On a section of the medieval walls surrounding Guimarães stands a large
sign that reads, “Portugal was born here.” It commemorates a battle in
1128 on the outskirts of this city that allowed Portugal to claim
independence.
A funeral procession recently passed in front of the sign, led by a
group of people carrying a coffin in the shape of Portugal, decorated
with the red carnations that became the symbol of another dramatic
moment in Portuguese history, the 1974 revolution that overthrew the
right-wing dictatorship.
The mock funeral of Portugal, courtesy of the Portuguese artist Miguel
Januário, was one of the many events staged this year to celebrate the
European Union’s declaration of Guimarães as a European Capital of
Culture for 2012. It also served as a reminder that, while the arts
scene has flourished in Guimarães thanks to the award and accompanying
European subsidies, Portuguese culture has otherwise been reeling this
year from a 30 percent cut in state financing for cultural activities,
as well as the downgrading of the Culture Ministry to the rank of
secretariat.
With the government in Lisbon unveiling another austerity budget for
next year, some of Portugal’s most celebrated personalities have been
loudly voicing their concerns. Portugal’s first winner of the Pritzker
Architecture Prize, Álvaro Siza Vieira, warned that he might close his
Portuguese office because of the lack of contracts. During ModaLisboa,
the Lisbon fashion week, the Portuguese designer Nuno Gama filled the
catwalk with models who had their mouths taped over and wore T-shirts
that read “I want to be happy.”
These events are not stopping the citizens of Guimarães from enjoying
their special moment of culture. A heart-shaped logo designed for the
award is on display in almost every shop around the city, in every
color, material and size. At the medieval café on scenic Oliveira
square, one of the waitresses even had the logo tattooed on her arm.
“It’s a year that I want to remember,” she said.
Such enthusiasm took time to build up, said Carlos Martins, the
executive director of the project surrounding Guimarães’s selection. The
project met with some local opposition, as citizens questioned why
millions of euros of public money were being spent on arts rather than
employment programs and other more pressing social concerns.
“People eventually got to understand that culture was not just
entertainment but also about revitalizing this city and integrating it
more into the new economy,” Mr. Martins said.
Indeed, on the back of the European award, Guimarães has revamped
several derelict factories and neighborhoods that were once at the heart
of the city’s leather and textile industries. In the Couros area, home
to abandoned tanneries, the old vats that had been used to dye the
leather now form a cubist-style square in which acoustic guitar and
other music concerts are staged.
One of the most impressive cultural centers that opened in Guimarães
this year is Fábrica Asa, housed in what used to be a textile factory
with a workforce of 2,000 people. It was closed as part of a downsizing
of Portugal’s textile production in the face of competition from China
and other cheaper producers.
Several foreign artists were invited to conceive projects for Asa this
year, including the French artist Christian Boltanski, who used one of
the rooms for “Dance of Death,” in which old coats that he collected
from flea markets were hung and kept circulating on an overhead rail,
like a crowd of dead people.
Also in Asa, Sandra Gamarra, a Peruvian artist, recently set up her
LiMac project, a virtual Lima museum of contemporary art that she
designed to protest the “artistic vacuum in my own city,” she said,
since the Peruvian capital actually does not have any such museum.
Guimarães, she said, “is showing us this year how quickly a city can
create a vibrant arts scene, which then need not disappear a few weeks
later.”
On the top floor of Asa, thousands of revelers have gathered this year
for a series of concerts held by Paul Kalkbrenner and other leading
European electronic musicians. Classical music has also been prominent
in Guimarães, notably through a series of chamber music concerts held in
the beautiful courtyard of the city’s castle.
While Guimarães wanted to use its European funding to attract some
well-known international artists, Mr. Martins also stressed that 80
percent of this year’s cultural projects have been designed and produced
locally, with a view to prolonging several of them beyond 2012. Among
such longer term initiatives is a fashion hub for local designers, who
have made many of the costumes used for the theater and dance
performances presented this year. From 2013, the fashion hub’s operating
costs will be covered by the local university.
Even with the overhaul that Guimarães has recently undergone, it retains
the charm and traditions of an ancient European city, with elderly men
sporting berets and reading their newspapers while having their shoes
shined. Beyond the more stylish clothing boutiques of the historic
center also lies a maze of rundown workshops, including one that
specializes in replacing cathode ray tubes for old television sets. The
building on the other side of the street, however, was shuttered,
displaying on the wall some graffiti that read: “If God exists, let him
help me.”
Among other recently refurbished former textile factories is the Center
for Art and Architecture Affairs, or CAAA, which can be used both for
movie and theater productions as well as an exhibition space for
photographers and other artists. Eduardo Brito, one of the promoters of
CAAA, said that even without the European culture award, the CAAA
project “would have gone ahead, but probably smaller, because nobody can
pretend that Guimarães is the new Berlin.”
Berlin was in fact among the first cities to be awarded the title of
European capital of culture, an initiative promoted in the 1980s by two
of Europe’s most forceful culture ministers at the time, the former
actress Melina Mercouri of Greece and Jack Lang of France.
More recently, however, the title has been shared between two recipients
— Maribor, Slovenia, is the other culture capital in 2012 — and was
also awarded to smaller cities.
“It’s obvious that such an award can have a lot more impact on a place
like Guimarães rather than a major European city that already has a huge
arts scene,” Mr. Martins said.
As the year draws to a close, the arts community in Guimarães is slowly
facing up to the challenging task of generating alternative revenue to
keep their cultural ambitions alive. At the CAAA, for instance, the goal
is to sublet some of the space next year to movie production and to
other companies in order to cover the costs.
“We’re perfectly aware that this is a year of exception for Guimarães,”
said Mr. Brito of the CAAA. “We need to be ready for the hangover.”
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