Connected Ports: Building Digital Worlds and Encounters between Porto Alegre and Liverpool

Both Porto Alegre and Liverpool share a strong connection with their ports. Even though they’re no longer at the center of attention, it was through these spaces that the two cities reached out to the world and transformed themselves — each in its own way — with deep urban, social, and environmental impacts.

The project’s idea is to use the image of ports as places of exchange and encounter to imagine new routes. But now, the flows go beyond people and goods: they carry ideas, fabulations, and artistic creations.

The rivers that run through the cities — the Guaíba and the Mersey — are part of this dialogue. They become sources of artistic investigation, sparking new ways of seeing and feeling the world, especially in times marked by floods and heavy pollution

Creative exchanges and digital experimentation

The project offers artist residencies at the Kino Beat Festival in Porto Alegre and at FACT Liverpool and promotes both online and in-person encounters between artists from Brazil and the UK. These exchanges create space for discoveries, unexpected perspectives, and connections between the ways of living and creating in each city.

The aim isn’t to compare Porto Alegre with Liverpool, but to generate blends — of forms, sounds, stories, and data. A true urban bricolage. Using digital tools and ideas rooted in worldbuilding, the artists explore creative ways of thinking about cities, mixing fiction and reality to bring physical and virtual productions to life.

Among the project’s outcomes: an exhibition at the Kino Beat Festival, a film showcase in partnership with Cine Esquema Novo in both cities, and an online publication presenting all the creations.

Timeline

*Connected Ports was selected through the UK-Brazil Season of Culture open call.

• Partner Organisations: 
  Kino Beat 
  FACT 
  Cine Esquema Novo  

• Sponsors: 
  Instituto Remanso  
  Museu de Arte Contemporânea do RS (MACRS) 
  Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana (CCMQ) 
  Cinemateca Capitólio  

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