The exhibition entitled “Psychedelia”, organised by the Lounge student group, was inaugurated on May 2nd, at Alameda campus, in the main building’s atrium. The event was attended by more than 50 visitors, including professor Rogério Colaço, President of Técnico.
At a time when war is again happening in some parts of the world, João Santos, a student of Equipment Design at the Faculty of Fine Arts and guest curator of the exhibition, proposes a review of the way certain social masses perceived the world in the 1960s, a time of emergence of liberation movements for peace, feminism and climate action. “It was the time of the Cold War and the psychedelic era”, he explains. “We don’t bring up these topics very often at Técnico, so we thought it made sense,” he adds.
Nearly 20 artists, students and alumni from Universidade de Lisboa, exhibited their paintings, images, videos and interactive installations. The first work visitors can see is Laura Amorim’s, an Applied Mathematics and Computation student at Técnico. “It has been a while since I expressed myself, I had ideas, I was inspired by Klimt and I made an escape from studying”, she says, sharing her wish to reconcile art and work in her studies.
The alumna Isabel Raposo (Computer Science and Engineering) presents an interactive work inspired by her Master’s dissertation. “I studied how to make video animations from music. Here, in ‘the dance of the spectator’, I explored animations and interaction with the audience”, she says showing a screen with a camera installed. “The system chooses random functions according to the movement of the people that pass by, we never know what’s going to happen”.
“Psychedelia” is an initiative organised by the Lounge student group, created a year ago, which aims “to be a bridge between artists and the public” says Duarte Ghira, responsible for organising Lounge’s second exhibition. “We started out 7 people and now we are already 25”, he says proudly, and also shares that they have also organised musical jams, stand-up comedy sessions, poetry and quizzes. Lounge will participate in the Técnico Master’s Day, on 18th May, as the event’s music programmer.
