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WALLS 

09 DECEMBER 2015 | 16H | THEATER CARLOS ALBERTO 

 

Daniel Blaufuks (photographer)

João Mendes Ribeiro (architect and set designer)

Jorge Ricardo Pinto (geographer)

Moderation by Né Barros (choreographer)

 

Conference organized in partnership with: Research Group Aesthetics, Politics and Knowledge of the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Porto & Balleteatro

 

Twenty six years after the material and symbolic fall of the Berlin Wall, the walls spread once again as immune political devices in Europe. Migrants, displaced, refugees, exiles are figures that gain their meaning in relation to a sedentary space where are marked the territories of recognition of the same and rejection of the strange. In a political setting of extreme violence, millions of men and women are moving without defined mapping. On the run, in a time that can last a lifetime, they are surrounded, trapped in non-places, immobilized by walls - material and immaterial - which summon scenarios where it plays a barbaric destruction policy through a geography of death. The burden of refugees, dead and displaced is thus an event that is meant by reference to a territory that, being a geographical notion, is, first of all, according to Michel Foucault, one legal-political notion, ie, it is what is controlled by some kind of power. With the project WALLS | aesthetics, politics and arts, it is aimed, throught a sensitive and theoretical perspective, to think the unthinked of a migration policy in Europe by questioning the figure of the wall as a historical and contemporary political device.

 

BIOGRAPHIES

DANIEL BLAUFUKS

Daniel Blaufuks was born in Lisbon in 1963 in a family of Jewish German refugees. He studied at Ar.Co (Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual), Lisbon, at the Royal College of Art, London and at the Watermill Foundation, New York. Since My Tangier (1991), in which he collaborated with the writer Paul Bowles, he has been working on the relation between photography and literature. More recently, Collected Short Stories (2003) displayed several photographic diptychs in a kind of “snapshot prose,” a speech based on visual fragments that give indication of private stories on their way to become public. Using photography and video, his work is presented through books, installations, films and facsimiled diaries, such as London Diaries (1994) and Uma Viagem a São Petersburgo (1998). His first documentary, Under Strange Skies (2002), chronicles the Jewish immigration, which included his own grandparents, through Lisbon during the Second World War. The recent film Slightly Smaller than Indiana (2006) is an essay on landscape and collective memory in Portugal. His films have been shown at festivals in Toronto, São Paulo, Montpellier and at the Lincoln Center in New York. His more recent shows were held at the Centro de Arte Moderna da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, LisboaPhoto, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Elga Wimmer PCC gallery, New York, Photoespaña, Madrid and Museu do Chiado, Lisbon. His work is represented in various public collections, such as the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon), Colecção Berardo (Lisbon), Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (Santiago de Compostela), Palazzo delle Papesse (Siena), Sagamore Collection (Miami) and The Progressive Collection (Cleveland).

JOÃO MENDES RIBEIRO

Born in Coimbra in 1960. Graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto in 1986. Doctorate in 2009 from the University of Coimbra where he is Assistant Professor in the Architecture Department of the Faculty of Science and Technology. Recognized with several awards and distinctions such as Award Architécti, 1997 e 2000 (Lisboa); Highly Commended, AR awards for emerging architecture, 2000 (Londres); Award Diogo de Castilho 2003, 2007 e 2011 (Coimbra); Premis FAD d’Arquitectura i Interiorisme, 2004 (Barcelona); Gold Medal for Best Stage Design, 11th International Exhibition of Scenography and Theatre Architecture – Prague Quadrennial 2007 (Praga); IV Prémio Enor, na categoria Portugal, 2009 (Vigo); Award BIAU, VIII Bienal Ibero-Americana de Arquitectura e Urbanismo, 2012 (Cádiz). Nominated to European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies Van Der Rohe Award 2001, 2005, 2011, 2013 e 2015 (Barcelona) being selected in 2001 e 2015. Finalist of II e IV Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Civil Engineering, 2000 e 2004 (City of México and Lima); of Premis FAD d’Arquitectura i Interiorisme 1999, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2012 (Barcelona), of Award Enor, 2009 , 2011 e 2014 (Vigo) and of National Architecture Prize in Madeira - PNAM 2015 (Lisboa).

In 2007 received the AICA award from the International Art Critics Association / Ministry of Culture, awarded by the set of his work and in 2006 he was honored by the Presidency of the Republic with the Commendation of the Order of Infante D. Henrique.

JORGE RICARDO PINTO

Jorge Ricardo Pinto (Porto, 1975) is Bachelor, Master and Doctor of Geography, Faculty of Arts, University of Porto. He is coordinator Professor in ISCET in degree and master's degree in Tourism, and assistant professor at UTAD, having also taught in the FLUP and the ESAP. It has developed scientific research on subjects such as morphology and urban history, social geography and history of tourism, both in the Center for Geography and Spatial Planning - CEGOT, where he is integrated member as in the Interdisciplinary Centre for Research and Intervention Community - CIIIIC where he is the researcher responsible for the research project "Culture, Heritage and Identity in Porto - CHIP". The CV includes several communications at international conferences, the publication of scientific articles in scientific and cultural journals, congress minutes and four books. Two books as author, "The Eastern Harbor in the late nineteenth century" and "Bonfim - Land of Memories and Destinations"; and two as coordinator: "Tourism, heritage and innovation" and "The 285th at the Street of Cedofeita". It is also deputy director of the Portuguese journal: "Routes and ideas."