House at the Castle

 

Title - A House at the Castle – Multidisciplinary Intervention
Edited by - Luís Firmo (PT)
Selection, Editorial Matter and Contributions - Luís Firmo (PT), Isabel Baraona (PT)
Graphic Design - João Vinagre
Keywords - Cultural Animation; Drawing; Sculpture; Public Space; Installation; Education; Site-specificity; Video; Photography
Languages - Portuguese-English
Number of Pages - 72
Publication Date - 2008
ISBN - 978-989-95397-3-0
Size - 21cm (H) x 16.5 cm (W) x 0.5 cm (D)
Weight - 150 gr
Price - 8€

 

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«The project A House at the Castle worked as a first space for experimentation and promotion, outside the academic context, for artists and other creatives who are ending their graduation or beginning their careers. A young curator had the opportunity to select a group of young artists and cultural animators, so that in an articulated way they could think about a specific intervention allowing them to show their work and through art enhance the life of the surrounding community. The project articulated a first moment of creation residencies followed by an exhibition and a series of educational activities conceived in close dialogue with the exhibited works, by using a house on Capitão Luís Boto Pimentel Street (former Castle Street), 11, in Torres Vedras.


Apparently, this house is similar to others in the labyrinth urban structure of the historical centre of Torres Vedras. However, it was a determining factor to the challenge made to the different creatives who participated in this program, and it influenced all the curatorial/artistic/creative work resulting from a close interaction with this space, which simultaneously provided the substance (of different kinds: historical-sociological, anthro-pological, architectural, affective, oneiric) and the place to exhibit.


These are the reasons why A House at the Castle as a multidisciplinary intervention marked artistically a space and a community. It is an initiative of great importance, since it is mutually enriching. If, on one hand, it gives the opportunity to a group of young artists still on an early-stage to make their first work and exhibit it, allowing them to benefit from professional production conditions within a context where the first opportunities are so scarce; on the other hand it gives the opportunity to test the rehabilitation of vacant spaces and of weaken city areas clearly in need, allowing the participants – creatives and observers – to be surprised by the process of finding other ways of meeting, as well as the exploration of other ways of communication and intervention which allow to extend the perception of the observer towards art and the city where he lives.


A House at the Castle started as a challenge made by Transforma to ESAD.CR/IPL during Transforma_B – a first platform for the integration of arts and creativity in the city, celebrated as a space of confluences in a continuous state of becoming, without being located, identified, occupied. Transforma greets and acknowledges the commitment, the potential and quality of the work developed by those who participated in this process. They knew particularly how to use, in a very relevant way, the drawing as the main medium for their creation, conceiving a set of new works both solidly grounded in the research proposed by Transforma_B and in the commitment to a dialogue with the specificity of the place which hosted them.»

 


Luís Firmo
Transforma Artistic Director