1 - 14 October 2024
João Gonçalo Lopes is an architect working across disciplines between art, design and education. Having worked in renowned architectural offices in different parts of the globe, he is currently working with a hands-on approach on scales that go from urban design, to art installations or furniture design.
As a founding member of Colectivo Til he has been developing exploratory processes and interventions with different communities, that question the notions of mediation, power and participation in the public realm.
With a context based attitude, his work is rooted in collaboration, focusing on the ecology of materials as means to achieve conscious and interconnected realities.
His practice investigates spaces and objects as mediators of multidimensional relations, be it social, political, emotional, artistic or material.
Gonçalo worked on site from 1 - 14 October.
Arriving in Traumsee in the first days of autumn, the lake and the mountains are changing their face. The autumn season and its changing bodies seem to be proposing different relations towards the water. During the residence, as we work through stormy and sunny days, we realize that if everyday we walk by the lake, the lake will tell us its state of mind, it will never be the same.
The floating platforms should also provide for an experience in time. Maybe what we are looking for is a condition of comfort, a garment, a way for the individual body to be safe enough to stay and relate to the other bodies: the body of water, the body of land containing the water, the body of air blowing, the collective body of people gathering around the space.
So it would be about enduring time, waiting, struggling at times, but gently slowing down, getting closer to the ground like in japanese tea houses, bowing as you enter, accommodating the bodies to the shapes and edges like soft sleeves.
IG: www.instagram.com/joaogoncalolopes
The resulting installation would be used as part of Angelika Wienerroither's course at the University of Art and Design Linz:
Laboratory for fluid experiences: Viewing the world from the water.
When a person leaves stable land to set off on a ship, the perspective changes. The waves shake the body, the mind. It is an abandonment of the known in favour of a future, uncertain, as yet unfixed state and place. The water transforms, thinking takes on a different direction, a new aggregate state. Things can become completely different. And perhaps then the possibility of an island, a utopia, a better world will emerge.
How can students utilise the change in perspective from stability to fluidity?
Concept:
João Gonçalo Lopes
Construction:
João Gonçalo Lopes, Kerstin Reyer, Sophie Netzer
Production
Kerstin Reyer, Sophie Netzer, Simone Barlian
Overall project:
Plateau Blo
Organization:
Salzkammergut 2024, Europäische Kulturhauptstadt
University of Art Linz
Thanks to
Markus Hiesleitner
Guilherme Rodrigues
Pedro Augusto
Li Wang
We would like to thank our cooperation partners!