Exhibition “Vem Para a Rua Gritar”, by Arquivo Ephemera
Opening: April 24 at 06pm
Patented:until May 31, 2024
Schedule:monday to saturday, from 10am to 01pm and from 02pm until 06pm
Location: LAC – Laboratório de Actividades Criativas
Free entry
Synopsis
VEM PARA A RUA GRITAR
Videos and graffiti collected by Arquivo Ephemera
April 25, 1974 was an explosion of freedom that has been incorporated into our lives to this day, like the air we breathe. That’s the power of freedom. We may not feel it every day, but if we lose it we feel it very well.
The materials that the Arquivo Ephemera collects, preserves and disseminates, especially throughout the 20th century and up to the present day, literally today, bear witness to the time without freedom but also to the Revolution and, later, to the consolidation of democracy and its full exercise.
Because freedom and democracy prevailed and existed beyond the founding moment, the Revolution, and in the Ephemera Archive we record their permanent exercise and evolution, we have been storing very diverse materials of political expression for many decades. We then have a record of political and social action, in the most diverse media and supports, showing the imagination, spontaneity, convictions and will of each individual, in many cases very young people, defending their causes, both inside and outside the party spectrum.
What is shown here is part of the daily collection that the Archive, through its volunteers and friends, makes all over the country, but also abroad, with messages of various kinds, some more institutional and organic than others, covering political parties, trade unions, past and present, local and national or global causes, such as climate change.
We have videos of the demonstrations that we covered and where we collected slogans for future reference, but also images of the banners, posters, t-shirts and all the physical supports on which the political messages are inscribed.
And, because the walls speak, we collected thousands of photographs of graffiti, street paintings, stickers stuck on walls, lamps or traffic signs and traffic lights, also here a record of freedom and democracy in exercise.
An Ephemera volunteer never just walks around, never walks down the street without paying attention to the walls. It’s another sense that develops, that of a gaze committed to memory, to the importance of recording what happens around us, of preserving and sharing it, as is done here.
José Pacheco Pereira
Arquivo Ephemera