We flew to São Miguel, Azores, to attend the Kick-Off of the Walk&Talk Arts Biennial, a project established in 2011 as an annual July event – but which now promises a more (!) long-lasting, involved and ingrained format, requiring longer, more reciprocal and committed gestures, and for that it will become a Biennial.

Having never been to the Festival, the Island or the Archipelago before, this made the experience even more (sensory and) familiar with the outlook and expectations of the Biennial’s programme, to be held for the first time between September and November 2025. These three days mirrored a bit of what they promise to do in the coming year – rather than the two weeks of the Festival, the Biennial, on the other hand, will have a different time span: two months of decreased intensity and extraversion (it is worth mentioning the need to relocate it outside of the high season), but greater complicity and impact, fostering the longevity of the projects, programmes and affections.

We were first welcomed into an auditorium at the University of the Azores, where we were given a presentation of the first edition. This was an important occasion to reveal what has been a slow and meticulous process, perhaps since the pandemic. Jesse James, artistic director of the Biennial and of the eponymous Association, brought to the stage the guest curators for this edition of Walk&Talk – Claire Shea, Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy and Liliana Coutinho. Everyone was there, whether on or off stage: the core team, the curators and the guest artists[1] (local and international), the regional government representatives, as well as residents and onlookers – something that immediately underlined two of the key premises: to locate, embody and materialise the essence of the issues, as well as to shuffle the island’s periphery by pooling efforts, affections and projects. There were no Zoom appearances, and we all travelled to the island to launch a process that mainly stems from a conscious and present gesture, even if intermittent – we go, we come back, we stay, we come back, we go -, which builds or fertilises imaginations ‘from’ the island rather than ‘of’ the island[2]. Claire Shea, from Toronto, Canada, started by saying that, notwithstanding the spatial distance, she is very familiar with a certain Azorean identity(s), as she lives in Little Portugal, a borough with a heavy presence of the Azorean community – a diaspora that, to this day, numbers around 1.5 million people, against the 250.000 who live in the archipelago. This raises the possibility of viewing the locality as a structure of feeling and sensibility (in Arjun Appadurai’s words[3]) and not only in territorial terms; the particularities of the island can extend beyond its borders, they can be exchanged, bargained over, returned to, revealed and restored.

Regarding going and coming back, it is also important to mention the fact that the University of the Azores – where we were welcomed to present the first edition – does not provide any artistic training, which results in displacement (and privilege, consequently), and, just as in the past, a disconnection with the island – even if they came back, the artists who decided to leave to find specialised training did not find much encouragement to pursue their practices. Nor was there an institutional or even informal network of cultural venues (or artistic and craft production facilities) in dialogue with each other. This dynamic, of encouraging and coordinating production and collectivisation, is a major component of Walk&Talk’s strategy – not out of an attempt to collectivise, market or give visibility to the event or to São Miguel, but out of a belief in the potential of artistic research and, as a result, of contemporary art to refresh ways of looking at, using and giving meaning to the island’s spaces and times. As a festival, Walk&Talk already had this ambition put into practice in certain cases, such as RARA (Azores Region Crafts Residency), which emerged together with the festival in 2014, but now operates with autonomy of its own in parallel to the event, like a rhizome. A rhizome is not built on any structural or generative model; on the contrary, it sprouts from a thousand plateaus, ‘continuous regions of intensities, pulsating on themselves, unfolding while ignoring any orientation towards a high point or an external goal’[4]; it ramifies horizontally under an open system designed to combine the most diverse elements and concepts in a web of relationships. New ideas may emerge from these interactions, but the web is ruptured and generates heterogeneous series, evolving autonomously following their vanishing lines – which can always be rebuilt. This issue of cultural institutionalisation through a rhizome-web is extremely important for the Biennial’s cohesion, according to Jesse James – and the University’s example could act as a prelude to this endeavour, of fertilising and articulating with other institutions and entities that work ‘from’ the Island. Perhaps, in the (near) future, there will be openness, willingness and conditions to reinstate artistic teaching at the University of the Azores.

A rhizome is also formed by ‘Gestures of Abundance’, the theme of the first and forthcoming editions of the Biennial. Actually, perhaps these gestures predate the rhizome, articulating them, stemming instead from the abundance of the ecotone, another core motif of the Biennial – moving away from the recurring inclination to work on the basis of eco-socio-cultural scarcity; they do not start with what is lacking, but with that which abounds, whilst considering how this wealth can be gestured towards and repurposed in cooperation models and contexts (regional and international), where that which is abundant is lacking, and vice versa, as stated by Liliana Coutinho. Coming back to the pivotal role of the ecotone in the rhizomatic epistemology behind the Biennial, we must clarify the ‘marginal effect’ arising from this scenario, which in ecology is known as an ecotone and in linguistics as a ‘contact zone’[5].

In ecology – the science which studies the relationship between living beings and their environment -, the marginal effect offers an opportunity for greater creativity. This effect happens in an ecotone, a transitional space between two or more distinct communities of living beings. This is where contact takes place between multiple neighbouring species. Its wealth lies in the fact that it often contains both organisms from adjoining communities and, moreover, organisms typical of the ecotone itself, which emerge from the confluence of these neighbouring communities. For example, the edges and banks of rivers. In other words, the number of species in the ecotone is always greater than in the neighbouring communities, making it richer and more complex than the communities that gave rise to it: ‘the propensity for greater density and variety in areas where communities come together is known as the marginal effect’[6]. This marginal and peripheral condition is where Walk&Talk acknowledges its abundance, centrality and creativity.

