Message in a Bottle is constructed as a time capsule, gathering an assortment of questions about the present times and reflecting on what an artist’s message to the world would sound like. Blurring the boundaries between the fictional and the real, as well as between a physical space and an imaginary place, the exhibition is expanding outdoors, into the city of Ponta Delgada, engaging people to participate in this experimental dialog.

The feeling of belonging is often related to a state of mind rather than to a geographical area; dreaming about a faraway place can be traced through the mythology of the island back to ancient times, when the desire to travel and to connect was shaped mainly by storytelling and fictional writing. Even nowadays, the projections on unknown territories are mixing facts and fiction, while the unsettling political fights for power manipulate one’s perception. In this context, the feeling of being simultaneously connected and disconnected, visible and invisible, loud and silent influences our capacity to act and react.

Sending a message in a bottle has a long history pertaining to the need of contacting an outside world, while playing the game of coincidence as an integral part of the communication formula. Sometimes the content of the message expresses all the secrets, the anger, the despair of the sender, while other times it is just a game of chance, an experiment proving that accidental encounters are possible. The impact of the message on the person finding it also relates to an emotional awareness of the existence of the other.

The invited artists articulate their own vision on this fictitious relationship to a future, unknown receiver of their messages, aiming to transgress the physical and temporal boundaries of a specific exhibition. The traces of their gestures, attitudes, ideas and visual creations are hosted by the space of Walk and Talk Festival, a former postal office, giving even more meaning to the conceptual framing of this exhibition. The layers of interpretation follow the clues of the exhibited art works and the temporary interventions in the city, from a fictional documentary photographic project about East and West relations, to an imaginary dialog with mythological characters, and historical representations of a paradise-like place, where anything is possible and time becomes elastic.