This year we visited Lisbon’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) and were excited to find EVIDENCE and immersive audiovisual installation by Soundwalk Collective & Patti Smith. Based around Perfect Vision, a trilogy of albums by Smith and Steve Crasneanscki made between 2017 and 2021. Each album relates to the travel writings of three french poets – Antonin Artaud, Arthur Rimbaud and René Daumal, who travelled to remote and distant locations hoping to better understand themselves. The Soundwalk team explored Mexico’s Sierra Tarahumara, the Abyssinian valley in Ethiopia and Himalayan summit in Nepal, recording the locations and gathering reference materials – sound, film and found objects combine with audio, photographs, text and artworks created by Patti Smith. Originally displayed at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, redesigned for the MAC in Lisbon.
Marina Tabassum’s exhibition “Materials, Movements & Architecture in Bangladesh” focusses on the Dhaka based designer’s work exploring how to better use resources and community engagement strategies. Particularly her work with the Rohingya refugees, responding to appalling living conditions and facing rising sea levels her team produced a modular and portable low-cost building system using local materials to benefit a large number of people. Interesting to see so many of the ideas discussed in Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics, this year’s timely holiday reading.
