Exploration 3 - Portugal

The main activity sector chosen is linked to the codfish harbour (Porto Bacalhoeiro) in Ílhavo and the fishing industries that have historically shaped this Atlantic territory. This sector reflects a dense network of cultural heritage, coastal urbanism, and industrial transformation. Today, it also exposes the ecological consequences of maritime extraction and the vulnerability of oceanic ecosystems. The codfish harbour sector brings together both active processing sites such as Grupeixe and Bacalhau Barents, and a broader industrial landscape marked by disuse and transformation. This environment reveals the layered tensions between heritage and economic necessity, and raises questions about the long-term ecological consequences of maritime industry.
The scientific theme was the complex interplay between marine industrial activity, environmental degradation, and climate change developed in collaboration with researchers from CIEMar (Maritime Research and Entrepreneurship Centre) and CESAM (University of Aveiro).

This exploration invited artists to reflect on the ecological, social, and symbolic layers embedded in a coastline marked by both abundance and collapse. The programme questioned how industrialised uses of the sea leave visible scars on landscapes and bodies, and how these traces can be read, interpreted, and re-imagined through artistic research.
By engaging with local labour practices, artists reflected on how bodily gestures and material processes carry traces of environmental change and historical memory. Through visits to the Ílhavo Maritime Museum, the Ship-Museum Santo André, and the Centre for Maritime Religiosity, they encountered both cultural narratives and archival absences. In the working sites of Grupeixe and Bacalhau Barents, they observed how hands, machines, and marine matter interact daily, shaping an economy at once material and precarious.

Under the guidance of Cille Lansade and Nathalie Blanc, the week unfolded through embodied research, site-specific improvisation, and reflective exercises focusing on ecological grief, rhythm, and collective listening. This exploration offered a space to reflect on how artistic practice can respond to environmental loss, while proposing new modes of attention and relationality within damaged maritime landscapes.