which I had the pleasure to curate.

Contemporânea #4: Moving Image will be launched January 12, 2020, from 4 pm. at SOLAR Galeria Cinemática, Vila do Conde, with a guided visit to Jonathan Uliel Saldanha’s exhibition Locus Amoenus, Locus Horribilis, and a panel discussion with Jonathan Uliel Saldanha, Mário Micaelo, and Sara Castelo Branco.

The fourth print-edition of Contemporânea Magazine explores and considers the expanding field of moving images within recent artistic praxis, to which I had the pleasure to write an essay about Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela’s body of work: “The becoming-image: about the films of Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela”.

The North Section of the Portuguese Architects Association has begun the publication of a series of small books with the reports from the journeys of the winning proposals of Fernando Távora’s Award. The one dedicated to my journey corresponds, in part, to the conference presented in Matosinhos, on 6th October 2014 (maintaining its orality), where I’ve presented some of the ideas resulting from the journey (and which have been contributing to my research project) instead of a report of it.

A Map of Lisbon in Cinema is a deambulation around the city of Lisbon through the images and ideas from a selection of films commented in viewing sessions organised since 2015 by the Lisbon Municipal Archive Video Library within the cycle “Imaginary Topographies.”

Isaque Pinheiro is a Portuguese artist currently on an Artistic Residence in Évora, provided by Association Pó de Vir a Ser, developing a work titled Pano (Cloth) consisting of three phases: a collection of stone reliefs transformed into engraving matrices to print multiple engravings that will be - both the stone matrices and the engravings - on display in several places along the city’s walls until the end of August.

“The photography of architecture’s ambiguity as an artistic practice” is my latest critical essay about photography of architecture after the exhibition Fiction and Fabrication: Photography of Architecture after the Digital Turn.

Next Friday, May 24th, at 9.30 p.m., I’ll be presenting the winning films of the Arquiteturas Film Fest 2018 together with Luca Martinucci at the Edifício A4, Baía do Tejo, Barreiro.

The third issue of the printed series of Contemporânea is now available worldwide in a bilingual edition in a bookshop near you. The present volume is dedicated to Sculpture and I had the pleasure to contribute to it with an anthological essay about the artistic practice of Musa paradisiaca and a shorter text about three selected works from João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva.

I am delighted to announce that the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Lisbon is now offering, for the first time and for the academic year 2019/2020, the “Advanced Studies Course in Curating Architecture & Design”, filling the lack of higher education in Portugal in this important and emergent practice, for which I had the pleasure of coordinating the curriculae plan.

On Thursday, May 16th, at 3 p.m., at the Marvila Library, I’ll be talking at the Laboratory “O que é o Arquivo?” (What is the Archive?) together with Catarina Alves Costa, Carla Filipe and José Bragança de Miranda. The starting point is the Marvila area in Lisboa as a territory in transformation where several layers of history and indeterminacy co-exist between rural traces and the current gentrification among other questions that problematise the notion of archive when it comes to the city’s development.

Viagem ao Invisível: Espaço, Experiência, Representação (Journey to the Invisible: Space, Experience, Representation), only available in Portuguese, is a book organised by Luís Santiago Baptista and Maria Rita Pais after a journey they curated to several works of architecture and an exhibition held at Teatro Thalia. The book documents exhaustively all the visited works with several unpublished archive material (drawings, documents, and photographs), but it also includes artistic projects by artists Nuno Cera, Tatiana Macedo, Ricardo Castro, and Spela Hudnik, and critical essays by Inês Moreira, Eliana Sousa Santos, Susana Oliveira and myself.

The exhibition “The Sommer Pavilion in the Garden”, which I had the pleasure of curating (a truly public exhibition for the community in one of the most liveable public spaces of the city of Cascais), will open on Friday April 5th, at 6 p.m., at the Parada Garden (near Casa das Histórias), and it will be on display until May 5th. All are welcome!

For the second edition of Maia Architecture Month, under the theme Fast Forward curated by Andreia Garcia, several architecture studios and critics were invited to think, question and imagine the city of Maia (located in the Porto Metropolitan Area) in 100 years.

Uma Breve História da Curadoria (A Brief History of Curatorship), only available in Portuguese, is a book edited by the artists Sara & André after the cycle of three exhibitions they curated under the title Curated Curators. The book documents the three exhibitions (objects, works and stories), the artists and the curators that had participated and a few more in order to map - as exhaustively as possible - the curatorial activity in the field of visual arts in Portugal.

Next Wednesday October 17th at 6.30 p.m., I’ll be talking with José Pedro Cortes about his latest exhibition A Necessary Realism at the Chiado National Museum for Contemporary Art , with a focus on the visual essays on the body and its multiple inscriptions and the critical awakening of the proper significance of realism.

Next Saturday October 6th, I’ll be talking at the closing debate of the exhibition Building Stories, at Garagem Sul - Centro Cultural de Belém, together with SKREI, and moderated by André Tavares. The exhibition is curated by Amélia Brandão Costa and Rodrigo da Costa Lima and it features works by the studios De Vylder Vinck Taillieu, MAIO and Ricardo Bak Gordon.

Next Friday, June 1st, at 9.00 p.m., I'll be introducing the film Columbus (directed by Kogonada) within the Arquiteturas Film Festival Warm Up. The Portuguese Pre-Premiere of the film is in partnership with Alambique Films and supported by Atelier 18:25, where the screening will take place on the rooftop (Av. 5 de Outubro, n.º 16).

Next Wednesday, the 30th of May, I'll be talking about Scopio Magazine #5 with Victor dos Reis (FBAUL), Pedro Leão Neto (main editor of Scopio Magazine, FAUP), Paulo Catrica (Photographer, UNL) and Rogério Taveira (FBAUL) at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon (FAUBL), around an 18h30m (Auditório Lagoa Henriques). After interviewing Hélène Binet, Philippe Ruault, Bas Princen and Thomas Demand for the previous numbers of the magazine, I had the pleasure of interviewing the photographer Paulo Catrica for the current issue and to talk about his training abroad, his main themes, instruments and techniques.