September 2021 - 2022
Public intervention, garden, installation, video and lecture-performance
Project commissioned for Bienal de Arte Contemporânea da Maia, Fórum da Maia

Maia was a rural place before the beginning of its modernisation in the 80's, to become what is now known as the City of Maia. Our research took place at the heart of this urbanization, where the Forum is situated.

We were invited to intervene in a public space, and were attracted to an abandoned house and garden, which was fenced soon after we started filming there for the first time. The front garden of the Forum was deemed too visible for our 'experimental' intervention, so we were given a patch of grass that had been neglected by the gardeners when cement was left there after construction.

We used a microscope to look at soil samples, and realised the huge difference in soil life between the compacted and almost sterile soil of the Forum's garden and that of the abandoned lot. A film emerged from this discovery, which later became the material for a lecture-performance, alongside an actual regeneration project, with the space now hosting more than seventy species, shared between spontanious wild plants, annual vegetables as well as trees and shrubs selected by the local community.

The community around the Forum - the guard, the cleaner, the director, the producer, the office workers, the shopkeepers - are now the guardians of this garden. They defend it against the official lawnmower and invite everyone to take part in this communal place of giving and taking which is, most importantly, a real space for the commons and an ecosystem that does not need to be tamed but indeed valued for what it is and what it can become. 

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