Galeria Municipal do Porto

Proposing an alternative understanding of the notions of energy, progress and full life, architect and researcher Marina Otero Verzier proposes the course "Compulsive Desires: On Lithium Extraction, Endless Growth, and Self-Optimisation", focusing on lithium and its multiple role as a mood stabilizer and fuel in the so-called transition to a green energy. Lasting five days, participants will have the opportunity to learn about the ongoing plans to start lithium extraction in Northern Portugal and its implications on the degradation of entire ecosystems, through visits to mines and public thermal baths of therapeutic mineralized waters. Throughout this period, they will come into contact with several activists and representatives of national and international movements contesting mining and defending places — including the "Movimento Não às Minas" from Montalegre, "Unidos em Defesa de Covas do Barroso" and "SOS Serra d'Arga" —, who will relate their struggles and experiences in legal and environmental disputes and their forms of action. 

 

Together with local and foreign guests, with work in different disciplines, the group will engage in collaborative and open practices.

The Time(s) of Contemporaneity 2: Decolonizing Culture brings together artists and intellectuals to discuss the relationship between art, race, institutions and the legacy of colonialism. It addresses decolonization in the broadest sense of the term: as an acknowledgment of colonial legacies in the present, as an ongoing system of oppression, and as a practice of affirming different forms of repressed knowledge. The invited speakers will explore decolonial methodologies in the museum and gallery, ways to critically interact with the colonial past, and how third world feminisms have used revolutionary socialism.