In 2020, aDrogaria, a project born in Porto, set up its temporary headquarters in Lisbon, at ARBAG.

Founded in the former Drogaria da Corujeira, the collective project is built on a collaborative hybridism that privileges de-hierarchisation, both conceptually and with regard to the areas it occupies. 

A drugstore, a place of day-to-day life in the underbelly of civil society, is not aligned with the sacralised and bureaucratised logic of an institutional museum. The drugstore is the “place next door”, open to anyone, where you can find the means to do and solve (almost) anything.

Along one of Lisbon’s main arteries, in the Estrela quarter, and at the very heart of the latest debates and demonstrations on property speculation, the drugstore has opened an office that includes accountancy, futurology and a bar. Técnico Oficial de Contas was the name given to this occupation.

As we walk along the street and stare at the project’s storefront, we could assume that this is just another business that is surviving thanks to a golden view in the middle of Portugal’s unbearable housing situation, with its geography for sale. A shop window with perfectly clean glass, a surreal concept and an eye-catching lettering. The cards have been dealt.

By using disguise, which effectively dilutes the boundaries between the artistic object and the “real” context, on entering ARBAG we are walking into an office.

A desk, a coffee mug, an open notebook and some numerical tasks written in pencil (some people still do their sums by hand). Nevertheless, many elements in this setting clashed with the seeming normality. 

Lit candles, energy-channelling stones and, right in the centre of the room, a printer constantly spitting out sheets of paper. Papers stacked up on the floor at lightning speed, bewildering everyone who decided to come in. 

If anyone looked at the paperwork, they could find invoices predicting the future. The printer, an icon of bureaucracy, acted as a clairvoyant, triggering an occurrence in the middle of the room that could, at first glance, seem to be a mistake. 

As the slogan on the front of the office read, “do you want to know how long you’re going to live and how much money you need to make?“. Accounting and the future have found a place to cohabit.

As we walked down the stairs, we entered the underground of this business. 

There was a bar beneath the office where visitors could sip a glass of wine while listening to radio music and doing their accounts. A place devoted to the escapism of an ordered and accounted-for life.

Layer by layer, the drugstore, using staging and occupation, brings together both humour and a present-focused awareness – a re-centred marginalisation that offers a taste of the unusual in a city where we find little to be surprised about.

aDrograria ran from September 15 to 16.