Projeto PLANT
Performing Life Akademia Network (PLANT) is a 2-year multidimensional project at the intersection of Contextual Performing Arts, Ecology and Audience Mediation. Its main scope is to encourage the development and experimentation of artistic practices (in terms of creation and curatorship) at the intersection of performing arts, permaculture and local life. PLANT is a collaboration between 3 creation centers: CRL – Central Elétrica, project coordinator, Duncan Dance and Research Center, from Athens, and the Nyamnyam Cultural Association, from Mieres, a small rural village in the volcanic area of La Garrotxa in Catalonia.
The kick-off meeting took place in Porto from the 12th to the 15th of January, over 4 days of reflection and work, including an exploration visit and knowledge of the geographical area of intervention, the parish of Campanhã, in particular in Lugares de São Pedro and Azevedo.
Co-funding: Creative Europe
International Partners: Duncan Dance and Research Center (GR), Associação Cultural Nyamnyam (ES)
The concept of the PLANT project is based on contextual performing art practices that use permaculture, preservation, heritage, collective learning and common knowledge in order to address the global eco-social crises and design a collective future as a common space for those practices. The work in proximity with the territories and their inhabitants, as well as the concern to connect artistic questions with common and everyday life, make contextual performing art practices a field of great interest for the implementation of artistic and curatorial practices that share, among their motivations, the close proximity to the audience and the empowerment of communities. Contextual performing art practices, both for the methodologies they promote during the creation processes and for the curatorial forms they appeal to, are fields of great interest for the research on commons and in the debate on the use and definition of public space at a time when that space is increasingly being monitored, politicized, and disappearing.
PLANT also examines and develops tools for sustainable artistic production as well as engages with communities in collaborative projects in order to highlight, in a practical and exemplary way, the values of permaculture and of circular economy. It uses art as a tool to encourage environmental stewardship and promote debate on the great ecological challenges and on the revolutionary potential of the small gesture.