2019
13.01.19 - OVO, Cirque du soleil
Altice Arena, Lisboa
A destacar: técnica, escenografía
19.09.19 - In Tarsi, Cia Eia
Riga's circus, Riga
A destacar: juego teatral, tiempos
2018
18.04.18 - El último bufón, Leo Bassi
Teatro principal de Ourense
A destacar: imperfección, caos, realidad, sinceridad
22.09.18 - Final of the student's contest of Cupula Circus Village Festival
Arcozelo, Porto
A destacar: el ambiente del festival, la localización y el cámping libre
2017
16.7.17 - Vincles, Circ Bover
Alameda do concello de Ribadavia (dentro da MIT)
A destacar: emoción
Diciembre 17- La soirée
London
A destacar: transiciones cómicas
2015
Amaluna, Cirque du soleil
A destacar: la elegancia del conjunto y de la escenografía
Salpêtrière: where art & science meet
Reference book: PERFORMING NEUROLOGY The Dramaturgy of Dr Jean-Martin Charcot, Jonathan W. Marshal
1. INTRODUCTION
- What was it? History.
After being the first gunpowder factory, the building was used for an institution for mad women in the
last few decades of the 19th century.
Considered a reference in the French
hospital system, it has made scientific contributions with worldwide
repercussions and figures such as Dominique Laplane, who studied
obsessive-compulsive changes.
XVII century – Luis XIV orders to
build hospitals for poor people, because the city is full of them. This building was converted into a
hospice for the poor woman: mentally ill woman, epileptic,
prostitutes, alcoholic, girls born on adultery, witches, orphans,
criminals, crazies, lesbians, girls with suicidal tendencies,
bohemians...
XVIII - During the September massacres
of 1792, the working-class district tried to release the woman:
134 prostitutes were released, 25 madwomen were murdered.
XIX – Alfred Vulpin, Jean- Martin
Charcot = father of modern neurology, he developed several studies on
hypnosis and hysteria. He creates a neurology school in La
Salpêtrière, where he starts teaching. Georges Gilles Tourette was
his disciple and studied what is now known as "Tourette's
disease". Freud was also a disciple – Charcot's said to be the
precursor of psychoanalysis.
XX - Gradually, the neurological
specialty of the institution is consolidated thanks to doctors such as Édouard Brissaud, Raymond Garcin and Pierre Marri.
Diana, princess of Wales, died here.
- Such a Wagner
monopolized hysteria. He astonished
men. He frightened women. He practiced in sum scientific
cabotinage. His success has been enormous. Oh the great allure of
hamming it up! It has profited Charcot, but science also. He
advanced science in the manner of Wagner, the great musical
cabotin.Charcot and Wagner seem to me to be of the same race.
It was horrible to say this for the doctor, as it was comparing him
to an artist rather than to a scientist. And he was such a
nationalist man.Wagner was famous for championing the total art
work, in which all of the senses were simultaneously assaulted by
different elements of performance: sound, music, voice, acting,
lighting, spectacle, and design. Charcot and his acolytes warned
against the potential ill effects of such intense neuro-affective
stimulation, claiming that it could bring on hysteria or other
diseases.
- Linguistics. Butler and performativity
Derrida explains this by reference to language itself. For any word
to make sense, it must have been said before, and the association of
this word with a particular object or concept have been recognized.
Every time this word is subsequently said, it becomes more clearly
associated with the object it names—the more one is called “man,”
the more this designation becomes, in Butler’s phrasing,
“sedimented” and “concretized” in social, physical, and
subjective terms. One “becomes” a man through such performances.
This raises, however, the possibility that the subject was not a man
at some time or other, and hence that it was always possible that
another designation could have been applied.
All language has some performative character. Charcot starts to name
things and actions, so he's creating the knowledge, but it could have been different.
“There is nothing outside the text”- Derrida. So, knowledge is
something human-made.
This is related to the concept of “mad women”, very present in
today's society. I had a teacher who told me when her daughter was kind of rebel she
was called “a bad girl”, while if it was her son who adopted
that attitude, he was seen as “a boy with a lot of personality”
and intelligence. The use of the language. “Stop being so hysterical!” - It is always said to women who just want to be heard. It was not only a big influence in arts, but in
society and in the meaning of the word “woman”.
