The third international meeting Montanha Mágica* continues in the evocation of Landscape as a way of seeing, understanding, representing and manufacturing the territory, insofar as such processes are interdependent on the capacity for symbolic and poetic exaltation, but also pragmatic and critical, which, in its increasingly extensive and multimedia field, Art works.
Landscape is considered here as a tangible phenomenon, which can be seen but also touches us, which we represent but also constitutes us as people: “The world and I are in each other”, says Merleau-Ponty, reflecting on this fleeting coincidence of the flow of space and time, of experience and distance, of how, although distinct, “things pass through us, just as we do through things”. So that the landscape names this interior crossing, this “wandering herd of sensations” and chance that the durable substance of the world is made of.
With the Anthropocene as a cyclorama, MM* is a platform that magnetizes heterodox visions of artists and researchers who, under the pretext of the encounter with the mountain epitomized by Mann's masterpiece, demand in this forum a progressive and more acute indexation of aesthetics to ethics as a strategy to combat the degradation that global capitalism has been inflicting on the ecosystem, of which we are a part. In this search for convergence and community reinforcement, MM* crosses different audiences and generations.
Like the previous ones, the Magic Mountain* culminates in the symposium and exhibitions. In addition to the activities taking place at UBI, Covilhã, it involves artistic residencies in Serra da Estrela (Seia, Sabugueiro and Manteigas) and in Trás-os-Montes. The production is the result of a partnership between the courses of the Department of Arts, in particular the Doctorate in Media Arts, LABCOM, the Wool Museum, the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of the Basque Country and the LaSIA Research Group, including the precious support from the municipal councils of Vinhais and Covilhã.
MM*2021 © Francisco Paiva
