Decolonising the City​

Based on personal experiences and collective memories, we intend to analyse colonial traces in Portuguese society (such as the First Portuguese Colonial Exhibition) and other marks present in the city of Porto, through a walking tour of the Jardins do Palácio de Cristal. We invite participants to join in a critical tour to dismantle colonial narratives and systems of oppression through a horizontal debate and exchange of experiences, but also by sharing practices, processes and artistic objects that we have developed. This performative walking tour joins personal contemporaneous experiences, collective memories, and relics of colonialism to its wider historical context and examines the root causes of individual prejudice and systems of oppression. This intervention is a form of activism that addresses the lack of attention, acknowledgment, and revision of colonialist narratives and ideologies that circulate in Portuguese society and the urban environment.

Group of participants in a circle listening to an audio recording during a decolonial tour of Palacio de Cristal, Porto.

Duration: 3 hours

Fee: 20€/person

Min. Number Participants: 8

Max. Number of Participants: 15

Dates: afternoon on 27th, 28th, 29th and 30th August

Contact: interstructcollective@gmail.com

Registration

InterStruct Collective

InterStruct aims to foster a dialogue around interculturalism, providing a discursive platform where people from different cultural backgrounds can collaborate, propose interventions and stage artistic projects of social importance. This forum values inclusion and encourages empathy and self-reflection as a basis for breaking adverse ideologies and stereotypes. The name InterStruct is composed of two elements: the prefix inter means “between”, and the radical struere, in Latin, means “build” or “assemble”.

 

The mixture of these concepts results in the importance of constructive and deconstructive processes during creation. These principles were formulated in 2017 following a workshop held during the tenth edition of the FuturePlaces: Medialab for Citizenship festival.

 

The collective was created later in 2018 and is based in the city of Porto whose social context is also the basis for many of its creations. InterStruct is constantly evolving and reformulating. There is no organizational hierarchy, since all decisions are made collectively. This fluid approach allows for a greater symbiosis between individual and collective motivations.

 

InterStruct has authored several artistic creations but also educational and curatorial projects, among others: Heimat I (Art residency in Reken, Germany, 2020), Unearthing Memories (Exhibition and Curatorship, Rampa, Porto, 2020), Unearthing Memories – Walking Tour in Palácio de Cristal (Porto Design Biennale, 2019), Colonial Traces (digital colonial map of the city of Porto, 2019 to the present). The collective is currently working on new projects that will be presented throughout 2021 in the programming of Rivoli – Municipal Theater of Porto, Municipal Gallery of Porto and Biennial of Contemporary Art of Maia as well as in the design of a book that adds new content and projects developed in the past. At the end of 2020, InterStruct officially constitutes itself as an Association (under the name Perspective Turtle – Cultural Association).

 

Currently the group includes several artists, researchers, designers, producers and activists:
Andrei Alecsandru, Beatriz Alcantara, Bruno Bontempo, Claire Sivier, Desirée Desmarattes, Fifi, Isabel Stein, Melissa Rodrigues, Miguel F, Natasha Bulha Costa, Sebastian Ioan and Vijay Patel.

Email: interstructcollective@gmail.com

 

Press: Sharing decolonisation strategies between the cities of Lisbon and Hamburg (Público, 26.04.2021), Porto Memorial to Overseas Combatants “deserves a public debate” (Público, 06.03.2021, newspaper edition), Cycle of debates focuses on discussion of colonialism in Portugal (JPN, 04.03.2021), A Series of Debates that Question the Colonial Amnesia of Porto and the Country (Público, 25.02.2021, newspaper edition), A Series of Debates that want to Dismantle Colonial Manifestations in Cities from Porto to Luanda (RTP Notícias, 25.02.2021), More than 50 guests attended the video sound installation (Borkener Zeitung, 04.09.2020, newspaper edition) Images, sounds and codes of home (Borkener Zeitung, 03.09.2020, newspaper edition), Young artists address home (Borkener Zeitung, 29.08.2020, newspaper edition), Unmasking the colonial side of Porto, or “a past that has not passed” (Público, 21.12.2019, newspaper edition), Group of artists unearth colonial memories in Porto (Esquerda, 05.12 .2019), Unearthing Memories (Buala, 04.12.2019), interview with Canal 180 and contribution to the Grande Reportagem: A Montra do Império (transmitted on Jornal da Noite, SIC on 23.07.2020).