Mud and Dawn

For 2020/2021, the invited artist was Sílvia das Fadas, who responded with Lama e Alvorada (Mud and Dawn). The project was developed with a group of pupils from António Arroio Artistic School.

Lama e Alvorada is a collective film, crafted during a day walk through an ancient open-pit mine. Under the blazing sun, the camera moved from hand to hand guided by spontaneous but attentive gazes at the relations between species, accompanied by the hospitality of a river guardian. We will present a 16mm film-poem, still in process, with the sound separated from the image, unmixed, without color correction. Brief and analogue. Lama e Alvorada, the film, was preceded by Lama e Alvorada, the pedagogical practice: months of mutual learning, observation and exercises of thinking and feeling with experimental, political and ecological cinema; weaving letters from critical newspapers, and reading out loud amidst conversations and sensory walks through the Tagus River; visits to urban gardens and parks, to cinemas and galleries of Lisbon. Micro gestures to re-enchant our visions of the world. Lama e Alvorada stems from an undisciplined pedagogical experience between Sílvia das Fadas, Rafaela Gonçalves, Madalena Gouveia, Madalena Martinez e Miriam Pedrozo, accompanied by Helena Tavares e Catarina Nascimento from the Municipal Galleries of Lisbon, and by the professor Hélder Castro from the Antonio Arroio Art School.