EXHIBITION / EXPOSIÇÃO
Coimbrismo
CURATORS / CURADORES
Jorge Figueira, Bruno Gil
Bienal Anozero, Santa Clara-a-Nova Convent, Coimbra
2 November 2019 – 29 December 2019
In “Coimbrismo” coexist drawings published in “Why I’m Still a Communist”, by Pedro Pousada, and a revisited architectural model of the “Cidade Universitária”, intervention by the Estado Novo at Alta de Coimbra (Cottinelli Telmo/Cristino da Silva). The fascist traces of this design, never fully realized, are immersed within 4 murals of contemporary communism purposed through fragmented and disruptive images. Coimbra is in “Coimbrismo” a place for retro-projections; the fascism and the communism of the 20th century as phantasmagorical presences.
“Coimbrismo” reveals a rereading of the architectural model of the “Cidade Universitária” aiming to underline the monumental and fascist traces of the intervention – which construction did not fulfil the Mussolinian model – in coexistence with expanded drawings by Pedro Pousada, published in “Why I’m Still a Communist” (Stolen Books, 2019), where the image is a vehicle of political thinking. “Cidade Universitária” reemerges in a unitarian, clear and functionalist tone, tinged by the red and apocalyptic colouration of the drawings by Pedro Pousada.
The return of fascism in a model and communism in drawing – the fascism in architecture, the communism in graphic design – defines a “Coimbrismo”: Coimbra is the place where both spectres resided; as the heart of the regime and the space of resistance.
This spectrality is summoned by accentuation: the model returns to the imagination of a classic, plastic and enlarged architecture as the definition of the Portuguese Empire; the murals redraw an agitprop without propaganda; a constructivism without the spirals; a neo-realism without the real.
A crucial time of the 20th century projected to the 21st century: a luminous fascism; a fragmented communism.
“Coimbrismo” is “A Third Bank”.
Curators
Jorge Figueira, Bruno Gil
Drawings “Why I’m Still a Communist”
Pedro Pousada
Architectural Model “Cidade Universitária” revisited (Cottinelli Telmo/Cristino da Silva)
Cláudia Ribeiro, Hugo Silva, André Santiago, Renato Leal
Acknowledgments
Nuno Rosmaninho, José António Bandeirinha, João Paulo Martins
Support
Centro de Estudos Sociais UC and Departamento de Arquitetura FCTUC
© Jorge das Neves
© Jorge das Neves
EXHIBITION / EXPOSIÇÃO
Coimbrismo
CURATORS / CURADORES
Jorge Figueira, Bruno Gil
Bienal Anozero, Santa Clara-a-Nova Convent, Coimbra
2 November 2019 – 29 December 2019
In “Coimbrismo” coexist drawings published in “Why I’m Still a Communist”, by Pedro Pousada, and a revisited architectural model of the “Cidade Universitária”, intervention by the Estado Novo at Alta de Coimbra (Cottinelli Telmo/Cristino da Silva). The fascist traces of this design, never fully realized, are immersed within 4 murals of contemporary communism purposed through fragmented and disruptive images. Coimbra is in “Coimbrismo” a place for retro-projections; the fascism and the communism of the 20th century as phantasmagorical presences.
“Coimbrismo” reveals a rereading of the architectural model of the “Cidade Universitária” aiming to underline the monumental and fascist traces of the intervention – which construction did not fulfil the Mussolinian model – in coexistence with expanded drawings by Pedro Pousada, published in “Why I’m Still a Communist” (Stolen Books, 2019), where the image is a vehicle of political thinking. “Cidade Universitária” reemerges in a unitarian, clear and functionalist tone, tinged by the red and apocalyptic colouration of the drawings by Pedro Pousada.
The return of fascism in a model and communism in drawing – the fascism in architecture, the communism in graphic design – defines a “Coimbrismo”: Coimbra is the place where both spectres resided; as the heart of the regime and the space of resistance.
This spectrality is summoned by accentuation: the model returns to the imagination of a classic, plastic and enlarged architecture as the definition of the Portuguese Empire; the murals redraw an agitprop without propaganda; a constructivism without the spirals; a neo-realism without the real.
A crucial time of the 20th century projected to the 21st century: a luminous fascism; a fragmented communism.
“Coimbrismo” is “A Third Bank”.
© Jorge das Neves
© Jorge das Neves