Beyond linguistics
The choreography of hysterioepilepsy was so violently
chaotic as to be not just pathological, but to exist beyond the
logical structures of language itself. Hysteria’s status as a
pre- linguistic, somatic language has since become a truism of
feminist psychoanalysis. What is often overlooked, however, is that
the alinguistic character of nineteenth century hysteria meant that
the disease could only be fully represented through the force of
physical performance, and not through written or verbal
description, or even the static images of photography.
- Later influences
- LEÇONS DU MARDI: his students write
the notes and then he reviews them and creates a book out of them. His work was inseparable to the work of his acolytes. Aesthetic values in
his school: some pupils were professors of artistic anatomy.
His work was very influential in arts. Neuropatologhy as
entertainment.
- DANCE
a) End of the XIX –
beginning of the XX century: Loïe Fuller, “trance dancers”.
b) Inability of the language and logic
speech acts.
c) Marta Graham used muscle tension and relaxation as
motor energy.
- SURREALIST ESSAY by Louis Aragon and André Breton, “The Fiftieth Anniversary of Hysteria”, 1928
- ARCH OF HYSTERIA, Louise Bourguois
- Per Olov Enquist’s fictional book of Charcot’s patients BLANCHE AND MARIE, 2007
- UNITED COLORS OF BENETTON, Oliviero Toscani and Isabelle Caro
- AUGUSTINE Alice Winocour’s film, 2012
- 1893: Charcot's death. Following
years: significant literary and aesthetic works
-
REFLECTION OF THE AUTHOR:
Didi-Huberman
concludes that: Charcot rediscovered hysteria. I attempt to
retrace how he did so, amidst all the various clinical and
experimental procedures, through hypnosis and the spectacular
presentations of patients having hysterical attacks in the
amphitheater where he held his famous Tuesday Lectures. With Charcot
we discover the capacity of the hysterical body, which is, in fact,
prodigious. It is prodigious; it surpasses the imagination,
surpasses “all hopes,” as they say. Invention
of Hysteria (2003)
For
Didi-Huberman, the collection of photographs published within the
Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière
“contains everything: poses, attacks, cries, ‘passionate
attitudes,’ ‘crucifixions,’ ‘ecstasy,’ and all the
postures of delirium” or what might be called “theatricalized
bodies.” one of Didi-Huberman’s most significant observations:
hysterics became art objects. the diseased neurological body is
therefore a kind of fiction , very close to theatre.
2. CHARCOT Diagnosis of
hysteria
- Key words = ART & SCIENCE
Hysterioepilepsy and hypnosis = theatrical diseases
- Process of study
BODY MOVEMENT
He
was known to explore illnesses by focusing on the body
movement. He even
produced, together with other people, proto-cinematic stop-motion
analyses of the moving body, just when the cinema was about to
start. We worried more about the plastic manifestations of hysteria
than about his nature or causes, having as an important tool a
visual archive he impulsed: Iconographie Photographique
de la Salpêtrière. He was more focus on the body reactions and impulses than on psyche,
sexuality or psychology, this means, on the choreographic patterning of the body.In the film, the movements are very sexual-related, with Augustine touching her sexual organs and breast while convulsing. But Charcot always stated that the sexual wasn't part of the disease, it was just delirium, and the disease starts in the brain.
RAPPROCHEMENT (relationship) BETWEEN THEATRE AND MEDICINE
At the Théâtre
du Grand Guignol and in the work of Munthe and Daudet (french
dramaturgues), a Charcot-figure is depicted as a diseased performer
or histrionic actor. It helps in the medical practice.He made a distinction: Performance of medical knowledge in the lectures / pathological performativity of patients
Controversial.
Even though, criticism of Platel: faced with the problem of
differentiating between illness and the mere performance of illness;
between outward theatrical display and essence, which in turn
implicitly raised the question of whether illness was itself a kind
of performance.
Health vs. Disease: symmetry of classical male young bodies vs disorder, grotesque, carnival. The work of Richer, Meige, and Duval on the healthy moving body acted as an instructive complement to Charcot’s own focus on diseased movement.
Marcel Duchamp’s Futurist painting of Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) explicitly references the lectures on the body in movement of Richer.
