Second initiative of the “Talks in the Square” is entitled “Fruit and Vegetables with Letters”

Next Friday, July 9, at 10 am, will welcome, near the fountain of the Braga Municipal Market, the second initiative of the Talks in the Square, entitled Fruits and Vegetables with Letters. The initiative of Passeio, as part of the research and intervention project COMPRAÇA, is organised in partnership with Braga City Hall.

A market is a place of exchange. We exchange goods, but we also exchange words, smiles, stories, knowledge, memories and affections. Under the motto, What do the sellers of the square have to teach us and show us? the Passeio team has been recording the details of these exchanges in close collaboration with all those involved. Among these records is a collection of verses and rhymes alluding to fruit and vegetables by the square’s seller farmers.

In this second talk, Passeio intends to give back to the square the content collected. There will be a small staging, performed by Estefânia Surreira, storyteller, and readings of literary passages (e.g. Cesário Verde, Ondina Braga, Sophia de Mello Breyner) relating to fruit and vegetables, through the voice of Isabel Cristina Mateus, teacher and researcher of the University of Minho.

Through this combination of voices, we seek to stimulate possible dialogues between traditional knowledge, the performing arts and the experiences of markets and squares in Portugal and the world, recorded in Literature.

The event will be moderated by Teresa Mora and is open to the public.

Estefânia Surreira is passionate about literature and illustration for children and has become a storyteller and Portuguese and French teacher in Primary and Secondary Schools. She has been studying lyrical singing since 1997 and performs regularly in singing and piano recitals. She is part of the duet of Ancient and Experimental Music Folie à Deux and vocalist of NyX, a band that fuses electronic music and lyric singing. She studied Introduction to Theatre Techniques. In the last few years has been invited to participate in theatre projects and various staged recitals of the Sindicato da Poesia de Braga (Poetry Union of Braga). 

Isabel Cristina Mateus has a degree in Modern Languages and Literature from the University of Coimbra and a PhD in Literature Sciences (Portuguese Literature) from the University of Minho. She is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Letters and Human Sciences. Researcher at the Centre for Humanistic Studies of this University, she works in Identity and Intermedial Studies (Group 2i) and Poetics in the Portuguese Language. She is currently coordinator and responsible for the project Maria Ondina Braga: Autobiography, Interculturalism and Life-Writing.  She has (co) organised thematic volumes and is the author of several essays on Portuguese authors, published in specialised national and international books and magazines. 

Teresa Mora was born on January 12 1963, in Lisbon. In 1989, she graduated in Sociology at the Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa (University Institute of Lisbon; ISCTE). In 2007 she completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of Minho. She is a lecturer at the Social Sciences Institute of this university. She has worked on social theory and social utopias, collaborative practices between art, science and philosophy, artistic practices of participation and social intervention. 

COMPRAÇA is a research and intervention project developed by Passeio that highlights the role of media in transforming urban space into a lived place and the participation of each one to build a communal place and a shared/contested feeling.

Passeio is an urban art and culture platform of the Communication and Society Research Centre of the University of Minho.  The project aims to observe the social spaces and provide context for the daily actions in cities through a dialogue with the shared memory of its inhabitants and passers-by.

[Posted: 06-07-2021]