Immemorial: Footsteps in Captivity — Ritualisation of absence in a walk with ghosts

Abstract

From March to September 2022, Associação Substantivo Mágico organised the performative walk “Immemorial: Steps in Captivity” in Lisbon’s riverside area. A ritual audio-walk, which, through historical narratives — especially from the 15th to 18th century —, scenographic elements and a sound composition, (momentarily) resignified the spaces, added readings to the public form and interrupted hegemonic historical representations. The walk emphasizes i) slavery, ii) the forced erasure of identities for integration into a majority culture and iii) the “alterity” and its contribution to modern Portugal. The question defining the artistic project was: what doesn’t the public space tell us (or hide from us), this space that we walk through? We used walking as a mode of enquiry to revisit the effect of the interlocutions between public space, urbanism, and individual and collective memory. We now pose a new underlying question that grounds this posthumously produced article: How to decolonize public space? In this article we will discuss how the space and cityscapes are active systematizers of memory, urban memory systems, of the past and present. And how art can be a catalyst for sociocultural change.