Since the very first edition of Linha de Fuga, one of the participating artists in the laboratory is invited to respond to the question: “How can the ephemeral be archived?” — and to this question, another reflection is added: What should be archived from an encounter between artists who come with their own processes and artistic research to meet other artists, develop their work, and allow themselves to emerge within an environment of total experimentation, but also of knowledge production?

The 2024 edition of Linha de Fuga proposed a reflection on the theme “Facing Fears.” In each edition, an ephemeral collective is formed over the course of three weeks around a social question that allows us to think about the power of collectivity. The Linha de Fuga laboratory is a space for residency, encounter, learning, knowledge production, and also for the exploration of sensitivities and ways of living collectively. During this period, there are collective work moments, individual work moments, dialogues and cross-contaminations that make it possible to move forward — or even to doubt — in the creative processes, and to develop a network of connections that supports individual fragilities. In the 2024 edition, 12 artists from different countries came together in Coimbra, taking the city and its context as an experimental environment.

Claudia Ganquin was the selected archive artist. She brought the proposal not only to observe but as well  to challenge her companions to engage in reflective practices around her own way of creating an archive. Claudia also presented her own archiving process: she performed installations based on her observation and interpretation of others’ work and practices, with an affectionate gaze upon each one’s fears. She made faces cry, offered stones to everyone, and left with memories, conversations, and many recorded images. Over the course of a year, she reflected on what this archive should be and insisted on its three-dimensionality, which is now displayed at the Festival’s Meeting Point in the 2025 edition — an installation that is her vision of a body-archive, where memories are buried like archaeological discoveries of a past that is also the present.

A year is not a long time to build an archive capable of reflecting and returning to the world what has happened. But Claudia had an ally within our organisation. Linha de Fuga assumes that an archive represents a subjective vision of reality — an essential premise for developing it with complete freedom and as an act of creation. In each edition, the proposals are different, shaped by the authorial perspective of each artist. If there is a scientific act of cataloguing information, we, as an artistic organisation, recognise that the mission of Linha de Fuga’s archives is not to be impartial — just as neither History nor any archive truly is — but rather to offer a perspective on the sensibility of acts as fragile as the creation of an artwork. If an artwork emerges from the depths and urgencies of each artist, how could an archive not also be traversed by that same sensibility?

Claudia reflected on her archive through several questions that resonated during and after the laboratory: the fears and fragilities of each participating artist, the memory of their practices, but above all, she wanted to understand what kind of body this archive could have. And what memories stay with our body?

Claudia thus embraces that subjectivity and presents an archive filled with her own personal memories. This archive, as she herself says, does not belong to the past, but rather offers a reflection on the thoughts and practices of artists who, for a time, had the freedom to live and share their fears, and to expose the wounds of society and humanity through art. It is also a reflection on what it means to archive something as delicate as those very reflections. In an act of profound generosity, this archive also reveals humanity’s sensitivity in facing its own fears — even the fear of crystallising, within an archive, moments that are pure memory.
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Catarina Saraiva
Curator of Linha de Fuga

Creation
Claudia Ganquin
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Artistic Collaboration
Joaquin Segade e Juan Gasparini

Critical gaze
Catarina Saraiva
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Acknowledgements
Lao Lamannamusic in Barbara’s video: Ruth Etting Love Me Or Leave Me (1929)film in Barbara’s video: “The Harmonies of Werckmeister” directed by Béla Tarr (Hungary, 2000)Lao Lamannamúsica no video de Bárbara Cordeiro: Ruth Etting Love Me Or Leave Me (1929)filme no video de Bárbara Cordeiro: “Las armonias de Werckmeister” direção: Bela Tarr (Hungria, 2000)

All other music and sounds used in the videos are part of the works and of the live-recorded environment.

Web Design
Joana Daniela Oliveira

Several of the photographs used in the videos belong to Paulo Abrantes