“The Risk” is the motto for the sixth edition of MEXE – International Art and Community Meeting, which this year will take place between September 18th and 26th.


This year in which it celebrates ten years of existence, Festival MEXE brings together citizens, artists and structures in ten days of programming, with the purpose of triggering spaces of confluence of artistic creation that contaminates, and is contaminated, by social and political realities.


In its sixth edition, the event proposes a reflection on the concerns and challenges that mark our communities, aggravated today by the pandemic that shook the world. “The Risk” will therefore be the motto of an edition that, in addition to Porto, will be, for the first time, extended to other cities in the country.


Performances, conversations, workshops, creative labs, installations and cinema make up the extensive programme of this cycle, co-organised by associação PELE and MEXE Associação Cultural, in  collaboration with São João National Theatre and co-financed by Direção-Geral das Artes.


During a year designed with particular difficulty, uncertainty and intensity, MEXE proposes to question “the risk” of giving up being human and its multiple possibilities of existing and being.


Taking place in various venues in the city of Porto and, for the first time, in Viseu and Lisbon, the event proposes a time for meeting the artistic, social, political and ethical aspects, in works created by various artists. Examples of this are the three projects revealed at the beginning of July: the stories and relationships between Miragaia, Porto and the Douro River of “Altamira 2042” (Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha); the culinary exchanges with a taste of tomorrow “Sabor Visceral do Futuro” (Coletivo Boca); and the self-proclamation of Centro Cultural das Fontainhas with “Laboratório dos Riscos Impossíveis”.


From the line-up of this sixth edition of MEXE, we also highlight the regenerative artistic creation project, proposed by PELE, from the territory of Azevedo, in Campanhã, which questions alternative patterns of being, doing and living in a neighbourhood; or, still, the digital installation “Máquina do Ruído”, by Bruno Kowalski, which posts urgent statements, in a kind of large virtual demonstration.

Mynda Guevara, one of the most interesting, instigating and disruptive artists in national hip-hop, is another of MEXE's confirmations.



The programme’s international highlights


Among the international guests, highlight for Neil Harbisson, the first person to be recognised by a government as a cyborg and whose work has been pointed out as one of the most controversial performative acts of our time.


Directly from Chile, another of this year's big hits arrives, “Paisajes para no colorear”, a play that builds on reports of acts of violence committed against female teenagers in Latin America.

Committed on blurring boundaries between different ways of knowing and doing, MEXE 2021 also features an installation project that mobilises biology and technology to reveal images and sounds of growing plant life beyond the scope of human sight and hearing. "Unearthing Queer Ecologies", by American Amy Reid, questions the dualistic notion in which humans perceive nature, by sonically and visually documenting the growth of lavender, pansies and mushrooms.



The festival's online initiatives


As this is an exceptional time, MEXE 2021 will also include online initiatives. Alongside the cybernetic demonstration ("Máquina de Ruído"), the event calls for the workshop "Herbário Anticolonial", where the plants serve as an ignition point for a dialogue with the colonial history of Portugal and Brazil.


Complementing the presentation and performance work, MEXE 2021 will also feature a film showcase that will include six films about organisations and projects whose work focuses on participative and community artistic practices.


In the thought aspect, another of the festival programme’s highlight, is the book “Práticas Artísticas Comunitárias, Participação e Política” by Hugo Cruz which will be presented.


MEXE programming is mostly free-of-charge access, consistent with the principles of accessibility and cultural enjoyment. The entire programme can be found on its official webpage.

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    Last updated 2022-12-06