Newsletter  168
June 2019

It is getting dry now. We harvested our first summer crops: artichoke and apricots. But June is bringing us much more.
On 6 June we had the opening of the exhibitions of Rob Monaghan and Katharina Fröschl-Roßboth, and a dance performance by Phyllis Akinyi and Stephan Jarl.
Around eight residents are working on their art projects.

The opening of the exhibitions was highlighted by an impressive performance by Phyllis Akinyi (dance) and Stephan Jarl (percussion).
Phyllis started her performance by walking through the two exhibitions and continued on a stage together with Stefan Jarl in the patio of the Palacio Barocal (Evora). The performance deals with identity, cultural roots and tradition, but also refers to the liberation of the feminine. Phyllis is a Danish / Kenyan performer who works mainly as flamenco dancer in Scandinavia and Spain. In this performance she mixed flamenco with Scandinavian post-modernity and Kenyan ritual dance. 

For Rob Monaghan (Ireland) organised an exhibition Architecture of Void in the INATEL Gallery in Évora (6 June- 12 August). A slideshow with highlights is below. More imagrs will be added in the next update of this newsletter.
In 2017 and 2018 Rob explored the abandoned marble quarries with photography, video, collecting “found objects” and by swimming in some of the quarry lakes.
Although several more works will be exhibited, with no doubt the central piece is a video showing a performance by Phyllis Akinyi (Denmark), partly staying at the edge of a ravine and partly standing in a lake. Rob created a highly artistic staging and Phyllis made a breath-taking performance. The video has a sound composition by Miguel Noya (Venezuela), who also last year had a residency with us.

Also in the INATEL Gallery, but in another place Katharina Fröschl-Roßboth has an exhibition with photos and some small installations. During several residencies in different countries Katharina made seven photo portraits of 31-years old women. She focused on their daily life and on the feeling of many women that an age of round 31 is a turning point. One of the portraits is of Mara, an Évora based fado singer. A slideshow with highlights of this exhibition is below. Soon some more images will be added.

Kathy MacLeod (Thailand) is a cartoonist by profession. Every day she worked on her dairy in cartoon style: generally very funny, original and to the point. But her main project was working on a book of about 150 pages, an autobiographical graphic novel, but also a critical essay on the life of her generation and on societal values in general. On the surface it tells about misadventures in online dating. Under the surface, however, it’s an exploration of the impossibility of achieving intimacy when pursuing it as a way to escape your demons. It is a story about watching in horror to see the void in personal life keeps getting bigger — and the slow, painful, but ultimately redeeming march towards self-acceptance. The story is funny, sometimes deeply sad and always very moving.

Jane Flett (Scotland, living in Berlin) worked on a novel, partly built up of hundred-words fables. The novel is basically an epic longform poem about a girl who gets lost in the wilderness. It is inspired by Scottish myths but also on people who are lost during nature trials. The story explores the point that a desire to get away turns into a terror once it actually happens. It tells about disintegration of perception and loss of sense of self that occurs when you no longer have the grounding of knowing where you are.
In addition she made short poems. One is a highly original vision on vultures: see the video. 
From the first day onward Jane decided to demand to herself an iron rhythm this is the opposite of her Berlin life:  alternating yoga, eating, writing, swimming, eating, writing, relaxing, eating writing and sleeping. And it payed of: she was productive like rarely before. 

Geoffrey Stone (USA) was working on his second novel that tells the history of a family in the nineteenth century that tried to emigrate from Portugal to the USA, but was not accepted and ended up in São Paulo, Brazil. The story also traces back family traditions and the origin of the family name. But it may also tell about people whose dream does not come true but nevertheless does not get frustrated but enjoy the second best. 

Bel Falleiros (Brazil, living in the USA) was working on a long-term project on the phenomenon of monuments in public space. She was focussing on Pelourinhos. These are columns, often made of marble, and most of the time placed on a public square. It was the location where justice was spoken and where punishments were executed. The Portuguese brought this custom to Brazil, where it stepwise became the symbol of oppression of the native Indians and especially the slaves by the colonisers. That is why in Brazil they virtually all have been destroyed in the post-colonial time. In Portugal they do not have this connotation and are valued as a historical object, causing odd feelings by Brazilian visitors.
Bel did several side-project using local marble and clay.  Among others she made an installation that referred to the megalithic monuments in the region.

other artists in residence

Other residents in June are Ingrid Simons (painter; Holland), Sabine Scholl (writer; Germany), Nuno Santos (Portugal), Maude Deslauriers (painter; Canada), Monica Miranda (visual artist; Portugal), Zia Soares (filmmaker; Portugal and Chloé Schemoul (writer; France). András Kecskes (visual artist; Hungary) is working at OBRAS-Holland. More information on their projects will be giving in later updates of this newsletter.

also nice to know:

The Dutch poet and resident in 2017: Job Degenaar got three of his Portuguese poems published in the prestigious literary magazine Extaze, in a thematic edition on dairies (Extaze 30-8 nr2). Nine more will be published in April 2020.

 
On 21 June we celebrated Solstice, with a picnic dinner that was loosely inspired by the Stone Age (starting with the famous Portuguese stone soup). At sunset we went to our solstice stone: a natural rock formation on top of a hill 50 m from the main house, which (by co-incidence?) exactly indicates the place on the horizon where on this day the sun sets.