16th SAR International Conference on Artistic Research

7, 8 and 9 May 2025

University of Porto, Portugal

Along blurred lines: repositioning memory at the border through the sensorial

André Araújo 
 
Thursday, May 8, 2025 - 12:30
20 min Presentation + 20 min Discussion
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Faced with the challenge of visually representing a border, it is common to turn to the exact lines found on maps, influenced by a "violent reduction of reality" (Guidice & Giubilaro, 2015), or "Spatial Turn" (Nail, 2016), which simplifies them as a clean cut that suggests identities separated by a millimetre line. Nevertheless, the passage of time urges us to reconfigure the narrative of the landscape, and it is in rescuing the stories of the border that its identity resides, forged in the divisions, symmetries and conflicts that echo, mediating the social order that we think of as insurmountable. Within this vision are the recent practices of Border Studies, which consider the territory beyond its geographical dimension and as socially constructed, as well as various artistic practices which, by demonstrating that they can question the established logics of the Border, have justified the designation of Border-Art. As a research-creation project, ‘’Along Blurred Lines‘’ proposes a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the Portugal-Spain border, by exploring the relationship between space, memory and artistic practice. Through a multidisciplinary and autoethnographic approach, audiovisual content is created and collective memories are recorded, exploring the affective dimension of memory to develop new forms of Border-Art, based on subjective experiences of place and its space-time relationship. Basing the fieldwork on Lefebvre's (1991) theory of the production of space, this communication explores the occurrences that emerge from the process of creation and the artist's auto-ethnographic contact on the Valencia-Tui Border, which acted as a roadmap for artistic creations that reflect on the collective and sensory memory around the memories of buying Spanish Caramels, and on the border between Ourense and Castro Laboreiro, where the artist immersed in a place where the memories of contraband mark the conversations, memories and journeys of those who live there.

André Araújo

Universidade de Aveiro, Department of Communication and Art. ID+ Research Institute for Design, Media and Culture


André Araújo (Porto, 1999) has a Bachelor's degree in Jazz, a Master's degree in Contemporary Artistic Creation and is currently studying for a PhD in Artistic Creation (UA, IPP, IPL). Araújo combines social science methodologies and artistic strategies to explore the relationship between memory and place, using installation, video and performance. He was selected for the book Portuguese Emerging Art 2024 and has exhibited in various exhibitions and biennials, as well as taking part in artistic residencies in Portugal and abroad.