The Walk & Talk continues to shake São Miguel

The two curators, who founded and directed the Kunsthalle Lissabon together, chose a place for an exhibition that had the desire as a theme, this fourth floor, which served from a makeshift warehouse to the mall, and that was once a gym (where the yellow lines on the floor), but that was never finished.

for example, on a terrace with a privileged view of the sea and the marina of Ponta Delgada, has never been finished.To get to the terrace, you have to pass a door where two equal roles prevent: "Please do not not open this door. "

The pool is now an orange lava pool, painted by Luís Lázaro Matos, who also used it as an amphitheater in a concert that he gave to the 39, inauguration of the show, with his music alterego Luís da Baviera. [19659002] Jesse James, who with Sofia Carolina Botelho assumes the artistic direction of the festival, explains that the organization

Member of the third generation of Azorean emigrants to Canada, the director of the festival owes his name, which He shares with the legendary nineteenth century American Outlaw, the fact that the father and mother had not managed to hear, one wanted Jesse, the other wanted Jacques.

Sitting around a table in the festival pavilion, both of them look flush When the idea came, she came with one piece, by Vhils (Alexandre Farto). "I ended up in a meeting with the Regional Director of Youth, then Bruno Pacheco, who said to me: But why only one?" It is therefore, with a budget of 20 thousand euros and a first multi-name program, that the festival begins. "There was very little at the time."

Sofia did not enter the third edition, but she remembers well the first exhibition of the festival. "I went to see, it was cool!" "It was a breath of fresh air in the city, it sparked a coffee discussion and I remember people saying, 'They are spending public money. "It was in 2011, in full crisis," remembers Jesse,

In this eighth edition, the budget was 170 thousand euros, with the support of the DGArtes, whose competition was one winners. Instead of expanding the structure of the festival, says the director, they chose to reflect and put into practice "how to improve and improve the working conditions of all people."

Sofia says that the idea in every issue is that every curator of the public art circuit "Pull the rope", move the festival forward. "Before the Azores appear in National Geographic in the fourth year [de festival] we appear in New York Times ," recalls Jesse James, referring to the article as the newspaper American devoted to festival in 2014.

There are many clues about the change of which speak Jesse and Sofia. One of them is in Lagoa, at Atelier Brum, near Cerâmica Vieira, that morning was full of tourists, whose workers are already so accustomed to it that in a room where they are painted trays, with a cage of parakeets hanging in a Beatriz Brum and João Miguel Ramos did not live very far away, but they knew each other only through Walk & Talk, when they both won the youth award creators

. Now, they divide the space of Atelier Brum, behind their grandmother's house, where they worked a carpentry shop which was first of his grandfather and after his father.

The architects who got their hands on the mass ]

From there, we should go to Vila Franca do Campo, where we find the collective Camposaz, formed by the Portuguese and the Italians, who worked on their wooden project. Almost all are architects, and there is also Chloe, carpenter in front of the São Vicente Workshop in Lisbon

They are in front of the island of Vila Franca do Campo, with the Atlantic in the middle, and the next day, proposed, which should be ready on the 14th, before the festival. When they arrived here this week, they knew nothing of what they would do. Only that they had 10 days to do it, and that the work would be site-specific. For the first three days, they watched, thought, drew, and talked. One of the principles of the workshop is improvisation, explains Mariella. "It's like a jam session."

This is the first time that they use cryptomeria, wood that exists in the Azores and, moreover, in Japan or China. Usually, they work with pine or white cone because most of the workshops were made in northern Italy. Some of the works that left there are now chameleons, hidden by vegetation. "We have done some beautiful constructions that we can not even see today," says Mariella, who had never worked with the woods before the Camposazs.

On the second day, the group took the boat and went to the other side. island island. They realized that, in the horizontality of what they saw, they thwarted the verticality of a building, inspired by the steeples that stand out from the landscape.

At first they thought they were building on the rocks. "Make it more accessible," says Chloe. But the sea has begun to come closer. In the model that is on the floor during our visit, we can guess the games of perception and the different vision cuts that the work invites the body. "There are spaces where you lose your sight, another who raises you, another who presses you," Max said.

Inês, another of the eight elements of the group that we find, talks about the importance of this project hands in the mass, at the university everything is theoretical, ahead of the computer, with measures. "

A garden for 2100

In the Ponta Delgada Urban Park there is now, among all the vegetation, a bed made to last. last (at least) from here 2100. It is called Declassified and is the result of the works of artists Sasha Pohflepp and Chris Woebken with local botanists and weather researchers. selected, for example, laurel and heather

Shortly after, we are in Santa Clara, at the edge of the sea and tetrapods that sometimes try to catch it.Along with some of the early works s public art at the beginning of Walk & Talk, there is the nucleus of Atropelos, work of Daniel Rourke and the Brazilian Luiza Prado for this edition which, with its layers, is part of the circuit of 39, public art festival