Between February and March 2022, Binaural Nodar (Viseu Dão Lafões Region, Portugal) will develop, in co-production with the House of Portugal in Montevideo, the first stage of the project “Echoes of Leaving and Returning: Place, body and sound in Portuguese emigration”. This project will specifically investigate several dimensions related to Portuguese emigration in Uruguay. Throughout different times and different places, of departure and arrival, a journey will begin together with several generations of Uruguayans who have arrived or are descendants of those who arrived from Portugal.
In this first phase of the project, several encounters will be held with members of the Portuguese community and descendants of Portuguese from the Montevideo area, thus starting a journey in search of echoes of identity, transformations, family and individual experiences. Throughout the cycle of encounters, an attempt will be made to discover how “portugality” is built, where it lives, how it breathes and expresses itself. The project also aims to understand and share, through internet or face-to-face presentations, which micro-stories or great narratives can be present in some details of these families or these households, who are both Uruguayan and Portuguese.
This first cycle of encounters will be directed by the Uruguayan anthropologist Ana Cecilia Rodríguez, who since 2015 has been developing the Mapa Sonoro de Uruguay project, which proposes different ways of socializing and valuing little-known memories and heritage. “Echoes of Leaving and Returning” represents the continuation of a collaborative path between Binaural Nodar and Mapa Sonoro de Uruguay, begun in 2018, which has already materialized in the development of sound narratives in the north of Uruguay and in the Portuguese Center region, in the exploration of rural territories, simultaneously with a reflection on the possibilities of art as a means of communication, knowledge and transcendence in often peripheral and forgotten territories.
The collaboration with the House of Portugal in Montevideo is extremely relevant for the project, because of the knowledge that it has on the Portuguese community and because of the dynamism of its regular program of activities. On the other hand, Binaural Nodar is once again grateful for the promotion support of the Portuguese Embassy in Montevideo, with which exists a path of several years of articulation in promoting proposals that enhance cultural links between Portugal and Uruguay.
This first phase of “Echoes of Leaving and Returning” is part of a larger set of activities to be developed in both 2022 and 2023 on the subject of migration from/to Portugal, including field work, cultural mediation, artist residencies, workshops, exhibitions, etc., in various countries such as Uruguay, Brazil, France, Switzerland and Portugal.