The primary aim of this seminar is to explore the role of cultural production in the socioeconomic transformations of the past decade within the Portuguese context. We begin with the following question: assuming that art transcends mere reproduction of reality and functions—particularly in times of artistic capitalism—as a driver of social change, what are the implications of rethinking Portugal in its “post-Troika, post-2008 crisis” context from the perspective of cultural work and precarity? As early as 2018, Ana Teixeira Pinto raised a similar question, drawing attention to the paradox of visual creation, which lies at the heart of Lisbon’s gentrification and re-signification—processes that lack comparable creative economy precedents in prior decades.

Between 2018 and 2023, this dynamic appears only to have intensified: Portugal is now often highlighted as a preferred destination for “digital nomads,” while public art, music festivals, summits, and large-scale events of all kinds have become defining features of the country’s urban identity.

What remains unclear, however, is the range of strategies employed by artists, writers, filmmakers, designers, and others to critically reflect on the active role culture has played in this purported “economic recovery.” If cultural production is understood as an active participant in the transformations of the past decade, then culture stands at the center of increasingly public and omnipresent contradictions and debates surrounding sustainability, structural poverty and exclusion, and environmental degradation.

This seminar seeks to investigate these strategies while also addressing the potential of cultural creation to imagine alternative futures and radical reimaginings of affective and caring practices, emerging from interaction and cooperation among participating forces.

Venue: ESAD, room 9: drawing room

11 December 2024

09:30 – 10:00: Coffee break and Introductory Note

10:00 – 10:45: Paula Guerra: Art Saves Our Hearts, But Not Our Lives: Creative Work, Gender, and Precarity in Times of Crisis.

10:45 – 11:30: Miguel Santos: The Difficult Table: Twigged Entanglements

11:30 – 11:45: Break

11:45 – 12:30: Giulia Lamoni: Inland Territories: Contemporary Art and Rural Spaces in Portugal

12:30 – 14:15: Lunch Break

14:15 – 15:00: Cristina Pratas Cruzeiro: Balancing on the Tightrope of Crises: Financial Capitalism and Socially Engaged Artistic Practices in Portugal (2014–2024)

15:00 – 15:45: Ana Paula Arnault (online): ‘Times Change, and So Do Desires’(?): Cultural Production and Precarity on the Portuguese Stage

15:45 – 16:00: Break

16:00 – 16:45: Maria Mire: “Clandestina” as an Observatory for Modes of Artistic Production

12 December 2024

9:30 – 10:15: Otávio Raposo: Art and Governance on the Urban Margins: A Critical Reflection on Youth Creativity

10:15 – 11:00: Jessica Falconi: Marginality and Resistance in Afro-descendant Literature Published in Portugal.

11:00 – 11:15: Break

11:15 – 12:00: Isabel Baraona: What a Book Can Do

12:00 – 12:45: Carlos Garrido Castellano: Temporal Speculations: Contemporaneity, Crisis and “Post-Crisis” in Portugal

12:45 – 13:30: Discussion on the Publication

Organized by: Carlos Garrido Castellano, Raquel Ermida, Miguel Santos, Lígia Afonso