Richer claimed that every age was characterized by a particular art form, in “modern times” however it was “music.” Marey and his collaborators, such as Londe, had indeed experimented with forms of musical and choreographic notation to record movement patterns, heartbeat, and other physiological phenomena, and Richer reproduced illustrations of Marey’s semi-musical “notation of movement” throughout his course-books. Scientists had moved from listening for the music of the spheres, to listening to and watching for the rhythms of anatomyological movement.
DRAWINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHY. CINEMA
Images.
Draws and pics. They let
the images speak for themselves: medicine and photography. As
photographic techniques improved, Salpêtrière physicians such as
Richer increasingly commended the camera for its superiority over
the physical eye, enabling one to capture the “most fugitive” or
subtle of bodily expressions for further investigation. The phrase
“made after nature” which Charcot evoked in his lecture above
was crucial here.
Charcot was a fair illustrator, and several of his schematic drawings adorned his published lectures. As Charcot’s secretary of 1889–1893, George Guinon, observed:
THE THEATRE OF
THE ATHLETIC NUDE
CHAPTER 5: The
Grotesque Body and the Living Nude
This concept led to some violent tendencies, such as Martin
McDonagh's and Sara Kane's“In-yer-face”.(Blasted)
French theatre at
the time very academic, following the Greek rules: Aristoteles'
model of the three unities: time, space, character, Rules of Classicism. Therefore, Charcot preferred Molière than Wagner or Aurélien Lugné-Poe. For the ancients, the admiration of beautiful forms was in some sense the dogma of
a religion, and the science of the nude became the catechism. Both
painters and physicians must know the nude.
Art and science.Health vs. Disease: symmetry of classical male young bodies vs disorder, grotesque, carnival. The work of Richer, Meige, and Duval on the healthy moving body acted as an instructive complement to Charcot’s own focus on diseased movement.
Marcel Duchamp’s Futurist painting of Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) explicitly references the lectures on the body in movement of Richer.
MUSIC
AND RHYTHM OF THE BODY
The
work of Richer, Meige, and Duval on the healthy moving body acted as
an instructive complement to Charcot’s own focus on diseased
movement. As Richer observed, it was above all the “music”
or “rhythm” of
the body, its uniquely sequential or choreographic action, which
defined the body as healthy or diseased.Richer claimed that every age was characterized by a particular art form, in “modern times” however it was “music.” Marey and his collaborators, such as Londe, had indeed experimented with forms of musical and choreographic notation to record movement patterns, heartbeat, and other physiological phenomena, and Richer reproduced illustrations of Marey’s semi-musical “notation of movement” throughout his course-books. Scientists had moved from listening for the music of the spheres, to listening to and watching for the rhythms of anatomyological movement.
DATA
Iconographie was full of statistical
data on the patients: the frequency and duration of their fits; the
volume and quality of their urinary and fecal excretions, as well
as notes on foaming at the mouth, saliva, menstruation, and other
“vaginal secretions”; skin and mucosal sensitivity; rectal,
vaginal, and skin temperatures before, after, and during fits, as
well as across the body; dynamometric measurements of muscular
force, the relative weakness and atrophy of limbs; measurements of
bodily proportions; transcriptions of patients’ delirious
ramblings; electrostimulation readings; ...
O. indeed claimed that during his seizures:
“There seem to be two persons in me … I am at once
the actor and the spectator; and the worst of it is, the exuberance
of the one [the pathological actor] is not to be thwarted by the
just recriminations of the other”. // others feel like the sky was
splitting in two parts, etc
Patients frequently raged and gnashed their teeth in
postures which Bourneville and Richer identified as being closely
akin to those which Catholics had formerly designated as being the
result of demonic possession.
These radically disordered movements could only be
described as “illogical attitudes,” a phrase also used to
describe Tourette’s syndrome. Such poses were “illogical”
because of “their non-correspondence to any [identifiable]
emotional states” or other narrative or contextual justification.
Charcot said that hypnosis was only possible with people with
hysteria (he was wrong), while whilst Bernheim argued others
attacked him saying this was not truth, and even that hypnosis could be a curative method for them.DRAWINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHY. CINEMA
Charcot was a fair illustrator, and several of his schematic drawings adorned his published lectures. As Charcot’s secretary of 1889–1893, George Guinon, observed:
He himself drew
like a true artist, and this talent often served him well in fixing
on paper a patient’s attitude, a deformation, which he immediately
[then] knew how to define with a characteristic word.
