Compulsive Desires
25.03–27.05.2023
Compulsive Desires — On Lithium Extraction and Rebellious Mountains addresses the entanglement between extractivism and exhaustion, productivity and burn-out, across scales. Curated by Marina Otero Verzier, the exhibition takes as its starting point the ongoing lithium extraction plans in the North of Portugal and the struggles sustained by local communities for their lives and rights. Battles that emphasize how, in what has been described as "green colonialism", the development of the "renewable energy futures", too often involves the dispossession of communities and degradation of ecosystems.
Compulsive Desires — On Lithium Extraction and Rebellious Mountains addresses the entanglement between extractivism and exhaustion, productivity and burn-out, across scales. Curated by Marina Otero Verzier, the exhibition takes as its starting point the ongoing lithium extraction plans in the North of Portugal and the struggles sustained by local communities for their lives and rights. Battles that emphasize how, in what has been described as "green colonialism", the development of the "renewable energy futures", too often involves the dispossession of communities and degradation of ecosystems.
Whereas the mining industry — and capitalism cravings — subjugates and exploits the mountain and its inhabitants treating them as resources to be extracted, the violence is turned into a force for survival for these communities through collective infrastructures and embodied rituals. If mining results in social, ecological, and mental breakdown, these practices, alongside artistic expressions, break social order to create counter worlds merging the individual and the collective, the ancestral realm and future generations, the human and more-than-human, and unleashing alternative understanding of energy.
With
Amável Antão, Anastasia Kubrak, Carlos Irijalba, Giuliana Rosso, Grupo de Investigação Territorial (Antonio del Giudice, Godofredo Enes Pereira, Jacob Bolton, Mingxin Li, Tiago Patatas), Heitor Cramez, Isidro Rodrigues, Jonas Staal & Radha D’Souza, Jonathan Uliel Saldanha, Lara Almarcegui, Leanne Wijnsma, Godofredo Enes Pereira/Lithium Triangle Studio + Nicholas Jaar, Maarten Vanden Eynde & Edmond Musasa, Medios Libres con la Gira Zapatista, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Natalia de la Rubia Kozlowska, Orlando Vieira Francisco, Povo de Covas do Barroso & Paulo Carneiro, Susana Caló, Susana Soares Pinto, Tanguy Pitavy, Tomás Saraceno & Aerocene Foundation.
Graphic Design por Joana Pestana
Exhibition design by D_P_S (Diogo Passarinho, Gonçalo Reynolds)
March 25th, at 5pm
Compulsive Desires - Talk with Cheila Colaço Rodrigues, G.I.T. — Grupo de Investigação Territorial and Marina Otero Verzier
The opening day included a first screening of the film Montanha Invertida, present in the exhibition, followed by an open debate on the effects of the mining projects planned for Northern Portugal.
Moderated by curator Marina Otero Verzier, featured Cheila Colaço Rodrigues, representing the association XR and Minas Não and the collective G.I.T. - Grupo de Investigação Territorial, responsible for the production of the film.
March 25th, at 7pm
Psych Op Pump
The installation Psych Op Pump, created by artist, composer and director Jonathan Uliel Saldanha, transforms the gallery space into an inverted mountain, creating an illusion of a bottomless lake in a high toxicity environment.
On the opening day the piece was activated through the performance of poet and performer Igor Borovsky, with whom Saldanha has been collaborating since 2014.
April 1 and May 6, at 4pm
Guided tours of the exhibition
The Galeria Municipal do Porto carries out a guided tour of the exhibitions on the first Saturday of each month.
May 7, at 5pm
Desejos Compulsivos - Talk with Leanne Wijnsma, Anastasia Kubrak e Marina Otero Verzier
From the compulsive act of extraction, to the history of therapeutic processes and well-being, Leanne Wijnsma and Anastasia Kubrak will join together in a conversation moderated by curator Marina Otero Verzier, for a moment of reflection and sharing on the emergence of an ecological and collective consciousness, focusing on artistic practice as a work of insistence and obsession.