Walk&Talk returns to São Miguel between 5 - 20 July and in its ninth edition, the festival welcomes more than fifty artists, collectives and curators, presents dozens of new projects that cross art, dance, performance, architecture, design, cinema and music, and builds a new temporary pavilion designed by Artworks & GA Studio. The program is organized around art circuits that extend to various localities and spaces of the island, hosts artistic residences, exhibitions, shows, concerts, talks, initiatives dedicated to knowledge and parallel events. 


ART CIRCUIT: AN EXPEDITION INSPIRED BY EMPATHY
Curated by The Decorators, a multidisciplinary collective based in London and made up of Carolina Caicedo, Mariana Pestana, Suzanne O'Connell and Xavi Llarch Font, the Art Circuit recovers the idea of expedition and approaches the island empathically, encouraging artists and participants to “merge instead of measure, to personify rather than classify, to live and not to explain." The seven new projects that will be created in various locations in São Miguel will seek to "incorporate the island and produce experiences on the ground in collaboration with communities and landscapes" and "that rethinks our current relationship with nature and rehearses alternative approaches.

EXHIBITION CIRCUIT: UNTITLED TO EXPLORE IDENTITIES
Seven new individual projects will be presented simultaneously in five spaces of Ponta Delgada by artists Andreia Santana, Gonçalo Preto, Maria Trabulo, Rita GT, Mónica de Miranda, Miguel C. Tavares & José Alberto Gomes and Diana Vidrascu. The circuit is curated by Sergio Fazenda Rodrigues and explores the idea of "identity" in its relationship with gender, history, landscape, architecture, archaeology and other fields of science. The projects that map the circuit result from residences in the Azores and will occupy public spaces, private, museological and develops, giving rise to the contemporary artistic creation of the urban network of the city itself.

In parallel, on July 4, the artist Olivier Notellet inaugurates an individual show that marks the pre-opening of the festival, as usual, at Fonseca Macedo Gallery. On Saturday, July 6, doors open at MIOLO Gallery, for the collective exhibition curated by the design studio Ilhas, founded by Catarina Vasconcelos and Margarida Rêgo.

ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE
During the festival, visual artists Abbas Akhavan, Daniel Bracken, Nadia Belerique and Madalena Correia, winner of Young Azorean Creators 2018, are starting new residencies. Luísa Salvador and Polliana Dalla Barba continue their residencies, and the duo In the area of music, Michelle Blades and Rodrigo Araújo (Vaiapraia) are going to compose in the Azores a new album that will be edited by Midnight Special Records, a live performance at the festival and, in collaboration with the director Tomás Paula Marques, produce a documentary about the artistic process. This group of artists will also be joining the winners of the Open Call 2019, which will reopen on March 15, and those invited by curator Miguel Flor for the sixth edition of RARA - Craft Residency of the Region of the Azores, where designers of all the world and local artisans cross techniques, raw materials, "know-how" and affections for the creation of new objects.

SHOWS IN ITINERANCY 
At the Still Point of The Turning World by Joana Gama and Luís Fernandes, directed and orchestrated by José Alberto Gomes, video by Miguel C. Tavares and the special participation of the students of the Regional Conservatory of Ponta Delgada, will inaugurate Walk&Talk’s 9th edition at the Teatro Micaelense. Also in the main regional theatre, the highlight is the presentation of Lento e Largo, the new creation from duo Jonas&Lander that premiered at Guimarães's GUIdance 2019 Festival and is co-produced by 5 Sentidos Network. Silent Disco by Alfredo Martins and Marco da Silva Ferreira and Burning Pricks by António Branco & Riccardo T., works that share the desire to cancel barriers between their interpreters and the public or even fuse the actions of both, will be presented at other venues and unconventional spaces of the island


More information and updates in the 2019 Program in the upcoming months.

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Most of the activities at Walk&Talk’s program are open access, with the exception of exhibitions, shows and concerts hosted in museums, halls and other partner venues, managed independently and with their own admission rules.