Charcot recognized
in Richer, however, a superior gift. As a young intern, Richer
stayed overnight in the wards so as to capture the transitory fits
and seizures of hysterics and other patients.
They both two major iconographic studies on illness in art,
Les démoniaques dans l’art (1886) and Les difformes et les malades dans l’art (1889), with their drawings.Art as realism.
The “love of truth,” of
nature, and of “ exact imitation,” formed the basis for all
true art, theatre and science. The ideal medical theatre was rather the
literally spartan aesthetic of the classical athletic stadium.
The reader
was encouraged to read across the images, and reconstruct patient
behaviour in all its chaotic totality. The Iconographie resembled
in this sense a flip-book of cinematic stills more than it did a
collection of self-contained, static images. The performances
represented in these texts were pathological because of how such
dramas transgressed the rules of classical theatre and Aristotelian
drama. Instead of being representations of real events, they acted
as corporeal manifestations of a compulsion to perform itself.
Hysterioepilepsy was a disease because, in the final analysis, it
depicted nothing other than itself; it was pure performance, or as
Charcot observed, “art for art’s sake.”
- Postmodernity. Taoism. VARIABILITY. TRANSFORMATION
Complexity of our
body, very postdramatic, always changing: As Richer observed: the
volume of the diverse parts of our body are not constantly the same,
it [the body] is, on the contrary, in a perpetual state of
instability. That is to say that it changes from moment to moment,
with our stances, with our actions, our feelings, our emotions, even
our thoughts. One of the features of life is the incessant changes
in the volume of the limbs and as a result in their form. From this
it follows that, in Nature, the form itself is variable, transitory
and ever-changing.
- Complexity in every field: postmodernism is not only a philosophical tendency, but it is expressed in several fields: architecture, literature, sociology... “Less is a bore”. Very baroque.
- I think he was kind of a visionary, as he didn't focus on searching for the causes of hysteria and the sense of it (as modernisms did, all of them were focused on the meaning of life), but on exploring and enjoying the performativity of the body in such a state. Postmodernity doesn't intend to raise new ideas, there is not a truth, but subjective impressions of it.
- Self-contradiction
Past: ancient Greeks. Body and soul were one, impossible to separate. With the mask,
body was very important. There was no concept of an independent mind
functioning outside the body. They didn't regard the naked body as
sinful or corrupt, but they celebrated in the gymnasium.
Postmodernism goes
back to the past, modernism wanted to differientate form the past.
Modernity:
industrialization, free market, rationalism, material life... Modern
society is mainly about destruction, about the change. Initiated by
nihilism.
Postdramatic
theatre totally breaks with the Aristotelian structure of the plot:
the theatre is defined by the staging. It doesn't destroy the
structure of the drama, but it overcomes it. There is an
absolutization of the body. This is way I'm studying physical
theatre, because I think it is the future and I somehow don't find
an inner meaning to other theatrical forms at the moment.
- Artistic way of description. Charcot and Bourneville
The Iconographie offered not only a transcription of
the dramaturgy which Charcot and his associates described, but also
an attempt to translate this living, performative material from the
stages of the Salpêtrière into a published, textual form.
Photography was enlisted to aid in this task of bodily
transcription. A tension existed between the alogical, pathological
body of hysterioepilepsy and its rational, medical description. This
conflict between medical diagnosis and its irrationally disordered
object was reflected in a similar opposition between performance and
its textual documentation.
It is significant in this context that Bourneville’s
project of somatic description was contemporary with not only the
work of Marey, Londe, and Richer in finding ways to record and
analyse movement, but also with attempts to carefully notate and
examine choreography by dance theorists such as Maurice Emmanuel of
the Paris Conservatoire, or the founder of Eurhythmics, Émile
Jaques- Dalcroze, both of whom drew on advances in
chronophotography.
Ways of linguistically describing and transcribing both
the poetic, and the poetically deranged, medical body were of
widespread concern in the arts and science throughout the 1880s
through the 1930s.
Choreographic patterns:
- “coprolalia” (vocal expletives)
- “echolalia” (repeating of phrases and nonsense)
- “illogical movements” such as “salutations” (swipes of the hand over the cranium)
- choretic movements: rhythmic movements, like continuous
movement of the feet. They counted the number of oscillations per
minute of the movement
- Charcot claimed that “It was there,” in these
rhythmic patterns, that one discovered “as is said in Hamlet ,
‘there is method , though this be madness.
