Malacate is an artistic-cultural intervention project in Mina de S. Domingos promoted by Companhia Cepa Torta in partnership with Mértola City Council.
Under the EEA Grants program – Connecting Dots – Artistic Mobility and Audience Development. Within the application, whose total value is 353.303,95 euros, with an EEA Grants co-funding of 280.743,10 euros and the Mértola Chamber of 49.999,94 euros, presupposes a partnership (twinning type) with the mining town of RØros in Norway, World Heritage of Humanity.
Mina de São Domingos (Mértola) It is a place with a remarkable past of mining exploration., as evidenced by the industrial buildings of impressive aesthetic value that still exist. MALACATE will be the vector of a contemporary and innovative artistic work, that will emerge from the meeting between the locals and a community of national and international artists, supported by a vast process of community mediation.
It is characterized as an open-air performance gallery that, such as or winch – industrial transduction equipment – creates links between the mine and the outside world, between the hidden and the revealed, between the past and the contemporary and between reality and fiction. It is from the nature of the place and its people that a diversified cultural offer of enormous attractive potential for audiences of the most varied ages and origins is developed..
MALACATE longs to become an agent of territorial and community regeneration, asserting itself as an unavoidable place for cultural enjoyment on a regional scale, with an impact on the attractiveness of the locations, as well as for external visitation flows.
craves, yet, improve residents' quality of life and broaden their horizons, creating a place of unique cultural enjoyment in the country, from its aesthetic potential, which constitutes an authentic open-air museum, creating a new layer, through contemporary artistic dynamics, in the field of performing and visual arts.
The project intends to promote a new vision of the Mine of S.. Domingos for the action of artistic practice and the work of, with and for the local community, creating a contemporary image of the place, not erasing its industrial past, but reoccupying the different spaces with new memories and meanings.
