Talk by Chilean poet Alejandro Urrutia

On Sunday 25th of June there will be a talk near Lisboa by the Chilean poet Alejandro Urrutia about his experience of exile. The talk will take place in an artist-run house and garden of Ursel August, a residency for older artists at risk or in exile. You are warmly invited to attend, via the zoom-link above.

This talk is only happening because last January - with the support of the EHL, the Swedish Embassy in Portugal and the Swedish Arts Council - Nuno Da Silva Marques organised a visit and presentations by Alejandro and the Iranian-Swedish poet Athena Farrokhzad to Lisboa. During two days they presented Athena’s very well known work Vitsvit translated to Portuguese by Alejandro and Nuni. From then on things developed and the opportunity for this talk came.

Iran and Chile are important extractive zones of the Anthropocene, or Capitalocene, because of oil, copper and lithium, among others, so this translation, the presentations and this coming talk offer valuable contributions to discussions about extractivism and its impact in people’s lives from an artistic point of view. And also of the generative possibilites of poetry and other arts to convey other vocabularies, imaginaries and to call for cultural critiques of extractivism.