Lessons from outside the classroom: performance pedagogies in Portugal, 1970–1980

Abstract

In the 1970s, Portuguese performance art exhibited itself as a language of experimentation in the local artistic scene with increasing public visibility. This prominence, which led to regular festivals and live events, was, however, not accompanied by any formal education or the integration of performance into the curriculum of art schools. In this article, we argue that the Portuguese approach to a performance pedagogy occurred mainly through a double path. On the one hand, through the convergent actions of two important critic-curators with relevant international connections in the area of performance, namely Egídio Álvaro and Ernesto de Sousa. On the other, through the singular activities of an association of artists, the Círculo de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra (CAPC), which had an institutional relationship with the students’ academy (Associação Académica de Coimbra) of the University of Coimbra. The CAPC takes the pedagogical and performative utopia of an art-life relationship a step further, at a time which shared the ethos of the democratic revolution of 1974. This generation collaborated with the international performance scene, not only developing projects with Wolf Vostell, in Malpartida (Spain), but also organising an important exhibition of Portuguese performance at the Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris (1984).

Keywords:

• Portuguese performance art
• performance pedagogy
• alternative art education
• curating performance

Notes

1 Here and throughout this article, all quotes from Portuguese sources are given in our own translations.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cláudia Madeira

Cláudia Madeira is an assistant professor and researcher at ICNOVA and a IHA collaborator at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, being responsible in the two centers for the Performance Art & Performativity in the Arts cluster. She also collaborates at the CET/FLUL as a researcher in the Theatre and Image Research group. She has completed a postdoctoral programme, Social Art, Performative Art? (2009–12) and holds a PHD in Sociology on Performing Arts Hybridity in Portugal (2007). In addition to several articles on new forms of hybridism and performativity in the arts, she is the author of Hybrid: From Myth to Invasive Paradigm? (Mundos Sociais, 2010) and New Dignataries: The Cultural Programmers (Celta 2002). She teaches Performance Arts at the Department on Communication Sciences at NOVA FCSH.

Fernando Matos Oliveira

Fernando Matos Oliveira teaches at the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Coimbra. His main areas of interest are Theatre Theory, Theatre and Performance Studies, Modern and Contemporary Portuguese and European Drama. He has been publishing essays and books on theatre, performance and literature. He is currently directing the PHD Course on Art Studies and the Theatre of the University of Coimbra (www.tagv.pt).