editorial This festival develops around 3 questions/issues:
how we see ourselves (local artists) what image do we have of ourselves? In what way are we reflected in what we do, in what we build?
how we are seen (national artists) what image do they have of us? How do we meet the expectations of others?
how do we make ourselves be seen (international artists) what image do we pass? How are we effective in communicating through the media, when we "sell" ourselves, when we promote our territory and what distinguishes us?
“Encontros do DeVIR” are divided into three phases: starter cycle (January-March) preparatory phase; national programming (April) in Faro, Loulé, Quarteira and S. Brás de Alportel; international programming (May) at CAPa, Centro de Artes Performativas in Faro.
As in the previous editions (human desertification of the Serra do Caldeirão - 2012 and where we COME FROM? Where are we GOING? 2015), this festival wants to continue to think the territory, combining the social with the cultural, the ecological and political to the artistic. It aims to be a reflexive challenge about our territorial identity, having in Art the vehicle for thought. It could be an opportunity to make the citizen of today to speculate, to create change, to build becoming and to project the future.
the premises of “encontros do DeVIR” are not to try to give answers, but rather raise questions. Let us mix the real and the imaginary, fiction and the documentary, and let us guess the future, so that we can survive by difference, by what characterizes us. Only balanced territorial development, attentive to reality, weaknesses and potentialities, will allow us not to mortgage further what we still have and are. In this way we will be taking care of ourselves, of what is ours, and guaranteeing a quality of life that will last and "nourish" us. Hence the need to find evaluation strategies related to a recent past by promoting moments of reflection about our reality, where the views of political decision-makers with those of artists, researchers and citizens intersect, in order to delineate a future that takes advantage of the potential of the territory (Sierra/Coast) and enhances the singularities of the communities, in a perspective of complementarity.
The preparatory phase, starter cycle, included a photography in urban space workshop, a cycle of documentary films about the subject decharacterization vs. territorial identity, (curatorship of Curtas de Vila do Conde), which preceded 4 talks "false inevitabilities”, 4 meetings involving the community, technicians and researchers on issues that intersect with the decharacterization of the Algarve: indigenous productions; exploitation of hydrocarbons; silent erosion; mass/self-devouring tourism.
for the construction of the national programming, was used the following formula:
1 locality X 4 [1 creation (performing arts) + 1 text X (illustration + reading) + 1 screenplay] = 4 performances. 12 creations/12 insights, 4 proposals about 4 locations (Faro, Loulé, Quarteira and São Brás de Alportel). The performances are accompanied by a photography exhibition, "the interest of the place", 4 audiowalks&thoughts will be made available - guided tours, and alternative road maps & subjective itineraries - 6 documentaries that are other ways of seeing the cities by those who know them from the inside.
from the international programming are part 8 choreographers from 8 different geographies and identities. From the destroyed Syria to the exoticism of South Korea, from deep Brazil, not visited by our Carmen Miranda, to the Congo, from a creator who struggles to find solutions to social issues in his country, passing through the East, Romania, Austria and revisiting what we were "close" to in the past, which has little to do with the present, India and Mozambique.
These creations reflect the territorial identities of those who produced them, translate significant social or political tensions.
I see the world on the backs of others is a documentary, a compilation, a montage of a set of short films that reflect what others think of us. They are fictionalized descriptions and images about this region by creators of the contemporary dance area who have never visited the Algarve, based on information provided by the entities responsible for promoting this territory. It reveals how we are effective in communication, through the media, when we "sell" ourselves, when we promote our territory and what distinguishes us.
good meetings!