thursday, march 26th. gill meets me in lisbon. we have dinner with mailie and rui of binaural (
http://www.binauralmedia.org) and then all go to an opening of francisco janes' work at the rock gallery. some thoughts gill has brought from the farm:
"I have been at Santarem for just over a week now. It is an incredible place - immense, and somewhat desolate. Only a young couple with their daughter lives permanently at the farm today. They are not alone: with them are two dogs, five sheep, one calf and a bunch of rowdy roosters. This is almost nothing compared to the farm's heyday, but the whole complex still seem to resonate with the bustling activity that once was. At least this is the feeling that I get as I roam through wineries, abandoned storage facilities full of farming tools, cavernous refrigeration cells, cattle pens, offices.
I feel like an archaeologist, amazed at the continuous flow of stuff that I am uncovering every day - all kinds of antique tools, a box with a hand-written love poem and an old watch, piles of fashion magazines from the fifties, discolored posters that recall my childhood in Italy's countryside, a few beautiful old boats - the Tejo is just across the field, I can look at the migrating birds that stop by the river banks while I shower.
As my work often deals with memory, this is indeed an ideal place and an inspiring project. But I am not interested in nostalgia. And there is no such thing in today's Portugal, as the whole nation is running at full speed towards the future.
And yet, futurestep is not amnesia. As the first artist in residence at the farm, I feel strongly to be at the conjunction point in time, linking what was then with what will be. My work here will be about this interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of the past and the future."
