The Walk & Talk is a project that restores old buildings, by the confrontations of arts that embellish the city Ponta Delgada on Sao Miguel, Azores. It all started when two young people met and forma a daydream reverie came the changing of facades. This year its second edition promeses more surprises, but approach and meet them.
How did you come together to envision this project? Did you previously knew each other? Where did the idea of a partnership came from?
Jesse James: Although we are both Azorean we only met in college on the mainland. And enter only this project, long after finishing our degrees.
The idea came from a reverie. In the sense we wanted to create a project with the message, which would generate enough confrontation to assert itself as an important moment in our lives and the people who come into contact with this "event".
Diana Sousa: The fact that we have gone to other living spaces helped generate confrontations with new ideas and concepts, one of the things was the urban art and how it intervenes in space.
We were getting more and more street art in the universe and the concept of public art, from the expression to the movement, to seek and evaluate artists, styles, content, design ... turned out to be a constant search. It has generate a fascination for public art and especially for the occasional form, that it communicates incomplicated and itenerant.
Why create this event? Do you think that by virtue of living in an island is isolated in parallel to other artistic movements, hence the need for exchange aesthetic languages?
JJ: After the survey, comes the desire to share, and hence the concept / movement walk & talk. As azoreans, made perfect sense to develop the project in a place that lives on its insularity. We wanted to prove that it is possible to decentralize culture and that this kind of events takes another value when developed in a space with needs at that level.
The geographical context and the concept of "Azorean" of Vitorino Nemesio, reflected in the mentality and cultural patterns extremely rich but sometimes unreceptive to change. And this is evident in the artistic experience that tends to be bipolar: popular / elitist. Lacked a middle ground, something that could create curiosity in audiences. And public art has this advantage because it is free and accessible to all: it is democratic.
The feeling of belonging is also higher, so the curiosity and willingness to interpretation are intensified. People when they are not force towards a situation enjoy much more of it, hence the insistence on creating an open air "museum" where people are confronted with artistic interventions in a casual way.
Ponta Delgada Azores as the largest city, has more critical mass and walls in need of interventions, was the venue chosen to host the free museum.
DS: By inviting artists one of the main points was the diversity of the line-up in terms of graphic language, artistic contexts, provenance of artists, and old versus new dichotomy renown talents (Azores, national and international, or worldview). Given these factors, we choose the artists we most liked.
The consideration was to participate in the walk & talk on the basis of contribution and mobilization, transforming it into something for everyone. And step by step we brought together 30 artists. Having defined the line-up, distribute the different kinds of intervention throughout the city, to which the public could relate to its own way, depending on your tastes.
And despite some conservatism, was a challenge met to convince entities and individuals to join the "movement for the end of the white walls and voiceless people."
One of the premises of your artistic movement is to make interventions on the walls of abandoned buildings. And when those outdoor spaces run out, what will you do murals?
JJ: Nothing in life is sealed, and we are very adept at change. It's like the wise man Raul Seixas says, "I prefer to be a metamorphosis, than to have that same old opinion about everything." The same applies to walk & talk a live art festival: has to change and adapt to social paradigms. The walls are just one of the supports that can be used, and accordingly there are many spaces and means use in future editions. And it happens this year.
It was difficult to obtain support from the public and the authorities?
JJ: No, because there was the curiosity factor. Of course it was not easy to convince the public and institutional entities to support a project that promised to fill the city of art, but we stress it all very well and we support the project in terms of mission, objectives, relevance and sustainability. The support of the Regional Youth department (Government of the Azores) was clearly critical. It was the first governmental entity to show interest in the walk & talk and the goals that we defended, and ultimately support us 100%. That was very important to gain credibility with other institutions such as the Municipality of Ponta Delgada, the Regional Tourism and several private entities have also joined the movement and played a critical role. Without them it would be impossible to carry out the festival, given the logistics surrounding the walk & talk.
DS: There are other associations that have joined the Walk & Talk cultural interpretation, in the organization and promotion of the festival, cultural gender network. The Cultural Corridor Association provided us workspaces and films a documentary of the event. The Cooperative Barefoot added activities parallel to the walk & talk with various artistic performances and exhibitions throughout the two weeks "Solidariedarte" and socio-cultural interventions with artists. All do, the receptivity of the local population was the most surprising. Before starting the walk & talk, despite good evidence that we were having and the apparent curiosity of the people, in average was unknown the society's reaction to the introduction of São Miguel art in public space. The truth is that half of the festival we had people offering walls for artists to paint! Generated a very healthy conversation around the urban art, preferred art interventions in the city, the group exhibition at the Academy of Arts ... the local population was curious and followed the work of artists. Every day there was news, because sometimes a wall was completed, another was beginning, and we were running from one side to another.
The designation walk & talk appears in what context?
JJ: The walk & talk express an idea of action, mainly for continuity and evolution, where the physical and mental shift that results in an interaction with the space, prompting us to develop an attitude and proactive stance in society. The description is illustrative of the objectives and mission of the movement as a promoter of culture in the public and advocate for a structure based on social mobilization and individual contribution.
