Exhibiting in Guimarães
My reason for leaving Brazil this time was twofold; The first being that a project I’ve been working on for about a year and a half, in loving memory, is privileged to open the conference The Walking Body (TWB) 6 in Guimarães, in northern Portugal, as a photo exhibition. The conference consists of a core week of activities, workshops, interventions, presentations, where, for all, the act of walking is integral to the activity.
The second is the yearly World Summit Awards (WSA), this time in Hyderabad, India, but set to happen at exactly the same time as TWB.
Thankfully, instead of having to choose, it was possible to schedule the opening of the photo exhibition a bit earlier, and for it to run for about four weeks.
I could have my cake and eat it.
The opening of the exhibition, at Garagem, was a pleasant affair, and was followed, a day later, by a lecture on anticapitalist, Situationist-inspired interventions in the public sphere, for a bunch of students of UMinho, the university hosting the conference.
My visit to Guimarães also allowed us founders of WLC to meet for our, roughly, once-a-year physical meeting. This time, it meant the inclusion of our recently added fourth person running the NGO.
My flight from São Paulo to Porto had taking me through Madrid.
Arriving in Madrid, immigration services were waiting at the gate, checking everyone’s passport. When my turn came, the officer looked at my passport, turned to his colleague, and pointed at something on the page with my personal details, “mumble mumble, Tehran, mumble”.
I had to step aside, and my passport was handed to the colleague, who then went over the passport with a magnifying glass, literally.
After a few minutes, I was allowed to continue on my journey.
Then, at the biometric gates for entry into the EU, the gates refused to authorise my entry, and another officer had to come and inspect my passport.
Oddly, at emigration in São Paulo, the immigration officer there also had to step away and have a backchat with a superior, before letting me through.