Cross-disciplinary Festival Of
Contemporary Arts
Lagos, Loulé & Faro
4 > 20 Nov
Tick-tack Tick-tack
Verão Azul reaches its 10th edition. A round number that marks an entire decade dedicated to the promotion of contemporary art, in all its disciplines (and indiscipline’s), in the Algarve region.
From November 4 to 20, the cities of Lagos, Loulé and Faro will host an extensive and challenging program of theatre, dance, music, performance, visual arts and cinema.
If the tick-tack tick-tack was already a more or less unnoticed presence, in the last year and a half it has become evident: we inhabit a true time bomb. Faced with such a shock, how to continue making art? Why continue to make art? What impacts can we already recognize on individuals and on the collective? There are countless possibilities to decipher these concerns. We couldn’t possibly dare to give any short answers, but, instead, we challenge you. In this sense, this Verão Azul brings 29 proposals from local, national and international artists, who provoke us to think, create and talk about the environment, human rights, democracy and uncertainties.
On the 4th of November, opening the festival, the exhibition Faro Oeste by Pauliana Valente Pimentel casts an affectionate and intimate look at the different and still possible ways of living of the gypsy communities of Loulé and Faro.
Also betting on the intimate encounters, Alex Cassal reframes and recounts the imminent experience of the apocalypse through the many stories that a library houses.
Thinking about the body, from its social and economic roles to its potential and sensitive urges, we have the Catalan group ZA! and Miguel Bonneville, artists with whom we have already collaborated and will keep doing so.
This 10th Verão Azul also dives into a self-reflection on the responsibility and vocation of art before environmental problems, with the film, followed by a debate, by Luciana Fina and with the old Mercedes-Benz of Galeria de Arte Ambulante, denouncing precariousness and the feeling of impotence of agents and professionals of culture. Also for this reason, we can’t not highlight the local artists: Carolina Cantinho & António Guerreiro, João Caiano & Martim Santos and José Jesus & Flávio Martins, thinking about love, ends, choices and so many other things.
This year, the commitment to education remains a certainty, with 11 practical activities for children and teenagers, including workshops, masterclasses, sessions for schools and creative workshops. Artists such as António Jorge Gonçalves, LBC Soldjah and Sérgio Pelágio are in charge of taking all these important themes and questions to the kids.
On the verge of exploding, we hope that this time bomb may represent, in addition to a planet on the brink of collapse, also the power of a collective awakening to a necessary and radical transformation.
Tick-tack, tick-tack: it’s time for us to fight, holding hands, thinking and creating our future, side by side, in this world. And may art always walk with us!
Let’s go?!
