rotina | routine
video | color | sound | 5’28’’ | 2005

Based on Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, and its reflections on the Panopticon concept.
The system of surveillance and punishment, increasingly similar to Orwells’ Big Brother – now accepted as a form of  popular entertainment – is something that is becoming more and more lauded by the present society. A security-centered society that channelled its scapesgoats to terrorism and emigration, therein conjuring the profound unjustices that are consequential to the globalized model of development.
The daily routine of a person that stands both as watcher and as subject to an ubiquitous surveillance. A person’s everyday life revolves around the act of surveying – the voyer is also watched in every places he or she passes through. The person being filmed by a stranger feels both pleased and annoyed, not knowing what lies behing the look that watches him/her. We seldom question the continuous recording of images in the public and private services that is made possible by the alleged pretext of public safety. Our permission for being filmed is never requested, we are subjected to the power mechanism that conditions us.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

arte como serviço | art as a service
site specific | screenprinting on paper bags | 2005

In a time where consumerism commands people’s lives, the construction of large commercial areas increases substancially, in such a way that these become street-patterned spaces where every kind of goods can be found. As a result, traditional commerce as disappeared with the passing years.
The neighborhood where the intervention was developed has an historical past centered around commerce – for several years it served as the location for Feira da Ladra (Lisbon’s traditional flea market) and still hosts some traditional commerce spaces, even though the proliferation of large consuming areas is obvious. For these reasons I’ve chosen to work on the subject of consummerism vs. publicity.
My goal was not to promote traditional commerce, but to use it as a means to show that everything around us drives us towards the purchase of goods. My action was simple: I provided the local clients with serigraphed paper bags, depicting the main street with its people and buildings. In front of the supermarket, in the same quarter, I put up a sign that showed stacked paper bags with no apparent use.
Publicity has always the same goal, it works in an immediate basis, one campaign being substituted by another, in an evergoing search for a change in tactics.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

nice place
video | color| sound | 2’15’’ | 2005

Inside every city the anti-city springs forth, with its non-architecture and anti-urban planning. We are left with the question: why this evergrowing adherence to the anti-city? Shouldn’t the all-encompassing development that defines globalization avoid this tendency?
Population growth, the reckless entrepreneurship of real-estate agents, the destruction of public spaces, all these elements lead to the proliferation of private condos and housing guettos, inside or outside the city.
A great conflict of interests stands behind our national land-use planning. Some individuals like to take decisions in a slightly arbitrary way, dispising environmental needs and creating a poor, degrated and vulnerable territory.
We are forced to inhabit places designed for the middles classes’ confort requirements; on the other hand, it is obvious that the money issue is sometimes more important than any municipal plan. The work shows us a bit of that real-estate ambiguity that makes it possible to sell every conceivable places, be they pleasant (near the ocean) ou unpleasant (in the suburbs, in absurd locations).

____________________________________________________________________________________________

s/título | untitled
site specific | photography & wood seat | 2005

Located in the northern region of Lisbon, Alta de Lisboa is one of the largest urbanistic projects in Europe. The project was based on “New Urbanism”, the American movement of urban design that originated in the 1980s. It’s goal was to reform all aspects of real estate development and urban planning, from urban retrofits to surburban infill. New urbanism neighborhoods are designed to contain a diverse range of housing and jobs, and to be walkable.
The first impression one derives from this urban space is of emptiness, of something devoid of life. On a second approach, we understand the rehabilitation of the area and the project gains interest: the former quarters were mainly illegal, built without a plan and arbouring a growing criminallity.
The urbanization of a large area, with the subsequent rehousing of the people who inhabit it is a positive idea. However, two questions must be posed: Will this ambitious goal be accomplished? Is this project solely of an urbanistic nature or is it accompanied by a social work plan that is able to reintegrate the inhabitants?
The project is based on these two questions. The placement of a vinyl with the image of a child in her room surrounded by toys, give the idea that the child is under the surveillance of an adult vs. observer. This adult/observer, sitting on the wooden seat, placed in the playground in front of the photo, observes the child in this way, from outside to inside.
The crime history of the area was(and is) well-known; its implication was the absence of living conditions, both for adults and children, and now the reason for a non dwelling of the inhabitants in this neighborhood is the lack of a social reintegration in all levels.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

vandalismo visual | Visual Vandalism
video | color | sound | 3’06’’ | 2005

Political marketing has evolved, becoming increasingly organized and mediatized, in such a way that it can be now compared to consumer goods’ advertising.
In election times every corner is invaded by an overwhelming ammount of propaganda; billboards and outdoors burst from nowhere, television, radio and newspapers are invaded by political party leaders. During two or three months nothing else is mentioned but the improvement each party should bring to the country and society. Visual Vandalism is a reply to that publicity: black prints, using the image of a television and a stencil with the word “BLA” were posted on top of political billboards in Lisbon.  As Peter Weibel claims, “In the media world , the world as event disappears and becomes a mere image, a spectacle and likewise a phantom (…)” and  were “The higher  the fetish character  of an image, the more is paid  for this image as good.” It makes sence in this intervention  using an image of a television set, as well as the representation of the political rhetoric by using this stencil (BLA), as Peter Weibel claims about politics in Ctrl [space] : rhetorics of surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother, “politics becames a theatre of instincts, subjected  to compulsive repetition because it underlies a tendency to restore an earlier state of affairs”.
The goal of this intervention was solely to make a statement against the political parties’ visual visualism, widespread during their campaings aimed at achieving POWER.