ECHOES OF LEAVING AND RETURNING
Memories of Migrations from Vouzela
Audiovisual installation

Lafões Cult Lab (Vouzela)
July 19th – August 9th 2024
Weekdays, from 9:30am to 12:30pm and from 2:30pm to 5:30pm
A co-production between Binaural Nodar and the Municipality of Vouzela

From the end of the 19th century to the present day, millions of Portuguese have emigrated, looking for alternatives to poverty, a subsistence economy and/or a lack of job opportunities. As such, emigration is both part of the memory and the present of Portugal’s rural regions. In each village there are multiple cultural layers that relate to the different waves of emigration, the more distant ones, to Brazil, Venezuela, the United States of America, etc. or the closer ones, to European countries such as France, Germany, Switzerland or Luxembourg. Likewise, many rural areas now hosting people from other continents, in a process in the opposite direction to that which so many Portuguese have embarked on.

The migratory flight, thought of in historical and social terms, identified origins, destinations, contexts, motivations and quantified the flows of those who emigrated and those who returned or not. However, there is a literally infinite range of topics that can be explored in depth when you have direct contact with former and current emigrants and their descendants, such as architecture, the economy, language, the sense of belonging and cultural insertion of those who emigrated and their descendants, perceptions of the evolution of the places of destination and origin, the type of connection with the rural world, family narratives and document records, symbology and affective semiotics, gastronomy and many others.

Binaural Nodar, in collaboration with the Municipality of Vouzela, is presenting the audiovisual installation “Echoes of Leaving and Returning: Memories of migrations from Vouzela”, conceived following ethnographic collections carried out in 2022 and 2023 with former emigrants from the municipality of Vouzela and also with recent immigrants to the region, paying attention to aspects related to “migrant sensoriality”, i.e. how the condition of shared belonging, between the place of origin and migration, is reflected in the senses: the visual and sound landscape, smells, music, gastronomy, objects with symbolic value, etc.

Thanks to the inhabitants interviewed for this project: Ana Carvalho, Abílio Pereira da Silva, Jeniffer Cabral, Dolores Rodrigues, Sónia Couceiro, Fátima Henriques and Avelino Henriques.

Technical and artistic file:

Interviews conducted by Liliana Silva, Rafael Bresciani, Ana Margarida Ferreira, Liliana Silva and Luciano Piccilli
Sound and audiovisual recordings: Liliana Silva, Rafael Bresciani, Ana Margarida Ferreira and Luciano Piccilli
Audiovisual editing: Ana Margarida Ferreira
Text and introductory voice: Luís Costa

Binaural Nodar is a cultural organization supported by the Portuguese Republic – Culture | Directorate-General for the Arts.