- All happens in a non-speaking body, no words
are issued during the seizure
Film called Hysteria, 2011: Two doctors in Victorian England use manual stimulation in the female genitals to cure the diseases of their patients, causing the invention of the vibrator.
Por qué é importante a arte na miña vida?
La sensación de estar tocando en una orquesta
Me gusta sentir mi cuerpo terso bajo la ropa.
"Much more classical, too modern for me..."
Percibir los cuerpos musculados de las bailarinas.
Gastarme un pastizal no teatro... E sentir que é o correcto.
Las artes escénicas me hacen sentir tan bien...
VI VI EN DO
Aporta o aparta, no Afri?
Ricordo quando suonava il violino. Tuttos insieme.
"Do you have any butterfly orchids - there are everywhere here - all the flowers are so wonderful this year - and the light nights and the utter calmness of the nights and the days, everything is so marvellous" - painter Ellen Thesleff in a letter to her sister.
Dancing excites me.
I dream of finding the meaning of life, but there is no.
There are some things that can't be known but through art.
Amo as artes escénicas ante todo e creo que é algo inherente a min, como viaxar.
Me gusta sentir mi cuerpo terso bajo la ropa.
"Much more classical, too modern for me..."
Percibir los cuerpos musculados de las bailarinas.
Gastarme un pastizal no teatro... E sentir que é o correcto.
Las artes escénicas me hacen sentir tan bien...
VI VI EN DO
Aporta o aparta, no Afri?
Ricordo quando suonava il violino. Tuttos insieme.
"Do you have any butterfly orchids - there are everywhere here - all the flowers are so wonderful this year - and the light nights and the utter calmness of the nights and the days, everything is so marvellous" - painter Ellen Thesleff in a letter to her sister.
Dancing excites me.
I dream of finding the meaning of life, but there is no.
There are some things that can't be known but through art.
Amo as artes escénicas ante todo e creo que é algo inherente a min, como viaxar.
E agora entendo aos malos estudantes,
sen vocación, porque cando algo non che interesa... que podes facer
para solucionalo?
Ata que punto se precisa formación para
ser actriz e ata que punto instinto ou personalidade?
"Se há que buscar o sentido da música, da filosofía, de uma rosa, é que não estamos entendendo nada" - José Saramago.
"Se há que buscar o sentido da música, da filosofía, de uma rosa, é que não estamos entendendo nada" - José Saramago.
Cuándo llegan los ángeles, it rains
Amar el sol y la alegría pero también el caos y la decadencia, como dice Vargas Llosa.
Non dover dare un senso a tutto.
No perder el sentido de sorprenderse.
Basta percepirlo.
Me gusta la sensación de estar despegando.
E il momento del sincericidio arriva sempre.
Penso che il mio momento preferito sia l'alba, può essere così magico...
Je suis si bien
Qué gusto dan a veces algunas cosas... saber que Carlota me ha estado pensando.
Cruzarme a gente que guarda mucho amor del bueno en su corazoncito.
Positive vibes.
Pessoas que riem.
Trip to Lapland
Santa's village
Saariselkä, Finland
The Artic ocean in Norway
New people
.
.
.
Resume of my emotions:
About MAAT and the poetry of lightness
Speculating about MAAT...
- INTRODUCTION
Museum
Art
Arquitecture
Tecnology
MAAT are the
initials for the Museum of Art, Arquitecture and Technology based in
Lisbon: a new cultural project focused on those three areas. I'm in love not only with the art it
provides, but with its architecture, its atmosphere and its soul.
To begin with, it
is always nice to go into the roots, and the roots are always in the
linguistics, as Derrida said “nothing exists outside the text”.
The initials have a proper meaning by themselves: Maat or Ma'at
refers to the ancient Egyptian concepts of truth, balance, order,
harmony, law, morality and justice and to the Goddess who personified
them. She regulated the stars, seasons, and the actions of mortals
and deities who had brought order from chaos at the moment of
creation. Her significance developed to the point that it embraced
all aspects of existence, including the basic equilibrium of the
universe. Maat regulated everything, opposing to chaos and it is
comparable to the Greek concept
of logos.
