[Exposition] From Lisbon to Marseille, the Iminente festival honors urban cultures
It is the first time that the festival imminentbased in Lisbon, stopped over in Marseille after having traveled to London, Shanghai and Rio de Janeiro, with a specific program for the mucem. An event organized as part of the crossed season France-Portugal and the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union. Founded in 2016 by artist Vhils, imminent is a festival that gives voice to urban cultures in all their expressions. Its principle? There is no headliner…
On the weekend of May 20, the Mucem hosted 1750 visitors on the outdoor spaces of Fort Saint-Jean and on the terrace of J4, for two days and two evenings of celebration around urban cultures. A program aimed at promoting emerging artists from France and Portugal. The occasion was to get out of the usual framework by playing on the complexity of a large Portuguese festival with a relatively atypical museum » explains Jean-François Chougnet, president of the Mucem.
A challenge born from a deep resemblance between Marseille and Lisbon
” We really wanted to come to Marseille says Carla Cardoso, director of the festival, while the city of Marseille maintains an anchored relationship with urban cultures and in particular hip-hop. Lisbon and Marseille thus form two multicultural cities of sharing and connections, one facing the Atlantic and Brazil, the other towards Africa and the Mediterranean. It is therefore quite natural that the desire to “ build a bridge between these two cities “Appeared, specifies the Lisbon.
While the festival will normally take place in wastelands or abandoned places, investing in an institutional space like the Mucem will present a challenge for artists with the objective of “ to break down barriers in order to create a dialogue, a feeling of community between the artists and the museum, between the street and the institution “. The Mucem has one of the most important collections around urban arts and considers urban cultures in their entirety: not only through the visual arts but also music, food or languages. He thus shares with imminentthe same approach, the same vision of urban cultures.
Iminente: From visual arts to musical performances: a multidisciplinary program
Thanks to a selection of artists, famous as well as beginners, the objective was to ” give an overview of what our festival can look like: a kind of best of support Carla Cardoso. With an eclectic musical program, visitors were able to find in the same evening, a new fado concert, a rapper from Marseille, a punk rock group from Cape Verde or a young pianist of Algerian origin. Enough to “ play on the unexpected, the mixture of genres and the curiosity of the public “.
On the visual arts side, visitors discovered the works of Vhils exhibit Cour de la Commande, in the upper part of Fort Saint-Jean and confronted the requested universe of the Portuguese illustrator Wasted Rita, the design studio Pedrita or again the Portuguese Miguel Januário who, with his MaisMenos project, frees himself from the constraints of support and works as well with sculpture as with video, passing through the graphic arts.
Performances that transformed the exteriors of the Mucem!
Useful links :
> To know more about theevent
> Find all the programming of the mucem
> Mucem news in the Gomet’ archives
> “Not even true! “: the Mucem in the eyes of teenagers questioning the truth