Estrada militar, 2009
Hd video, cor,sm20´

The military road work is a video of a journey that traces , as in an archeological quest, the landscape of the old military road of Lisbon. Military road traces out what remains of the military road build for the defense from the french invaders at the beginning of the 19th Century . A “ fortress of Europe” finds here historical territories to protect the city from new invasions of foreigners, but we can also find it even in the suburbs and in the margins of the city; perhaps because margins are under construction, unfinished and more definitive than some other forms of another urbanity, which In its turns creates constant redefinitions of culture and identity. This road has partially disappeared, but in what are its remains ,it holds along 45km around Lisbon the social housing neighbouhoods and ghetos of the city. The road somehow is still nowadays the fort that protects the city against foreign invasions; it holds a large immigrant population from entering the city. This work was developed through a process of collaboration with housing associations and habitants of these neighbourhoods and with friends and relatives of the artist . The work in itself is a journey in which the artist took with her some friends and relatives that are inhabitants of these housing complexes to explore these double metaphor and irony of the past invasions of the territory, as well as the present urban flights and strugles.

Her interest was to look at how cities grow and how the nature of the city changes, and with them the functions of the urban spaces change and how this impacts on local and national culture and identities. This work was part of a major research art project entitled Underconstruction developed in Lisbon during 2009 with the artist and curator and urbanist Paul Goodwin