Never in the two long years of work that the candidacy and subsequent acceptance of Lisbon as Guest City of Honor of the 48th Buenos Aires International Book Fair The promoters of this presence imagined that the opening of the exhibition would coincide precisely with the 50th commemoration of the Carnation Revolution, which put an end to almost half a century of dictatorship in 1974 and which Portugal will celebrate in style.
This explains why neither Mayor Carlos Moedas nor his Secretary of Culture, Diogo Moura, are present here on April 25, although they will arrive in the following days. In any case and beyond the coincidence, Lisbon will land in Buenos Aires with the best of its culture and will not limit itself to exhibiting it at the Fair but intends to make that presence dialogue and build bridges with the exponents of literature, Argentine music, cinema and arts.
So, The Portuguese capital designed a dazzling program that will have its epicenter in La Rural, but that will be projected radially towards various institutions in which activities will be presented from the Usina del Arte to the National Library, from the Leopoldo Lugones Room to the Library of Congress, there will be proposals for all tastes. “As a curator, what I sought was for Lisbon to be better known through its authors and for that identity to dialogue with Buenos Aires and its own writers,” anticipates the writer Carla Quevedo, curator of the program offered by Lisbon at the Fair. That is why the program, which can now be consulted on the Fair’s website, is shown as a meeting area between the twenty Portuguese authors – led by the Nobel candidate, Lídia Jorge – who will arrive throughout the next three weeks and their Argentine counterparts.
Some examples that show the parity built by Quevedo and his team: if we talk about the police genre, the Portuguese Francisco José Viegas will debate the scope of that genre with Claudia Piñeiro. The notable Bruno Vieira Amaral, a navigator of the literary and social margins, will discuss football and narrative with Martín Kohan, a Boca fan as everyone knows. In addition, Vieira Amaral will analyze the identity of Buenos Aires and Lisbon residents with Pedro Mexia and Darío Sztajnszrajber. And two bestselling historical novels will also exchange secrets: Isabel Stilwell with Florencia Canale. The meeting between Portuguese and Argentine literature is also a bet on the future and that is why curator Carla Quevedo will announce a line of aid and financing for the Argentine edition of Portuguese authors.
A unique light
They say that the light of Lisbon It is different from all the others. And it is true for both climatic and poetic reasons. The capital of Portugal is the European city with the most hours of sunshine per year, ahead of Madrid and far from Paris and London, which seem gloomy in comparison. The city extends over the ridges of seven hills, taking a curved shape that favors the reflection of light between these folds and the waters of the Tagus River. So true is this effect, evoked by poets, storytellers and musicians, that the Lisbon Museum dedicated a specific exhibition to it. Some of that light will reach Buenos Aires in the music, cinema and arts that the city will display throughout the Argentine capital.
The music, from traditional fado to electronic and urban rhythms, can be heard both at the Fair stand and outside it. At the Usina del Arte, on May 4, the free concert “The Portuguese” will be offered, by the musician and composer Rodrigo Leão, founder of two influential groups of contemporary Portuguese music: Sétima Legião, together with Nuno Cruz and Pedro Oliveira in 1982 and Madredeus with Pedro Ayres Magalhães. The show covers a repertoire of popular songs and instrumental classics “that underline the indefinable Portugueseness of its melodic inspiration,” according to the organizers. Meanwhile, in La Rural the beautiful voice of the young revelation artist Ana Lua Caiano will sound, who explores the fusion of traditional Portuguese music with electronic music from her two EPs I arrived late to yesterday and If dancing is only later. “Different eras interact in me because my musical tastes are very varied. “I’m a little eclectic,” the interpreter introduces herself.
The brothers Gaspar and Sebastião Varela will also arrive at the Sala José Hernández with their group Expresso Transatlântico, which brings together Portuguese guitar, electric guitar and drums, to illustrate the experiences of a cosmopolitan and multicultural Lisbon. “There is something untouchable about tradition – they say about the use of that identity instrument – and we challenge that establishment.” Another must-see in the Sala Hernández will be the unique Lisbon Poetry Orchestra (LPO), a group of musicians who perform pieces designed to accompany a corpus of poems that are added to the score. “People are thirsty for poetry,” says Alexandre Cortez, leader of the LPO. “People should feed on poetry.”
Illustrations and samples
The visual arts will also be present and will be from the entrance: the tunnel that connects the entrance of the Santa Fe Avenue Fair with the interior pavilions will present a tour of illustrations titled Alameda in which the artists André Letria and Sara Feio will respond with ten images to the question: what unites Lisbon and Buenos Aires? And now inside, in Pavilion 9, the Casa Fernando Pessoa museum will offer a series of activities, including the reading of fragments of the Book of Disquiet, in Portuguese and Spanish, with the Amador Portuguese Theater Group of the Camões Center in Buenos Aires.
Outside the fair and from May 2 to June 13 at the National Library, a collection of artists’ books from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation will be on display; while at the Library of Congress and between May 3 and June 3, the José Saramago Foundation, in collaboration with the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI), will present the exhibition Let’s take the word, with photographs by Gervasio Sánchez, and celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 25th anniversary of the awarding of the Nobel Prize to José Saramago.
Consult the entire Fair programming at: el-libro.org.ar
