Cities are as diverse as the layers that compose them. An ongoing alchemy sets on producing sometimes conflicting, yet osmotic inhabitance patterns, sensorial experience and social togetherness. Also the result of many architectural dreams, evolving power structures and contingent local deviations, cities are simultaneously hardware concrete structures and ephemeral realms. In them, we live & die, we meet & depart, we hold together the daily fiction that glues the interstices of the bigger picture of the urban phenomena.

With a background in Dance, Anthropology and Political Sciences, Fernanda Eugénio & Gustavo Ciríaco have been collaborating with each other and in each one’s projects since 2009, leading an intensive path of works and research around the public space.

In 2015, the duo started the project Steaming Cities, in New York and Saigon during their site-specific workshops City Labs. In this long run project, Fernanda Eugenio and Gustavo Ciríaco propose to transport sensible operations from one city to another, building, through the invitation to navigate in a sensorial ambiance, a crossed and imaginary space-time through which city vapors can propagate. In December 2019, the project had its premiere in Lisbon under the frame of the exhibition-occupation AND Lisboa at Rua das Gaivotas 6. The city vapors were brought from their in situ residency in Saigon / HMC, Vietnam, as part of a local edition of the City Lab / Site-Specific Practices, at Sán Art Gallery.

In 2020, the project Steaming Cities would be traveling to the Philippines for an artistic residency and public presentation at Bellas Artes Projects, in Bataan. In May 2020, we had a live talk with Inti Guerrero, Bellas Artes´ Curator on our project there and previous trajectories. This live talk was part of Eskwela, a program promoted and organized by Bellas Artes Projects. See it HERE. The project has been finally realized in March 2022, when we were able to travel to the Philippines for a short residency  in the city of Manila under the attentive and wonderful hosting of Bellas Artes Projects. A public presentation concluded our project at Acuzar Houses, in Manila, on March 26th.

Presentations

Acuzar Houses, Bellas Artes Projects, Manila. March 26th, 2022.

Escola das Gaivotas, Lisbon. December 20th (at 21h) and 21st (at 18h and 21h), 2019.

 

Residencies

Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics – New York University (NYU), NYC. April, 2015

San Art  Gallery Lab, Saigon. January 2015.

 

Presentation in Lisbon

Conception and direction Fernanda Eugénio & Gustavo Ciríaco

Lighting design Gustavo Ciríaco

Set design Fernanda Eugénio & Gustavo Ciríaco

Light operation and collaboration in Lisbon Filipe Pureza

 

 

 

Photos by Alípio Padilha.