Cultivamos Cultura is a platform for experimentation and development of shared knowledge in the theory and practice of science, technology and contemporary art. In other words, Cultivamos Cultura provides conditions to foster your creativity. The non-profit Cultural Association Cultivamos Cultura was founded with the aim of developing programming in the area of visual arts and disciplinary crossings in a region not privileged with this type of activity – the Alentejo coast. Founded in January 2009 by people with complementary experiences and with the aim of encouraging the development of creative activities with a strong connection to the community and natural environment. Its mission is to develop a programming strategy that stimulates the interaction between national and foreign artists and partnerships between institutions to foster the exploration of new frontiers in visual arts. Cultivamos Cultura organizes activities in the areas of production, dissemination, research, education and exhibition. It is also part of our mission to contribute a strong sense of cultural identity by fostering the generation of bonds with the local community and environment. We are located in an old farm house at the village of São Luís, within the Southwest Alentejo Natural Park, on the Atlantic coast of Portugal, approximately 200 Km south of Lisbon. CULTIVAMOS CULTURA hosts resident creators for periods up to 4 months. During the residency, creators are encouraged to engage in activities with local communities, including schools. It is expected that a record of the activities pursued during the residency will remain in our archives. CULTIVAMOS CULTURA curates and produces art exhibitions related to new media and experimental art practices. The objective of these exhibitions is to show the diversity of strategies within contemporary art creation, as well as the outcome of art residencies.
Recent accomplishments: Over the last few years Cultivamos Cultura has carried out and participated in projects such as: Archive (02/2021 – 06/2022): Project Arc-hive creates an open source digital platform that aggregates, preserves, publishes, distributes and contextualizes a variety of information, knowledge and documentation on art with a focus on biomedia, ensuring open access to a variety of users, and a wide outreach of digital materials across cultural sectors and territories. Together with six other partners, strengthening the relations between bio-art archives and museology and building a new online way to contribute to the dissemination of contemporary art. Arc-hive addresses the challenges of creating and distributing cohesive digitization and dissemination protocols through a centralized digital space where knowledge and best practices relevant to art predominantly using biological materials are collected. Created through collaboration of six partners working in NGO and museum sector, publishing, and IT and audio-visual field, the platform as the main project result serves as a catalysation tool for the activities of artwork and museum specimen digitization, archiving and distribution; remote event participation, planning and realization; augmented publishing; staff and student education and training; and topic contextualization and interconnection. Co-funded by Creative Europe. (https://arc-hive.zone/) Biofriction (10/2019 – 09/2021): Biofriction addresses the need for common tools and approaches in the intersection between bio-art, biohacking and biotechnologies by stimulating transnational cooperation between artists and scientists, building bridges of communication between the different areas of technical, scientific, social, artistic and transcultural knowledge. A Creative Europe project with the goal of generating and facilitating spaces for exchange where artists, curators, theoreticians, and different social collectives, such as activists and educational projects, can collaborate in transdisciplinary experimental proposals that offer practical alternatives to existing problems in contemporary Europe, such as the rise of essentialist discourses that launch not only a worrying discourse but also policies of marginalisation and exclusion. (https://biofriction.org/) FACTT (2017 – ongoing): Festival of Art & Science Trans-disciplinary and Trans-national. In Partnership with the Arte Institute this Festival of Art and Science intends to clarify the importance and intersection of these two areas, across the world. In doing so, our aim is to promote the interdisciplinary dialogue and reflection through debates and exhibitions, and to identify and analyse the various ways in which both areas are currently interconnected. Supported by DGArtes, Câmara Municipal de Odemira and Naturarte. (http://factt.arteinstitute.org/ 20/21 edition website) FEMeeting (2017 – ongoing): A community project, created within Cultivamos Cultura, FEMeeting encourages experiential communication among individuals worldwide who identify as Women doing research work (in the broadest sense of the term) in Art, Science and Technology. FEMeeting aims to contribute to the development of research methodologies in art and science as well as to the establishment of collaboration strategies that can increase knowledge sharing and bring communities together. (https://femeeting.com/) The (im)permanence of Being (10/2019 – 07/2020): During the 2019/2020 school year, the Eugénio de Almeida Foundation’s Educational Service challenged artist Marta de Menezes to develop a project with the community that aims to promote and deepen the intersection between art and science through an informal and experimental methodology. In this project, entitled The (im)permanence of Being: dialogues between Art and Science, we invite the local school populations, the university students and any interested audiences to establish a direct dialogue and explore the broad subject of identity in Marta’s work and methodologies to research and produce art through a series of theoretical and practice based workshops that will be streamed online.
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e-mail: info@cultivamoscultura.org