Saudade de Europa

Local Merchants & Various Artists

“Saudade is a Portuguese and Galician term that is a common fixture in the literature and music of Brazil, Portugal, Cape Verde and beyond. The concept has many definitions, including a melancholy nostalgia for something that perhaps has not even happened. It often carries an assurance that this thing you feel nostalgic for will never happen again.”

Saudade de Europa is a poetic exploration on the 50-year economic evolution of the European continent. Whereas globalization transformed it into a consumer-driven economy.

Various Artists will be buying, gathering, and changing objects and their tales that relate to Europe's difficult economic transformation as they make their way from Cologne to Munich through Frankfurt, Würzburg, and Nuremberg.

The goods are under a broad category of necessities, including clothing, decorative items, kitchenware, and hardware. The one thing that all of these artifacts have in common is saudade, a Portuguese term that cannot be translated but denotes melancholy, nostalgia, a sense of loss, or a feeling of missing.

The acquired objects, as well as the shops where they can be found, transport us to "the good old days," when there were no shopping malls or online stores. When storeowners had the time to connect with a customer, the items they sold were made by locals for responsive customers. These 'good old times' in 'Saudade de Europa' also represent a possible future scenario, an alternative to our current neoliberal system, and an active support for diversity.

STORYTELLING OBJECTS

The collected products will be “processed” on the road in improvised studios like hotel rooms, pubs, ateliers, etc. Various Artists’ fictional members
use their favourite techniques to transform these objects into art-pieces. Breaking, mending, erasing, painting are some of the techniques used to alter these storytelling artefacts.

Behind the acquisition and transformation of the objects, the life story of the shop owners is of most importance. Are they who initially were considered as “petit bourgeois” now the last witnesses of centuries old trading traditions and should we try to record their stories , their trajectory, and local embedding. How they got in the business etc... Their view on a changing world with for them a harsh economic development. How they cope with it, etc...

ONLINE SELLING

To disseminate all the encounters and stories we use contemporary online interfaces, sale sites
as Ebay, Amazon, artfinder.com, etc... ‘ONLINE Selling’ will be the campaign to diffuse our collected stories. The online prices for the objects will be set at the highest level to ensure that the works are not sold, but to lure the online shoppers into our campaign and direct their attention to the related stories.

We use (or hack) the interface of Ebay, Amazon, and others as a form of publishing to reach a specific public of online shoppers and to create an awareness about the disappearing of traditional local shops due to online commerce.

chapter.i: September – November 2016

i.i Brussels – Helsinki via Magdeburg, Szczecin, Koszalin, Gdansk, Olsztyn, Riga, Tallinn.

i.r Helsinki - Jyväskylä via Porvoo, Joutsa, Hartola, Sysmä, and Korpilahti.

i.z Helsinki -Rovaniemi via Pieksämäki, Lapinlahti and Kuusamo.

chapter.r: March 2018

r.i Sevilla

r.r Córdoba

chapter.Z: September 2022

COMINES-WARNETON