PRESENTATION

Seen from Montreal the Lisbon subway remains a pure metaphor…a subway seen in films, or one described on the telephone or via e-mail by our Portugeese VideoLisboa partners. This led to a desire to intervene in the city, and more specifically to dig underground and set up a temporary storehouse for images hailing from elsewhere. This insitu electronic art event—previously presented in Montreal (September 1998) and in Paris (April 1999)— constitutes an extension of Champ Libre's nomadic and tangible exploration of aesthetics, electronic art and novel urban spaces such as the subway.

This project obliges us to build in the in-between spaces of the connections and dreams of a city and its history;like the meaning of an image that sweeps before us. An image in transit, moving through the waves, electronic impulses, time and the ocean. By its very nature video draws the outlines of eclipsing realities whose meaning arises from a continuous oscillation between light and darkness. In the daily journeys of the subway riders we discover the same phenomenon—though here it is profoundly anchored in the identity of each individual—a roundtrip journey between one's private and public being. The changing states of mind that result from the passage between the subterranean and the surface in relation with a collective urban activity call for a constant and simultaneous negotiation between anonymity and the presence of being.

We chose the Baixa-Chiado station, which inspired us through its architecture, its exits and the fact that it really is under the water. This later fact is discreetly and persistemntly brought to light through the station's structure and the continuous flow of people—natural human rhytms which meet. This artistic experience, which grows richer from one subway to the next, will certainly allow the riders of the Lisbon subway to make furtive and surprising encounters—something that Champ Libre and VideoLisboa sincerely hope for.

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