Colin Self. Photo: Mariana Lopes.
Deep in the Atlantic Ocean, around 1,500 km west of Portugal, the Azores archipelago comprises nine small volcanic islands of stunning beauty. Their beaches, cliffs, lagoons and valleys produce a landscape of lush vegetation, aided by constant mild temperatures and periods of heavy rain, typical of subtropical climates. São Miguel is the biggest island, and its main city, Ponta Delgada, serves as the capital of both the island and the whole archipelago, which is a Portuguese autonomous region. Surrounded by water, both the ocean and the magical Green and Blue Lakes, and covered with hilly fields bursting with crops of tea, hydrangeas and cattle feed, this remote island might seem like an unlikely backdrop for an experimental festival that blends contemporary art and design with performance, music events and a talks programme. But that is exactly what Walk & Talk, spearheaded by the local curators and programmers Jesse James and Sofia Carolina Botelho, has been doing since 2011.
“Around 10 years ago, me and other colleagues started to think about what we could do to activate the cultural context here. We had left for the mainland to study and when we came back we were struck by the huge differences in access to culture,” James told SLEEK on the first day of this year’s festival, which launched on 5 July, running until this Saturday.
Now in its 9th edition, Walk & Talk places a special emphasis in connecting contemporary art to its unique landscape, so one of its main strands hinges on residencies, in which artists are invited to spend a few weeks of research in Ponta Delgada and then create new commissions in public spaces across the island, to be shown either at the end of the festival. This year participating artists on what’s called the Island Circuit include Clementine Keith-Roach, Inês Neto Santos, Paloma Gormley, Pedro Lino, Prem Sahib and Rain Wu, who have been selected by guest curators The Decorators, a London-based design agency.
Walk & Talk began as an almost utopian project in an area where there were barely any peers or cultural context to speak of, and where one is infinitely more likely to run into sun-seeking tourists and avid hikers than into devoted art biennale goers. “The first editions where perfect platforms for experimentation because we had no support, so we had a small budget but also the upside of having no expectations or demands placed on us, which meant we could give our artists complete freedom to experiment without fear or repercussions” James explained.
The stakes for Walk & Talk have changed since then, having become a publicly funded project, but for James and Botelho the importance of experimentation and community-building remains exactly the same. In fact, one of the most striking aspects of the festival is that it doesn’t prioritise art shown in a traditional exhibition format at all (although there are indeed a number of shows on view). Instead, the value of lived experience is clearly underscored. This often takes the form of performative pieces and music concerts, like the stand-out set delivered by the Berlin-based American musician and artist Colin Self, in which epic melodies reminiscent of Björk and Anohni envelop poignant songs about nonbiological families and survival with nods to the ideas explored by the likes of Donna Haraway (just don’t imagine it as a self-serious, heavy-going spectacle; it was uplifting, tender and with some moments of hilarity).
But also, in a clear allusion to the “walk and talk” of its name, the core aims of the festival are also embodied in a much more discursive line of programming based around walks, where conversations and new friendships can be forged. In fact, much of my time on the island was spent as part of large groups with the participating artists, the curators and others experts as part of tours around the island of São Miguel. On my first day, and as part of the Knowledge strand of the festival curated by Talkie Walkie’s Matilde Seabra and Ana Neto Vieira, the local historian Pedro Pascoal de Melo took us to the small town of Villa Franca do Campo, where we visited churches and convents in the morning and ended the day by going to a small islet by boat, where we swam in a stunning natural lake connected to the open sea. But perhaps of the more striking visits of the day was to the Corretora canned tuna factory, first opened in the 1930s. As we moved across the pungent rooms, observing the workers as they meticulously de-skinned and shredded tuna filets, and filled tins on conveyor belts, I felt as if I was inside a Mika Rottenberg video—real life suddenly more “arty” than art itself. The fact that Walk & Talk considers experiences such as this just as important as one of its film screenings is, for me at least, what makes this festival such an extraordinary event.
The success of the festival has had huge ramifications for the artistic scene on the island. Before Walk & Talk began, there was only one contemporary art gallery in Ponta Delgada: Fonseca Macedo, which represents established artists like Pedro Cabrita Reis and Miguel Palma but also young locals like Beatriz Brum. But in the last four years a cluster of artist-run spaces, including Miolo, Brui and Oficina, have opened in the centre of the town, contributing to a now burgeoning cultural scene.
“We’ve had about 300-400 artists coming to make and exhibit work throughout these past nine years, and an average of 11,000 visitors per edition,” says James, as our conversation turns to other art festivals like Stromboli’s Volcano Stravaganza or the Setouchi Triennale in Japan’s Inland Sea that are implementing radical artistic programmes in island communities. “We really feel part of a movement in which new peripheral geographies are redefining what a centre is, and where art should be seen. We have even come up with this word to define it: centriphery.”
“Long live centriphery!” I thought to myself on my last day in Ponta Delgada, as I sat in a field eating a meat stew cooked underground by volcanic heat, surrounded by a bunch of newfound friends.
All images courtesy of Walk & Talk.
The 9th edition of the festival Walk & Talk runs through to 20 July 2019 on São Miguel island, Azores.