The Octagon is an interactive installation in public space that reflects on the role of digital fabrication between the memory of the territory and the reinterpretation of traditional knowledge of Beira Interior.

“In the warehouses of the Municipality of Fundão, between refrigerators and abandoned cars, we rescued a forgotten object, which was readily recognized by the ‘Fundanenses’ as the old carousel of the ‘school of Alcaide’. 

This carousel is garbage, it’s an obsolete object. Simultaneously, it testimonies a collective memory — a handcrafted artefact, an analogue pivot — which failed to fulfil its function due to the inadequacy of the parameters that are currently required for its category of objects. We tried to reflect on how to guarantee the carousel’s survival and we did it by establishing a dialogue between the ancient and the new, and between the analogue and the digital. Our tool was digital fabrication; however, our process was inevitably analogic. 

The project requires interaction and human action to activate its mechanism, it is also accompanied by a QR Code (https://octogono.cargo.site/) with a digital file that can be cut in any Fab Lab and assembled by everyone who wants to give back the carousel its original function.”

Art(e)facts Biennial was born from the idea of an alliance creation between artists, architects and designers, Portuguese and international, with artisans from the Beira Interior. The project aims to care for the intangible memory of the territory. To do so, it proposes to rethink dialogues for the construction of a contemporary heritage of artistic works focusing on the enhancement of the region and the reinterpretation of traditional knowledge.

The project is developed within Guarda’s bid to become the European Capital of Culture 2027 and takes the shape of a Biennial of Knowledge, deeply embedded in the territory and intending to implement a constellation of practices with long-term impacts.

Art(e)facts’ first edition introduces the theme Supernatural Togetherness to propose alliances between humans, generations, species and knowledge in order to save the future. Ongoing until September, the programme has involved an international call for projects that resulted, during May, in artistic residencies in local artisans’ workshops.

This collective exhibition is simultaneously located in six distinct locations in the region — Alcongosta, Janeiro de Cima, Telhado, Famalicão da Serra, Gonçalo and Fundão —, as the mirror of several dialogues and of the scenarios that hosted them. The invitation to this visit suggests, therefore, paying attention to the places that hold memory and the experience of immersion and permanence.”

Team: Colectivo Warehouse + FabLab Aldeias do Xisto

With: Monica Di Eugenio, Raquel Santos, Rúben Teodoro, Sebastião de Botton

Press and extras

As improváveis coincidências de um octógono – website

Artefacts ‘21 – Supernatural Togetherness 

Guarda 2027 – Art(e)facts 2021

[ípsilon] Bienal Art(e)Facts: A criação contemporânea está nas aldeias do interior