This is such a
beautiful name for an art space, such a beautiful comparison. She
represents the ethical and moral principle that every citizen was
expected to follow throughout their daily lives: they should act with
honor and truth in every field. So talking about art, it gives the
museum a very honorific connotation: it makes us think the museum as
a reference place for our behavior and daily lives, it brings the
museum a temple's connotation. As the architecture critic Jonathan
Glancey mentions, it is “one of Europe's most lyrical new museums”.
The Egyptian law
preserved the rights of women, who were allowed to act independenlty
of men, and the Goddess is sometimes depicted with wings or with an
ostrich feather on her head. In our culture, feathers and birds are
related to freedom: it is a lovely idea that of representing art as
a free and powerful woman.
- ARQUITECTURE & ATMOSPHERE
The museum is
placed on the River Tagus (Tejo), to the west of the city centre, in
the district of Belém. It is composed by two buildings: the new
building and the Tejo Power Station, a steam factory which is an
example of Portuguese industrial architecture from the first half of
the XXth century. Both are connected through a corridor designed by
the Lebanese architect Vladimir Djurovic.
The objective of
the EDP Foundation is fulfilled: to revitalize the historic Belém
neighborhood. It is placed in one of the most historical monumental
areas of the city where we can find constructions such as the
Jeronimos Monastery, the Belém Cultural Center, the Belém Tower,
the Monument of the Discoveries or the Palace and Museum of the
Presidency of the Portuguese Republic.
- KEY WORDS: subtlety, tradition, modernity, elegance, tiles, lightness.
- NEW BUILDING
Remembering the
ancient culture, the architecture of the new building is light as
Maat's ostrich feather, the symbol of the truth. It also remains to
our actual, although not true, image of the ancient Greek
architecture: all in white. We cannot forget its shape, a soft arch,
one of the oldest forms of western architecture. In a very elegant
way, the old meets the modern, linking historical and contemporary
architectural concepts.
There is no need of colours on such a building, the architecture is great by itself and the colours are given by the city itself and by the brilliant sunsets by the river, all involved in that shiny Portuguese culture.
Facade
It's curved, elongated and oval. It's composed of a mosaic of white pieces. The angle and position of these tiles were planned in order to create specific luminous effects, according to the time of the day and year, reacting to the changes of light and water reflections. It works as a mirror of Lisbon's soul, reflecting every time the state of the city.
The
shape doesn't disturb the area, as it is only
12 meters high, avoiding covering the historic buildings behind and
the panoramic views. Its undulating shape also fits perfectly with
the sense and state of the river, reminding us of a wave.
Pedestrian roof
It starts from the ground and rises on a gentle slope from where you can see views of both the Tagus river and the city. It also has a garden area, very attractive for tourists.
Interior
It comprises four exhibition spaces totaling around 3,000 square meters: the Oval Gallery, the Main Gallery, the Video Room and the Project Room.
The Oval is the first exhibition area, with 800 square meters, along a curve, offering a path through the interior of the building and its special projects. There, they are held in site specific projects, being a very interesting space due to its big capacity.
The Main Gallery is
about 1,000 square meters and is located on the lower floor of the
building. It is a versatile space that, depending on the programming,
can be presented as a single unit or can be configured in several
spaces.
In
turn, the Project Room and Video
Room are two rooms for the presentation of projects in film or video,
installations, among other media.
Amanda Levete
The artist who
designed this building is the British architect Amanda Levete.
She was a partner
of Future Systems, a firm characterized by the development and
production of organic architecture, from the use of high
technologies, which enabled the expression of forms of nature. It was
founded by who was going to be her professional and personal partner,
the Czech neo-futurist architect Jan Kaplicky, and it was recognized
for bloblitecture works such as the Selfridges building in
Birmingham. But since 2009, she is the owner of her own firm, Amanda
Levete Architects (A_LA). And in 2017, she
was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), for
services to architecture.
She
studied not only Architecture,
but Art
and History.
Regarding her artistic and personal life, she was an outstanding
student, but also a very rebel and creative teenager, being expelled
from school for taking naked sunbaths. Another aspect of her
versatility, is
her role as a regular writer. Her textual
productions are published in several media outlets. All of these
personal events can be seen on her works, probably as well as the
fact of possessing Portuguese roots, creating this work of art so
subtle and so respectful of the environment and culture.
