In December 2012 I participated in an artistic residency in Lisbon, organized by the association XEREM in partnership with Triangle Network and the Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa – Fotográfico (Lisbon City Archive – Photography).
The residency, under the title “In transit: between albums and archives” addressed questions regarding place, identity and archive. Starting from the proposed themes I decided to work on the area we were staying and focus on the Martim Moniz square.
The Martim Moniz square has undergone many transformations throughout the these last 100 years . Curiously, when researching the photographic archive’s database, I came across more records of demolitions and constructions that took place around the square than actual documenting images of its many configurations.
I asked myself: what has remained in our memory of the many shapes the square has had (thinking about us as the city of Lisbon itself)?
I decided to work on this in three different ways:
Interviewing people living in the area and asking them to describe in detail one of the configurations the square has had.
Asking other people to draw me a map of the square, also thinking of one of its past configurations.
From the photo archive’s database I printed a selection of images depicting demolitions that took place in the Martim Moniz square and did an intervention on those photos, eliminating the buildings which were not under construction.