RE_ACT
CONTEMPORARY

Re_Act Contemporary is laboratory and residence space based in the Azores Islands commissioned by DRAC Azores. The main residence space is based in Terceira Island with a final presentation at MAH Museum.
The residency explores notions of ecology, myth and technology on this unique location in the North mid-Atlantic ocean. Taking the form of a laboratory accompanied by artistic processes and curatorial experimentation the artists and curators will be invited to begin or develop ideas presenting afterwards the results of this process in an institutional context.The curatorial approach focus on artists working at the crossroads of technology and environment who would benefit from the opportunity to research geographically remote and volcanic archipelagos exploring the paradigma of being in a different layer, entering a specific place lost in space and time in relation to the social contemporary scenario.

In a context of transformation of human perception influenced by the digital innovations of our society, a dialogue is created between the post-digital era and the organic essence of our natural being, immersed in an electronic environment. Those elements symbiotically contribute to drive the body to its ancient basic elements of human existence although constantly perceived by technology. The "digital act" contrasts and coexists with our human nature in an eternal cross communication.
The continuous influence of our own accelerated pace, propagates in a new paradigm of new media and digital realities that alters our perception of time, space and reality, in contrast to the availability of a sensory contemplation. In the fast-paced frenzy that drives our contemporary societies, where thoughts and impulses are beamed by way of artificial communication  and express the paramount need to scroll through the snippets of information that make up the latest trends, the current post-digital, new-media generation is faced with the unprecedented shift from direct life experience to an artificial way of connecting/disconnecting with the natural/analogical world. This loss of sensorial reference and contemplation is increasingly contributing to distance human beings from the elements of the natural world. In this dazzling new reality, the pictorial tradition of landscape painting no longer seems apt to capture the intricate web of new significations emerging from cityscapes in the age of the global city.

In an archipelago In the middle of the Atlantic, connected to the idea of Atlantis, described by Plato, The resident artists shall work inside this matrix in a dialogue between matter/non-mater and in permanent laboratory in a apparently neutral territory for exploration and co-relations between different layers of reality and post-reality.

Re_act was Co-Founded by Paulo Arraiano and Paulo Ávila Sousa.