The conference "Public space, marks and visuality in the city of Porto" will take place on the 22nd November at 18h30, at the Municipal Theatre of Porto - Rivoli. The event is organized by CICANT researchers Isabel Babo, Manuel Bogalheiro and Universidade Lusófona's teacher João Sousa Cardoso. The event is part of the VI Conference Cycle Lusófona University / Rivoli Espaços, lugares e territorialidades [Spaces, places and territorialities].-
Starting from a perspective of urban spaces, and of the city itself, as polycentric and polyphonic, given the original plurality of the polis, we seek to think and analyze marks of inscription in the public space of the city of Porto, by different actors, which configure different visual expressions and which will correspond to modalities of subjectivation – of living and appropriating the city – of political action and the aestheticization of public space.
Generally recognized within the scope of the so-called urban art, we understand these marks as codifications of meaning introduced into the public space that were not foreseen or that, in most cases, were not the object of institutional planning and that – due to this vocation to escape a certain idea of control – they can be transformed into processes of new experimentation (political, ludic, aesthetic) of everyday life (logics of attention to the visible, representations of work, modalities of consumption, urban policies related to housing or tourism, among others) .
The conference will have as its starting point a photographic collection of these inscriptions registered in the city of Porto, a collection that was compiled and studied, visually and analytically, in the book “Disruptive Visual Expressions in Public Space” (CICANT/Edições Lusófona, 2021) available at here.
Speakers
Isabel Babo holds a PhD in Sociology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. She is a researcher at CICANT, full professor and director of the PhD course in Communication and Activism at Universidade Lusófona. Her areas of expertise are the sociology of communication and the event, the theories of public space, publics and network activism. She is the author of books, namely Especatadores e Públicos Activos (2015) and A configuração de acontecimentos públicos. O caso República e as manifestações nos Açores em 1975 (2006), book chapters and articles.
Manuel Bogalheiro teaches at Universidade Lusófona and, as a visiting professor, at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He holds a PhD in Communication Sciences – Contemporary Culture and New Technologies (FCSH-UNL), having been an FCT fellow. He is a researcher at CICANT and at the Philosophy of Communication Section at ECREA. He is director of the Master in Communication, Networks and Technologies. He edited and coordinated the volumes Crítica das Mediações Totals – Expanded Perspectives of the Media (Documenta, 2021), Disruptive Visual Expressions in the Public Space (Edições Lusófonas (CICANT, 2021), with Isabel Babo and João Sousa Cardoso and Evaluation of Design-Driven Research ( 2022) with Edite Rosa.
João Sousa Cardoso holds a PhD in Social Sciences from the Paris Descartes University (Sorbonne). He staged Sequências Narrativas Complexas, premiered at Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, and Os Pescadores, by Raul Brandão, premiered at Teatro Municipal do Porto in 2016. He directed the project TEATRO EXPANDIDO! in the year of reopening of Teatro Municipal do Porto, between January and December 2015. He also created the shows O Bobo (2006), A Carbonária (2008), Raso como o Chão (2012) and Barulheira (2015). He directed the films A Ronda da Noite (2013), Baal (2013) or Na Selva das Cidades (2016). He is a professor at Universidade Lusófona. He writes regularly for the Público newspaper.
