as cidades ocultas / hidden cities
09.11 - 30.11.2024 - atelier b12, lisbon - portugal
curated with duda affonso

Thinking about metropolises - Lisbon, Berlin, Paris, São Paulo, Tokyo - and their state of frank decay and ruin in the face of the logic of both virtual and decentralised thinking. The invisible cities, hidden beneath the tarmac and above the clouds where television information and mobile data pass through and which are taking shape as a city in their own right. In one way or another, ‘the city is redundant: it repeats itself in order to fix some image in the mind [...] memory is redundant: it repeats the symbols so that the city begins to exist.’ (Calvino, p. 17) (Calvino, p. 17) A city of possibilities: I felt that the memory I brought to the city and to the people who were making the tour happen at that moment, invented a new city. Younger people can't think they're the masters of the scene - the city has a history at the same time as cities tell their own stories. Who made the old scene? Note: who are these people? ‘Thus - some say - the hypothesis is confirmed that each person has in mind a city exclusively made up of differences, a city without figures and without form, filled with particular cities.’ (Calvino, p. 25). Postmodernity summons us to an eternal present, a kind of programmed obsolescence of what is no longer now. The metropolises are the catwalks for fashionable things: trainers, glasses, bags, jeans and so on. However, what is as basic as the white t-shirt under the pastry chef's button-down shirt? What endures in city time - what survives the furious speed of cars on motorways? The memory is recorded in the dusty corner of the underground stairs and also in the torn trail of the old flag flying in front of a cheap hotel. The lady wakes up early to make coffee and stares at life through the living room window while her cat Nuno rubs up against her feet and runs the tip of his tail along her thighs. Escape: to be in the city is to constantly want not to be there. To take a flight to anywhere at discounted prices and spend days sleeping on a semi-comfortable ikea sofa only to find yourself somewhere else dealing with other problems. To come back and be welcomed by a pigeon turd, one of those pigeons that has been sitting in the doorway since before I travelled, and perhaps even before I came here. It choses today, when I felt I would finally be happy in the city.

There are days when the simple act of picking up a skateboard and gliding through the streets is enough, a way of navigating between the skyscrapers, of cutting through the wind and feeling the city under your wheels. Freedom lives in these small gestures, in the choices of routes that don't necessarily lead to a new place, but reconfigure the old, the familiar, worn out by routine and time. The city, in this coming and going, is always different, new even though it's old. That fallen lamppost on the corner, the rusty sign, the bench in the square where you can no longer sit, the hole in the tarmac, the fetid manhole, the dog shit as you cross the corner. These vestiges of other eras intertwine with the rush of the present, creating a landscape where past and future collide at every moment. Walking through the city is like watching a film, the images speed past your eyes while you collect snapshots that are more or less clear, more or less noisy. Remembering cities is like remembering a dream, since ‘cities, like dreams, are built by desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules absurd, their perspectives deceptive, and all things conceal something else.’ (Calvino, p. 29).

The city swallows us up and pushes us along. The routes are repeated, the footsteps echo on the worn pavements, and the path that always seems the same is reinvented in invisible detail. Every trip to work, university, the corner bar or friends' houses is an involuntary dance between streets and avenues, with hot asphalt, the clink of coins in pockets and the muffled sound of lives rushing by. We get into app cars, taxis, buses, a ride on a work colleague's motorbike - as if it were a modern ritual, where the destination, however routine, carries with it an air of mystery. The metro takes us through corridors of concrete and steel, where the noise of the train merges with the shrill singing of a city that never sleeps, where the sounds sometimes imitate the singing of birds that have lost their way among the buildings - at other times they are confused with the desperate whistle of the scooters drowning in the light source. The city, although beautiful, is unjust, it removes from urban centres the lives of the inhabitants who build it every day, giving way to the passer-by who carelessly uses and abuses its spaces. The city includes, the city excludes, the city benefits, the city abuses, the city tires and the city welcomes - who has the right to cities? What are cities for from now on?

text in portuguese
text in french

     

work images in order:

alice turnbull - yume yume, japan, 2024 - oil on camera
diogo bolota -  anómalia, 2019 -  ink jet print on paper
gilson schwartz - filme 001, 1980 -  super 8 video
joão parente - homologados e retroativos, 2023 - digital video
luiza baldan - como olhar junto, 2024 - sublimation for fabric
paula ferreira - car junkies, 2019 - artist book + risograph
pedro gomes - rostos pela cidade, 2022 - mixed media over skateboard
simon david - red spot, 2023 - 35mm photography
alice turnbull - as i was going away i saw jonas mekas, 2024 - photo printed on canvas
victor gonçalves - instrumento de aferição dos desencontros, 2023 - bollards, wood and screws
xavier ovidio - city birds (bird cage version), 2024 - bird cage, rag and sound


exhibition catalogue