Community based project 2012 - 2014
Museu da Crise is an international, social art project initiated by Daniela Paes Leão and Merel Willemsen in 2011, inspired by the parallel between the abandoned Portuguese Pavilion by the renown architect Siza Vieira and Portugal’s now precarious state.
Museu da Crise wants to offer an artistic challenge to the poor market-mindset and the hegemony of the financial sector. Liberalism is the dominant ideology on political, economic and social level worldwide. The free market is the organizing principle par excellence of society and is also commonly believed to be the most efficient ordering principle, but the succession of various crises in recent decades seems to contradict that. It is also questionable whether the free market is the most desirable ordering principle, from an ethical perspective.
Within this contemporary context, Museu da Crise collaborates with various social groups to construct new narratives that redefine the social, cultural and economical ideologies on which Europe has been founded. The main objective of Museu da Crise is to ‘museumify’ crisis and to turn it into a concept of the past. The idea for Museu da Crise originated in Portugal; the avant-garde of the Europe that will be, according to the project initiators.
Museu da Crise explores the potential of domestic strategies and parallel economies, which have a strong presence in contemporary society as counter movements, by expanding these strategies from the private, into the community sphere. Museu da Crise does this by implementing them into the existing visible and invisible infrastructures of the city and the urban environment. By doing so, Museu da Crise wants to liberate the basic human needs from the whims of the free market and make them freely accessible to all.
Even in times of crisis. Museu da Crise does not have a physical location; it is a conceptual place very much present everywhere, as is the current crisis. Musue da Crise manifests itself in different places during presentations, performances or workshops developed by the project initiators in collaboration with the input of the communities, organisations, institutions and individuals that invite the project.
Images: video stills the city of Porto from the video Museu da Crise I
Museu da Crise manifestations
Museu da Crise at
GUIMARÃES EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 2012
In Guimarães, the Museu da Crise was part of the programming of the Educational Service of Guimarães 2012 European Capital of Culture, under the Love Difference project by Michelangelo Pistoletto, whose programme aims to create a purposeful dialogue and to expand concepts and methodologies.
Museu da Crise at
‘BEST OF’ GUIMARÃES: EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE
Museu da Crise was again a guest in Guimarães, Portugal, between June 19th and 22nd at ‘A Festa dos Dias Cheios’, as part of ‘Best Of Guimarães: European Capital of Culture 2012’.
Museu da Crise at
ARCHITECTURE TRIENAL OF LISBON 2013: CLOSE, CLOSER!
Museu da Crise was invited to participate in the Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2013, as part of Associated Projects programme ‘But is it Architecture?’. The triennial examines, encourages and promotes architecture in the broadest sense, both in theory and in practice. ‘Close, Closer’, the third edition of the triennial, portrays architecture as a living, social and artistic force.
Museu da Crise at
PREDRAS 2014: THE FUTURE WAS LIKE THIS
At Festival Pedras ’14 in Lisbon, Museu da Crise presented its film and publication and launched a temporary augmented reality intervention by Paes Leão in which a QR-activated video overlaid the streets of Baixa with a message from a possible future, urging collective social transformation.