Trabalho capital - Irene Laub

José Pedro Croft

In this exhibition-installation curated by Paulo Mendes, the Norlinda and José Lima collections are placed in dialogue with new works carried out for this project, others already produced, as well as documentary and technical material of the industrial museum estate related to the history of the Oliva Factory. It is intended to summon the historical, social and political memory of Oliva, confronting it with our time and the present exhibition space.
The convocation of this material and immaterial heritage will be one of the important components of this project, with the premise here of gathering works that are more directly or indirectly related to some ideas and concepts that we can inventory and debate with the idea of WORK.
In this factory, founded in the 1920s and definitively closed in 2010, there is now a cultural space. Here we see the fragmentation and recomposition of a manufacturing space, which allows new uses and performative senses.
In a city with a large industrial park it is desired not to obliterate this memory, but to call it to this project, which will confront the inhabitants of the city and the visitors that come from outside with a past and present industrial reality. The occupation of an old factory by a cultural project raises questions about the relation between work and culture, between material values (production of capital) and immaterial (production of culture).
In this exhibition-installation, the memory of the workspace, factory and industrial will be reactivated through photographic and filmic documentation. A series of interviews will be held with former workers, thus initiating an oral and video file to be displayed at the exhibition as a way to return the Oliva Factory to the city and reestablish a bridge with the past.
The scenography of the exhibition will refer to an industrial space in (re) construction, evoking the reminiscences of the industrial past in confrontation with the contemporary production of culture. The materialization of these memories is carried out through transformational proposals and spatial practices that explore interdisciplinary readings of the architectural heritage and post-industrial spaces, mobilizing the participation of the visual arts, architecture and moving image. It is intended to deepen, in his research, different tools of anthropology, history or archeology, through field research or documentation on file.
In this project, various types of findings are explored – objects, materials, images and spatial structures – inviting creators and researchers to explore the cultural dimension of post-industrial physical space.