Every week, UMBIGO invites two people to share their 5 cultural suggestions. What can we do at home? From a book to a podcast, album or film: here are recommendations from artists, curators, gallery owners, cultural activists, friends.

We will share the recipe for what makes us better, and we remain united and positive.

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Emily Wardill

Books

Maybe I am a little bit biased but I am not the only person impressed by the cinefile culture in Portugal and the insanely beautiful books that Cinemateca produces on Robbe Grillet, Agnès Varda and Howard Hawks amongst others. This bookshop has them all :
Link: https://www.linhadesombra.com

Occasional Criticism
Mike Sperlinger

This mini book Occasional Criticism from Mike Sperlinger is great company, thinking about the cinematic experience away from the idea that it is a black space where your body falls away, the specificity of watching together in particular architecture with projectionists putting up personal messages on the screen. All seems very fantastical in this quarantine. Sperlinger writes so well – rethinking cinema and winding it together with humor and philosophy and his always original eyes.
Link: https://lux—registered-charity-1094936.square.site/product/occasional-criticism-or-anacolutha-on-cinema-and-its-causes-mike-sperlinger/447?cs=true

Video

Havemos de Voltar
Kiluanji Kia Henda

Very grateful that Kiluanji Kia Henda made his video Havemos de Voltar available online to watch in expectation of his exhibition in lisbon. The film takes its title from a poem by Agostinho Neto that argues that in order for Africans to be effectively independent they should rescue all cultural heritage from the pre-colonial period.
Link: https://vimeo.com/210667909

Opera Show

I’ve always been a big fan of Hannah Catherine Jones’s Opera Show and this corona special was , I thought, pretty genius with it’s accapela versions of I will survive and the show must go on capturing the chilling feeling of walking through Rossio in spring with shops boarded up and the only people present attending Remar vans handing out food in plastic carrier bags.
Link: https://www.nts.live/shows/the-opera-show/episodes/the-opera-show-17th-march-2020

Project

Home Cooking is a project by the artist Marianna Simnett and features poems by Precious Okoyomon, cooking with Korakrit Arunanondchai, and a playlist by yours truly, to help you through one hour of this strange spring.
Link: https://soundcloud.com/home-cooking-933046425/spring-2020-playlist-emily-wardill

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Emily Wardill is an artist living in Lisbon and working as a professor in Malmo Art Academy Sweden. She has shown at Tate Britain, The Venice Bienalle, and Gulbenkian Project Spaces. She is currently working towards a solo show at Secession , Vienna that will open in September 2020 and a group show at V-A-C Foundation in Moscow.