Back to the rhizome: this is also built on failures, errors, changing direction, pauses, reversals and only occasionally many certainties. Errancy is an integral component in processes which are not based on any structural or generative model, in processes unconstrained by productivity outputs, and this is another vital point of the Biennial which they were determined to emphasise. One of the guest curators, Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy addressed this question on the launch day by sharing a popular South African expression (and philosophy): ‘Angazi, but I’m sure’, which translates as ‘I don’t know, but I’m sure’. It is a contradictory sentence, usually uttered at the beginning of an answer: ‘How do I find my way to the beach? – I don’t know, but I’m sure you’ll get there if you keep going’. The respondent is unsure of what they know; or perhaps they are certain, but do not know how to say it; or else they know, but do not know what they know. This is essentially an expression that asserts the importance of experience, improvisation and imagination as knowledge forms in their own right.

All these questions that drive forward the Biennial’s philosophy and epistemology were brought to our attention both during the presentation session and throughout the remaining days. On Saturday, we took an Excursion to Various Sides of the Question (it should be noted that the route included the outskirts and not just the city of Ponta Delgada), met Professor Zélia Travassos and the Sete Cidades eco-social mapping project by Maria Emanuel Albergaria. We rounded off the day at Termas da Ferraria, where we enjoyed hot baths on a cold and rainy day. On Sunday, we attended an Assembly, built by Vergílio Varela, where no one (not even the press) was left out – residents and travellers thought and discussed territories, communities, the Azorean identity(s) and, in these contexts, what the arts can do. I must also mention that we enjoyed lunch, dinner[7] and some dancing, because, as Jesse James was fond of emphasising, these are also ways of taking part and making culture out of leisure.

On this subject, it is worth mentioning Vaga – Espaço de Arte e Conhecimento and home of the Walk&Talk Biennial, as well as Associação Anda&Fala, an extension of the event when the Biennial is not running, but which is permanently involved with communities in the cultural sphere, as well as on a daily basis. They showed us the exhibition Corpos Magmáticos, from the New Wave Prize[8], curated by Marta Espiridião and featuring the work of Isabel Medeiros, Joana Albuquerque and Sofia Rocha. Three emerging artists, born in the archipelago, but who intermittently live between the islands and the mainland (Lisbon and Berlin), something that Joana Albuquerque ends up referring to, quite literally, as Um pau de dois bicos (a double-edged sword). Over the course of a year, together with the curator, they worked on a sort of communal exchange with the island. The volcano became the central theme – the very entrance to the exhibition took place through a sensory experience that simulated a crater. Sofia Rocha mimics the volcano’s digestive systems, a living entity and member of the island, between drawing, painting and installation. Isabel Medeiros works on memory and the processes involved in its preservation. With a materialist dialectic, she understood that she needed to explore glass work – and from there she tried to encapsulate volcanic stones and old photographs -, illustrating the meta-material clash of glass’s inability to support stone; as well as the proximity between conceptual and material memories. With both, the (photographic) image fades. Finally, Joana Albuquerque shows three works centred around the conflicting feelings between identity, territory and permanence. For instance, in Grandes Podões, she cuts out large silhouettes that replicate the spaces occupied by resting bodies in the Pesqueiro area – a place central to both the Island and the Biennial, stressing the importance of stillness over productivity.

After all that I have just written, it does not seem as if I have been outlining the essential features of an Art Biennial, but of a socio-ecological project of participatory regeneration through arts and culture, and I truly believe that this is what Walk&Talk intends as a Biennial. If, initially, as a festival, most of the interventions were geared towards the city walls (and the walls of the museum and gallery), today, as the road to the Biennial is built, the relationship with the territory has grown more rooted, engaged and involved. In other words, the curatorial proposal is withdrawing from material exclusiveness to embrace a set of artistic-cultural, inter-relational exercises between the different agencies that make up the Azorean identities.

[1] Alice Visentin, ANDLab, Candice Lin, Colectiva MALVA, Ebun Sodipo, Helle Siljeholm, Gala Porras-Kim, Janilda Bartolomeu, Joana Sá, Lucy Bleach, Mae-Ling Lokko, Maria Emanuel Albergaria, Meg Stuart & Forúm Dança, Nadia Belerique, Resolve Collective, Uhura Bqueer & Soya the Cow, and co-productions with Hotel Europa and Os Possessos.
[2] Cf.: Marincu, D. (2024). “Aprender o nosso presente comum… While we Walk the Talk”. In M. Mesquita (Ed.), Walk&Talk 2011-2022: o que não sabes merece ser descoberto. Azores: Anda&Fala, p. 220.
[3] Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis, MN :University of Minnesota Press.
[4] Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1995). Mil platôs: Capitalismo e esquizofrenia (Vol. 1). Editora 34, p. 32.
[5] On this subject, see: Pratt, Mary. L. (1991) Arts of the contact zone. Profession 91. 33-40. New York: MLA.
[6] Odum, E. (1997) Fundamentals of Ecology. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, p. 250.
[7] Local recipes and regional and seasonal ingredients.
[8] This prize is in fact split into three finalists, rather than one winner – focusing on communality rather than competition through the (possible and feasible) allocation of funds for artistic creation.