Lisbon Art Weekend’s second edition of Spot Lisbon “Imagination — Tools to think about the future”

Lisbon Art Weekend presents the second edition of Spot Lisbon, a series of annual exhibitions following an open call to emerging Lisbon-based artists.

Imagination — Tools to think about the future

Along with the theoretical frameworks developed around it by major 20th- and 21st-century thinkers, imagination pushes at the boundaries of reality. Reflecting on its use and limits is a radical way of asserting our right to the world and calling for new ways of relating, collaborating and living in cooperation.

Many have done just that, from Karl Marx, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, and Jean-Paul Sartre, to more recent voices like Donna Haraway and Fredric Jameson. As a result, imagination has become something of an intimidating term for those willing to engage with it. But indeed, if we mean to rethink our collective future, we must let go of that fear and allow ourselves to be challenged by the ideas it generates—ideas that often arise from the relationship between imagination and contemporary art.

In this spirit, let us approach imagination through four main lenses: as an inner exercise in critique, deconstruction, and transformation; as a tool for meaning- and world-making; as a way to spark speculative realities; and, finally, as an empathy-generating mechanism.

If images are a form of consciousness, then our inner visions, our imaginary space, can be a transformative force, empowering us to question systems, norms and institutions. As such, can the unreal be used to rethink the real? This is where imagination emerges as a vital tool for envisioning the future, for living better, and for speculating about a more just world—politically, culturally, and socially. Speculative practice itself can serve as a kind of training ground for imagination: by granting equal weight to fiction, the unreal, invention and the unknown, we can place them on par with what is known; and instead of standing in opposition, they reveal themselves as complementary, mutually enriching forces.

Ultimately, imagination can be a profound act of empathy: a way of feeling with others, the ability of stepping into someone else’s place. Empathic imagination is inherently political—and, as such, it calls for responsibility, attentiveness and transformation.

In this exhibition, artists Ana Grebler, Francisca Sotto / Sofia Magalhães, HElena Valsecchi, Henrique Neves, Inês Raposo, Luís Rocha, Maria Peixoto Martins, Maria Ventura, Patrícia Assis, and Pedro Liñares collaboratively imagine alternative places that expand our capacity to think and generate new ideas. They do so together, in the space, with visitors and with the world—reciprocally, not on behalf of others, but with them.

Leonor Carrilho