URBA FEAT

Interdisciplinary Project 
2010 - 2012

“URBA FEAT - Análise do processo criativo - Entre o Céu e a Terra”: theoretical practical project of Master Thesis in Draw and Printing Techniques, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Oporto, oriented by Diniz Cayola. It appears in the library depot of the FBAUP (LINK).


An interdisciplinary artistic project, which crosses drawing, anthropology, sound and performance, and has developed over the last two years as part of master’s research, intersecting drawing and urban anthropology, articulating with a constant exercise in the analysis of the practice of the creative process. It aims to contribute to an investigation of design activity in artistic practice, based on the intersection of these disciplines.

Based on the conceptual triology  DJ/Artist/Shaman, URBA FEAT started from the creation of a fictional and liminal character  URBA — half woman half animal, performs the the duties of Shaman, with deer horns and glass eyes, is the ancestral body with which Sónia Carvalho moves — and the construction of its public image through the performative practice, which encompassed the sound, the drawing, the graphic image, among other supports, in a process of featuring.  



This project arises with an activist and echo political rescue purpose necessary for the survival of the planet, in the sense of awakening to an awareness of the sacred.


From the gloom and shadow, URBA was reborn on a yellow morning. From the beginning, she always knew that her destiny would be to be a shaman! ︎ Through music it makes smile unpleasant and allows energetic souls to move into a trance and to contact themselves until dawn. Their goal is to awaken in each one a capacity for return to their origin, in an encounter with a mythic and pagan root, whether through music, drawings, light and/ or image, intends to maintain contact with the supernatural universe and with the forces of nature.


          
  Escotema estrela de David                                                                          Escotema estrela de Diana


URBA FEAT’s multimodal process was configured in a series of concerts and performances of the URBA character staging the props that characterize it,  also with colaborations, among other devices such as digital collages and vídeos, understood as transitory objects in the performative process. Evoking shamanism as a mediator between action and action supports, through which symbolic transfer occurs in the process of image conquest.









Graphic image made in a the framework of a partnership and photographic records in Madrid, at the cultural association La Tabacalera, and also at Oporto, the cultural association Maús Hábitos.

︎ This collaboration results from the combination of URBA with the character PROTORRAGIO, whose common point is the sound as a vital element.PROTORRAGIO is the caracter made by the film-maker Vasco Mendes.


2012


︎ Live act “El Despertar” to the Performance e Arte Eémera Olhar o vento event, curated by Albuquerque Mendes, Porto, Portugal. 
2012

DUH

︎ “Desenho na Universidade Hoje – Encontro Internacional de Desenho, Imagem e Investigação” (DRAWING THE UNIVERSITY TODAY), University of Oporto, Faculty of Fine Arts and Faculty of Architecture, with the Master of Design and Printing Techniques project of the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Oporto, framed in the exhibition of experimental projects.
Installation
2013

URBA FEAT

Presentation of the practical Project at the Faculty gallery Faculty of Fine Arts of Oporto University, (FBAUP).

Exhibition
2013

URBA FEAT is not just a fictional project, it moves between auto-biographical reality experienced mutation, based on a routine shamanic practice — called tensegrity movements [as known as magical passes developed hitherto by Indian shamans from Mexico and prior to the Spanish conquest - (︎Link for a video exapmple)] — exploring the artistic potential of certain anthropological practices, such as participatory observation and performance, and certain cultural archetypes, such as liminality and shamanism. 



This kind of practice, also like meditation, yoga and martial arts are fundamental for my creative process as liminal action that confers on me a different state of awareness — and being connect inner need (Wassily Kandinsky).  

2011