- TEJO POWER STATION
The
Tejo Power Station was a thermoelectric power plant which supplied
the entire Lisbon region with electric power from 1909 to the 1970s.
The facades display several artistic styles, from art nouveau to
classicism, and
in 1986 it was classified
as an Asset of Public Interest.
Since
1990 it is used as an Electricity Museum. The museum’s permanent
exhibition, called the Power Station Circuit, presents
original machinery in a perfect state of conservation, which tells
the story of this old plant, as well as the evolution of electricity
up to renewable energy.
In
2016, the Tejo Power Station also became one of the sites for MAAT,
reinforcing its vocation as a space to present contemporary art.
Interior
It
is composed of several rooms. The turbine hall is a large room which
offers a fabulous view of the river, the condenser room and the
conference room host smaller events.
I
would like to stand out an exhibition I attended on September 2018.
It was a site-specific installation by the North-American artist Gary
Hill, a pioneer in exploring the artistic potential of new
technologies. This installation can be inscribed in his works that
explore the relationship between sound, language and electronic
image. It was presented at the Boiler Hall and it consisted, as we
can read on his webpage, on images spread throughout the space,
appearing as spectral presences, “taking us to a mysterious
preindustrial and post-apocalyptic realm”. It was such a unique
sensorial experience, where you could immerse yourself in a
preverbial environment. The lights metamorphose the surfaces of all
the space, and together with the abstract electronic sound, they
immerse you in a space and time different from the real ones.
The
relationship of the old boiler with the modern lights and sound made
me feel like drugged. It was a very interesting relationship, with a
very heavy and cold surface tying you to the ground through touch and
an almost-futuristic sound and visual space taking you up: I could
dance the space and I could feel the love there.
This building also offers a very active square called Praça do Carvão (Carbon square), where a lot of events are held during the summer season.
- COLLECTION & EVENTS
It is a very recent
museum – it just opened in 2016. This is also a sign of
contemporary that I enjoy. Its aim is to present national and
international exhibitions, not only by contemporary artists, but also
architects and thinkers. It also shows exhibitons from the EDP
Fundation's art collection, which is just about contemporary
Portuguese artists.
Pedro Gadanho is
the director, former curator of the MoMA in New York. Inês Grosso is
the curator.
MAAT
offers you several different events, such as conferences,
performances, happenings or even concerts. It also provides
orientated and thematic tours, with a logic of knowing to interpret,
supported by the dialogue. From time to time you can also join some
workshops, exploring various materials and techniques as a way of
appropriating and building knowledge, developing creativity as
a result.
- PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE SPACE
In this case, the building and the space itself is such an important part of the museum. It is a very touristy place due to the viewpoint the roof and due to the possibility of sitting, lying down and walking around. The magnificent architecture itselfs provokes people to visit the outer place, and probably the interior space.
It
is remarkable the fact that here, tradition meets modernity.
Postmodernity is about this. It is about mixtures, about bringing the
historical issues into the modern issues. MAAT reflects both the
preservation of our cultural heritage and progression: its steel
structure is covered in a skin of white tiles, modernizing a
Portuguese tradition. It embraces the idea of facing the future
without forgetting the past. Not only on the aesthetic side, but on
the content. It is thought as an art space for temporary
exhibitions... and what is more postmodern than the concept of
ephimerity?
On the riverside, you can also appreciate this concept with a Pedro Cabrita Reis' sculptur, Central Tejo. It consists of two connected aluminium towers, which are lit up. Miguel Coutinho, the director of EDP Foundation, stresses the symbolic nature of the piece: “This work symbolises, in our view, the spatial relationship between EDP Foundation and the river and, above all, the continuous commitment of our institution towards contemporary art. It is also a work of art for the city of Lisbon not just because of its location, but also because of an agreement between EDP Foundation and the artist.”
Going
back to the Egyptian times, they believed that in their underworld,
the Duat, the hearts of the dead were weighed against the “Feather
of Maat”. The heart was seen as part of the soul and if it is
lighter or equal in weight to the feather, it meant that the person
had a virtuous life, so they would go on to Aaru (heavenly place).
And in fact, there must be for sure a relationship between the
mythology of ancient Egypt and this museum, because with no
hesitations, every time I visit it, my soul seems to remain lighter.
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