VA 2023 Editorial

Festival Verão Azul is having, in 2023, its 11th edition, and has designed 8 days of programming for the cities of Lagos and Loulé – continuing its active mission of discussing contemporaneity through experimentalism in national and international visual and performing arts.

Working in the Algarve region for 13 years, it seeks to renew itself without ever forgetting the purpose of its creation, which is to eclectically continue to invest in the decentralization of art shows and artistic experience.

Characterized by a curatorship based on resistance and miscegenation of current cultural landscapes, FVA presents a programme that integrates transgressive artistic objects, carefully catering to the needs of a new generation, and suggesting a hybrid disruption, contemplation and immersion.

After a close and intimate 4-year collaboration with co-programmer Catarina Saraiva, and wanting to embrace new ideas and ways of seeing and being in the world, Verão Azul invited Daniel Matos – a young Lagos-born performer, dancer and choreographer – to design, together with Ana Borralho & João Galante, the programme for the next four years of the Festival.

Having as a starting point sound, in its relation with body and space, we invited a collection of established and emerging artists acting mainly across disciplines and new media, proposing to break the boundaries of normative realities, from the intimacy of niches that are becoming more and more global, choosing works that glide between performance, the visual arts and video-gaming, including concerts fusing pop-electronic, afro beat, post hardcore and metal.

We have also partnered with the Performing Identity Erasmus+ project – in professional training – in developing a critique group and workshop for 17 students coming from Ireland, Brussels and Poland, looking for new insights on the theme of collective identities.

The Verão Azul programme focuses on that search zone for the in-between, where one continues to learn how to be a minority in the greatest possible way.