GIFmeback# with Catarina Simão and Marílio Wane.
Workshop for Memória de Elefante – ping! Galeria Municipal do Porto – Porto’s Municipality, happening in May 2022 at Escola Secundária Infante Dom Henrique, in Porto.
Maps, charts, crosses and Padrão monuments, African masks and sculptures, drums, timbilas and mbiras, sisal and cotton, animal skins and horns, seeds and plant species from Angola, Guinea and Mozambique, peacocks and gardens, straw houses, people exhibited as in a zoo…dehumanization, change, justice and reparation. GIFmeback# proposes a workshop animated by a conversation game and the creation of digital images, which has its roots in Escola Secundária D. Infante but takes us back to the gardens of the Crystal Palace where the 1st Colonial Exhibition took place in 1934. A few more other stories from cities like Maputo, like Lamego, end up meeting and crossing paths in the here and now.
GIFmeback# is a reply to the summons launched by Ping! Primeira Exposição Colonial Portuguesa (Memória de Elefante) to do a contribution to an educational and critical debate on Porto’s colonial legacy. The artistic and research practices that Ping! provokes find common ground in a shared risk of imagining a community of future citizens much more aware of their capacity – and responsibility – for transforming the public space.
GIFmeback# involves the D. Infante High School students and teaching community in exploratory visits to the Crystal Palace Garden. The logic of identification of problematic symbols will continue to the decoration and architecture of the school. The intention is that students add comments to found colonial representations by creatively producing animated digital images, commonly called “GIF”.
