PES_CE
Entre Serras Project, a contemporary art network in mountain areas

Project Entre Serras_Creative Europe (PES_CE) is the internationalization of the former Project Entre Serras (PES), an artistic initiative that ran in Portugal since 2017. In 2023, thanks to the Creative Europe Programme, PES was enlarged to Spain and France.

PES_CE Project Coordinator
INSTITUTO POLITECNICO DE LISBOA

Partners
ADXTUR AGENCY FOR THE TOURISTIC DEVELOPMENT OF SCHIST VILLAGES (PT)

AYUNTAMIENTO DE MALPARTIDA DE CACERES (ES)
COMMUNE DE DIGNE LES BAINS (FR)
CONSORCIO MUSEO VOSTELL MALPARTIDA (ES)
ECOLE SUPERIEURE D’ART FELIX CICCOLINI (FR)

GEOPARK ESTRELA ASSOCIATION (PT)
MUNICÍPIO DE CASTELO BRANCO (PT)

Between February 2023 and January 2026, the Entre Serras_Creative Europe Project (PES_CE) will host residencies, artistic workshops, and seminars, revealing the potential of rural areas as a living laboratory, territories open to experimentation. The driving force behind PES_CE’s artistic actions is a quest to merge what we see as nature and what we see as human communities, questioning the landscape, the boundary between urban and rural. Under the overarching theme “living and moving in mountain territories,” PES_CE brings together partners from Portugal, Spain, and France to interrogate the relationship between “seeing” and “experiencing” the landscape.

Moving through the world erratically is the most primitive way to explore the territory. During the Neolithic period, with the domestication of plants (agriculture) and animals (herding), two distinct types of space were generated: the sedentary or domestic and the nomadic or wild. Since the 1970s, artists like Richard Long, Hamish Fulton, and Alberto Carneiro have transformed walking and territory discovery into their artistic practice. The idea of walking as an aesthetic form, a way of sensing, had already been suggested in the previous century by Henry David Thoreau, in a triple understanding of walking through the landscape (action), the path/line that crosses space (object), and the relationship established with space (experience, narrative). PES_CE adds here a particular interest in the separation between urban and rural, attenuated by today’s technology and mobility. Its program is based on in situ artistic experience, at the intersection of theory, history, and sensitive practices. PES_CE questions the need for the rehabilitation of the sensitive world and the disastrous separation between Nature and Culture that we have witnessed over the past centuries.

Creative Europe is the European Union’s programme to support the creative and cultural sectors and has two main objectives: to safeguard, develop, and promote Europe’s cultural and linguistic heritage and to increase the competitiveness and economic potential of the cultural and creative sectors. Until 2027, the programme invests in actions and initiatives to strengthen cultural diversity and address the needs and challenges of cultural and creative sectors, aiming to contribute to their recovery while empowering them to intensify their efforts to become more digital, greener, more resilient, and more inclusive.

Expected outcomes:
(1) Creative portraits of the territory to raise awareness of environmental issues
(2) Mobility and co-creation of European artists
(3) Exhibitions in three European countries
(4) Local communities introduced to contemporary art and sensory practices
(5) International exchange and training of cultural producers
(6) Introduction of contemporary art into the agenda of local organizations
(7) Seminars on art in European mountains
(8) Digital mapping of art in European mountains
(9) Art network for European mountains
(10) Book and special edition of the Mésozoaires art magazine.

The proposal involves 3 countries, 8 partners, more than 20 artists, more than 20 cultural producers, and more than 50 direct participants from the community. In addition, an unknown number of: users of digital platforms, visitors to exhibitions, readers of the book/magazine.

Project co-funded by the European Union
Subprogram: Culture (Creative Europe)
Action: Cooperation Projects

Start Date: February 1, 2023
End Date: January 31, 2026