DEMO_polis
DEMO_polis
ORIGINAL IDEA: MOOV INSTALLATION MONTAGE: António Louro, José Niza
RESEARCH AND SOUND DESIGN: Jorge Andrade
SYNOPSIS
Ephemeral artistic interventions in the public space can be tactical strategies that assimilate and explore the metabolism of the urban device, its signs and ways of functioning to implement small temporary actions that can be catalysers of changing. Temporary intruders that aim to make the alternatives visible, testing and developing new approaches and programs. DEMO_polis is a new inhabited territory. An emergency and social contamination territory, a token of a city stressed between necessity and opportunity, between discovery and security.. It explores the contrast between a solid but selfish (because isolated from the street) way of life and a precarious one that is, nevertheless, capable of crossing individuals, religious beliefs, cultures...
CONCEPT The strong dysfunctions between legal and economical means, between urban politics thought with marketing goals and not for the city, originated a growing social segregation and urban fragmentation, territories for excluded and included people. The city, as a space for meetings, for walking, multicultural and multiethnic, is confronting itself with the new estate politics, based on a private security and a quick profit-making.  Urban spaces, paradigmatic of the contemporary society, are products which are shown in a scattered way and not with a communitarian purpose: shopping malls, amusement parks, designed to allow a quick access and an easy parking; closed block of flats; corporative buildings, arrogantly erected over its neighbours; standard service stations…
All of them have in common a security paranoia, a preference for vehicles accesses and, above all, the necessity to know behaviour and appearance codes. The ones who are not included in the circuit represent the decadent and abandoned city, strengthening the idea of insecurity and danger in the city: the city turns into a place where the connected fight and survive. For those reasons, as a way to emphasize this antagonism and the growing decreasing of the polis as a symbol of diversity and interaction between people and ideas, we decided to install, during the period of the Biennial, several tents, which will create a new inhabited territory. Emergency space, social contamination, witness of an exhausted city fighting for necessity and opportunity, discovery and security.
An installation that suggests a new accommodation perspective, improvised and temporary, situated in one of he most expensive district for m2 in Europe. The main goal is to explore the contrast between a way of living, more secure but more selfish, cause of its distance from the street and a way of living more precarious but able to generate a meeting between people, believes, cultures… The tents will extend their action to the surrounding façades through a simple light equipments, installed into those buildings in a tangle of cables, as if they want them to know that those new urban objects, almost parasite, is receiving the energy from those buildings. It is the price to pay of whom is not using the space was giving to him and give up the territory to the city. Â
The intervention will use, on purpose, common means, as tents camping lights, cables, etc to strengthen the message more than the form and the concept more than the decoration. The tents will be seen from the audience as objects of light which will invite them to enter inside. There, the unusual combination of specific elements will contribute for a widened reflection about the contemporary urban device, about included and excluded, about connected and disconnected.Â
MOOV PROFILE
MOOV is a Studio of Art and Project, active since 2003. Its adisciplinary approach is generated by the intersection between architecture and other areas of knowledge, either creative or technical ones. The studio projects can be synonym of a performance, an urban installation, a movie or a building. MOOV is built around a very specialized and experienced team core, complemented with multiple collaborations and partnerships established to meet the particular needs of each project. We worked with city council teams, defining strategic programs for critical districts, developed public space interventions though a participative process with local communities. We have designed in close collaboration with architects, artists, scientists and engineers for several competitions and commissions.The studio received several awards for its architecture and research work, and and it’s invited on a regular basis to give lectures in several venues and events around the world. MOOV was also one of the selected studios for the exhibition Portugal Now, in New York [2008] and in the Top 10 of young Portuguese Architecture studios, promoted by “New Italian Blood†platform
Amongtheir works stand out:
Soap Catharsis Wall : urban installation, Skyway ’09– Torun, Poland – [2009] Forwarding Dallas : 1º prize Re:VisionDallas Internacional Ideas Competition– Dallas, USA [2009] Ilha de Faro : Special Prize on the Ideas competition to Faro Island promoted by Faro Municipality -Faro, Portugal [2008]  Long Streets for Short Stories : urban installation, TallinnLight Festival – Tallinn, Estónia – [2008]  Eco-kit : winner project [1/15] of theCity Interventions Competition promoted by Architecture TriennaleLisbondo – Lisbon, Portugal  [2007] Habitats Abertos : 1st price in the CompetitionGalápagos – Latitude 0, launched by the XV Biennial of Architecture of Quito–Ecuador - [2007] DEMO_polis :urbaninstallation, LUZBOA’06 - Pátio Garret, Lisbon, Portugal – [2006] Pixel Urbano : installation / performancepresented at Urban Visions– S. Paulo, Brasil and  LD2006 – Lisbon -[2006] Yellow Arrow : installation/performancepresented in several cities such as Lisbon, São Paulo, Coimbra and TorresVedras, between 2004 and 2006 – [2004>2006] Casa Nomad : 2º Prémio no concursopromovido pela AIP-FIL Tektónica’06 - [2006] Casas Pax : new concepts for turism units,exhibition Casa.Granturismo, promoted by Granturismo - Agency for the(Re)design of Algarve -  Silves, Portugal  – [2005] Fractal House : Jury Special Prize -Shinkenchiku Residential Competition’04, Japão - [2004] Community Interface : finalist in theInternational Competition of Ideas Siyathemba, South Africa – [2004];   +info: http:// www.moov.tk
Lisainfo: Disainiöö - Maris Takk maris@plsab.ee 5058837  Valgusfestival – Indrek Leht Indrek.leht@mail.ee 51 55 365 |
