Contra
Contra is an artistic and community-based project with its roots in Cabeção.
Through three co-creation residencies with the Cabeção community, a cultural program has emerged that blends music, performance, and visual arts with the unique heritage of this region. With a focus on engaging the local community, concerts, exhibitions, workshops, and residencies become spaces for gathering - bridges between the contemporary and the traditional, the urban and the rural, today and tomorrow. The exchange between artists and the local population is the starting point for a new way of looking at the town.
Contra is inspired by the photographic and film archive of the Cabeção Cultural, Sports, and Recreational Center (CCDRC), a disruptive cultural and social initiative that emerged in 1975, in the aftermath of the April 25 Revolution. A group of young people occupied an abandoned theater and organized concerts, matinees, film screenings, and Super 8 courses in the village. “We were counterculture; we wanted to bring urban influences and change mindsets, to go beyond folklore. And we succeeded!”
Fifty years later, Contra addresses the scarcity of cultural offerings and revives this April Dream - against oblivion, desertification, and monotony.
January - November 2025
Miguel Tavares
Tânia Sofia Dinis
Tomás Longo
DGArtes – Directorate-General for the Arts
Cabeção Parish Council
Cabeção Elementary School
Lar da Purificação
Lar de Solidariedade aos Trabalhadores Idosos
Adega do Teso
Adega Cananó
Cooperativa de Consumo de Cabeção
Desenhos do Futuro
The artists carried out a residency with the elementary school students at Cabeção Elementary School to create a collaborative artwork.
The project began with several exploratory exercises: drawings of elements of nature and the route from home to school, recordings of interviews about the village, among others.
On the 25th of April, in keeping with a CCDRC tradition, Freedom flags were painted in Largo do Ribeiro, in a moment that brought together images of the past and dreams of the present. Over time, a collective map of Cabeção was created, based on each person’s inner mapping.
To complete the project, using models created in workshops with the students, the artists designed a refuge house to shelter the drawings and paintings produced. Everyone is welcome to enter this house, listen, and dream about Cabeção’s future, and add new drawings, thus reflecting the project’s participatory nature.
The final presentation in October also included a sound piece created from interviews with the students, where each shared their dreams for Cabeção.
Nós por Cá
The artist’s project began with meetings with Luís Canelas, a local photographer who captured images of Cabeção in the 1970s and 1980s. The central aim of this residency was to return this archive to the community in a new form, blending memory with the present.
Social gatherings and workshops were held where we viewed the images and identified the people, places, and moments, and in the village’s two community centers, everyone was invited to paint over these images.
Later, these memories, colored by the community, were displayed on the street in the village’s oldest district, Fonte Velha. It was a reunion among neighbors, between faces from the present and the past—a moving moment for the local community.
As part of the weekend’s program, the artist also presented a performance in which photographic overlays from the archive interacted with a sound piece that recited the names and stories behind the images of Cabeção.
Entre-Águas
Over the course of two weeks, the musician conducted a co-creation residency with the Grupo de Cantares de Cabeção (a singing group), and two day centers, the Lar da Nossa Senhora da Purificação and the Lar de Solidariedade Trabalhadores Idosos. Through various informal gatherings and workshops, we explored each person’s memories and the collection of local songs and poems.
Drawing from the Cabeção songbook, local poetry, and memories of the April 25 Revolution, regional and contemporary music came together in a performance at the community laundry sink, where the vibraphone guided a new creation.
Amid memories, poems, and songs, a concert/performance was presented with and for Cabeção.
Nos últimos fins-de-semana de Julho, Setembro e Outubro realizaram-se dias de programação cultural em Cabeção: encontros íntimos entre artistas e a comunidade local.
On the last weekends of July, September, and October,
cultural events were held in Cabeção: intimate gatherings between artists and the local community.
