Book launch by the collective à escuta — Corinna Lawrenz, Joana Sá, Ana Viana, Luís J Martins and Lucas Tavares — with guest participants (to be announced).
Community : forest — Communicating voices for the future of a territory emerges from attentive and ongoing listening to the Serra da Estrela territory and its communities. It draws upon three artistic projects by the collective à escuta carried out in the South and North of this region — Catálogo Poético (2020–21), CasaFloresta (2022–23), and Folha Volante (2024). The book engages with the archive of these projects, but broadens the scope of reflection and resonance to include new contributions from the collective as well as interventions from collaborators in diverse fields, civic movements, and members of local associations.
Through a language that is diverse, polyphonic, and multidimensional — weaving together transcripts of informal conversations with literary, scientific, academic, poetic, and even pseudo-poetic registers — the book reflects on the past, present, and future of the (de)forest and the communities that live with it. Different materials are placed side by side in resonance — sometimes harmonious, sometimes dissonant — in a way that is non-static and resists musealization. With links to videos, sound pieces, and publications from previous projects, the reflection also extends beyond the physical format of the book.
This publication seeks to be a tool that contributes to imagining and creating verdant, dignified futures for this territory. At the same time, it aims to bridge the gap between urban experience and rural reality, grounding in tangible form urgent ecological, climatic, and social issues that are often perceived in abstract, theoretical, or distant ways. Ultimately, it seeks to give concrete tools to the idea of interdependence: how can we feel with our senses that the global future inevitably and radically passes through here?
Although it engages with the concrete realities of a territory (or perhaps precisely because of this), we believe this is a book that could only have been created from an artistic perspective: in the way it listens, relates, associates and dissociates, flows and transforms — and perhaps in the way it allows itself, against the fashion of the times, not only to dream, but to insist on this practice as an absolutely necessary methodology for the creation of futures.
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à escuta was initiated by Joana Sá (pianist, composer, transdisciplinary artist) and Luís J Martins (guitarist, composer, transdisciplinary artist) with the project à escuta: Catálogo Poético (2020–21). This initiative sought decentralized artistic ways of thinking-doing that addressed global environmental and social urgencies (forest fires, climate change, structural inequalities, etc.) starting from the small scale of a territory: the village of Frádigas (Vide, Seia) in the Serra da Estrela Natural Park (PNSE). With CasaFloresta (2022–23), the interdisciplinary thinking-doing of Catálogo Poético — which brought together communities, scientific collaborators, civic movements, and collectives — was expanded to other nearby villages (Balocas, Gondufo, Vide), as well as Figueiró da Serra and Freixo da Serra in the northern PNSE. With Folha Volante (2023–24), commissioned by the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, the scope of the PNSE territory and its communities (and beyond) with whom we worked continued to grow.
Throughout these projects, three new members joined the à escuta collective both effectively and affectively: Corinna Lawrenz (editing and facilitation), Lucas Tavares (video), and Ana Viana (design). Working (mostly) within the PNSE territories and their communities, the collective proposes an inter- and transdisciplinary reflection on the future of these lands. Intimately linked to a notion of “listening” as a resonant relationship with the “other,” their artistic projects foster encounters and exchanges among artists, local communities, collaborators from different scientific fields, civic movements, and local associations.
