Balcony Festival by Anita Araujo

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-14 11:03:24 UTC

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-14 11:06:16 UTC

The only balconies around me in Ireland were in the big hotels where I worked as a housekeeper, so I decided to use the festival to speak out against the poor working conditions in that context.

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-14 11:11:13 UTC

I put out this open call, but no one submitted a story, although some people shared the post on their Instagram accounts.

The fact that no one was willing to share their stories impacted me deeply as I thought about how relevant it was to talk about balconies in the current context.

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-14 11:28:38 UTC

Looking for songs about balconies I've found this playlist: "Girl, get off the balcony!" and the first song was about suicidal thoughts in the balcony, they were asking for a person to not jump from it:

"Girl, get off the balcony

You're too young to play at dying

Tell me what's wrong

What has life done this time?

Come on, get down from there

Let me take you to a cafe

To talk, listen to you

And try to convince you"

Lyric Amianto, Supercombo

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-14 11:36:15 UTC

Then I came across some famous balcony scenes, and this particular one from "West Side Story" got me thinking about the possible relationship between fire escapes and balconies in the urban life.

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-14 12:04:18 UTC

What is it? What have you done this year during the course?
What was its context or have you created one for it?
What have been the iterations of activities, practices, tests/experiments?
What are your reflections about the project and its relation to publicness?
How have you evaluated the decisions taken/ or turn of events from the project in relation to the discussions that took place in the course?
What is the status of the project now?
What is yet to be realised/proposed/speculated in relation to the project? How will you be working to achieve that?
Are there questions the project left you with? How will you be working in order to understand them further?

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-14 12:15:00 UTC

In some of the discussions about my project, people would ask what would be the balcony where I was living and what I could do as a practice action at that moment of my research. As I was in the middle of the Kerry Ring in Ireland and there were no balconies there, I staged a performance on the porch of the house I was living in. Since I was in the same level of the street, I started to ask myself about the power relations in the verticality and horizontality of the balcony.

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-14 18:12:26 UTC

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-14 18:15:37 UTC

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-14 19:13:28 UTC

Today, balconies, which serve as new public spaces aimed at restoring both physical and social wellbeing (Grigoriadou, 2021), have also begun to play an important role in terms of sustainability and energy efficiency

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-15 10:58:13 UTC

I also reflected on the role of the balcony in its political potential. In this particular text, the author discusses the banners and posters that people put up outside and the neighbors respond to them.

"Urban balconies and porches provide important platforms for public discourse and social change. They encourage residents to maintain a political discourse through the common practice of hanging political banners and slogans and flying political flags on them."

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-15 11:02:41 UTC

March 24th (2020) in quarantine: the "white handkerchief" for memory, truth and justice

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-15 11:58:07 UTC

I had the opportunity to share my research at a conference in Brazil, and it enable a space to reflect on the role of being a cultural producer that organizes a "performance art festival". and how this is a key word in my practice because it is what "transforms" any proposal I make in that context in art.

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-15 12:01:05 UTC

The difference between make soap bubbles and make art with soap bubbles as a medium to express something else is that the action Bulbullia from Yarines Suarez and Frank Bready was part of the Balcony Festival.

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-15 18:25:29 UTC

What are your reflections about the project and its relation to publicness?

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-15 18:36:49 UTC

I had a meeting with Laura Malacart from thebalconyprojectceglie and it was interesting to hear how she thinks the balcony in her project in a real dimension, as a part of the house from where she is capable to develop a relationship with the neighbors and the virtual dimension, the possibility of building communities that do not need to respect the borders.

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-15 18:39:04 UTC

I discovered that in Netherlands there is a Balkon Festival happening since 2017, the same year as my project. I asked them if I could be a volunteer in the next edition, and I am waiting for their response

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-15 18:43:33 UTC

I launched a catalogue from an exhibition that I organized in 2021, and now I am organizing new editions of the exhibition to make circulate the artists work.

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-15 18:45:09 UTC

We exhibited the catalogue at Peras de Olmo Ars Continua, a performance art gallery in Buenos Aires.

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-15 18:48:12 UTC

Lou and I, are planning a curatorial project with the artists from the catalogue to participate in the open call from the hdkvaland galleries. The next step is trying to answer the questions from the image.

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-15 19:00:35 UTC

During the artistic residency I participated in in Biella, I presented my project to fellow artists and then, talking to the residency mentor, I understood that my main subject was not the balcony but rather artistic production in adverse environments: how to continue making art when everything seems inappropriate or how to keep making art inside the darkness?

anachrisaraujo — 2024-12-15 20:00:23 UTC

I decided to propose a project to making in Brazil using funds of the Rouanet Law (in the article you can read more about this law)

anachrisaraujo — 2025-07-26 12:22:47 UTC

Projeções e encontros online Festival en Mi Balcón

anachrisaraujo — 2025-07-26 12:46:16 UTC