SOUND PATHWAY (Porto/PT, 2018)
Audio walk to the site of the former São Vicente de Paulo neighbourhood. Made in collaboration with Ângelo Coelho (Lito).
The Corujeira neighbourhood, later renamed São Vicente de Paulo, was a complex of social housing located in the parish of Campanhã in Porto. Built in 1947 on previously uncultivated land, it was one of the city’s oldest social housing estates, created mainly to accommodate people displaced from *ilhas* and precarious dwellings in the historic centre.
Despite the residents’ resistance, it was demolished in stages between 2005 and 2008, with the high level of housing degradation and the site’s lack of safety cited as the main reasons. People who had lived on the land their entire lives were rehoused in different social housing neighbourhoods across the city, most of them far from their parish of origin. To this day, the demolition is questioned by former residents, as the destruction was carried out even though there was no plan for the area. Around thirteen years after the demolition process began, the site still remains vacant.
The Sound Pathway is a route through the site of the former neighbourhood, narrated by Ângelo Coelho—better known as Lito—a former resident who was born and raised there. Sound is used as raw material to “make visible” what is invisible, thus creating presence for the erasures produced by demolition.
The stories move between the reconstruction of the space and the ways it was used by its residents, and anecdotes about neighbours or events that took place in the neighbourhood. Through his voice, the void is rewritten, seeking to decode in the traces the former spatial structures and the everyday practices associated with them.
The audio recordings were edited into sound tracks that link specific points in the site to particular stories from the neighbourhood. The tracks are available online and can be activated by visitors according to the indications distributed throughout the site.
©Inés Ballesteros
The first collective listening took place in October 2018, when the Wasteland Feast was also held.
More information and a link to listen to the audio tracks are available at percursonoro.tumblr.com
More information and a link to listen to the audio tracks are available at percursonoro.tumblr.com
