bumbledum: means of exploring

It's been a really good few days, although the weather is starting to get worse (yesterday all hell broke loose: pouring rain, thunderstorm and a howling wind!). Last friday we went to Centro Vasco Da Gama, a huge shopping-mall located on this great plaza surrounded by some outstanding architectural buildings. We basically just walked around on random instinct, did some shopping (bad idea when you have no money) and had dinner in a nice Italian restaurant. Saturday we went to a secondhand market in Graça, it had lots of old comic-books (but in portuguese), dvd's, vinyl's, cameras,... simply put: great crap! Afterwards we went to CCB (Centro Cultural de Belem), but we were a little late so we only had time to see one exhibition. 'Um teatro sem teatro' (theatre without theatre), it examined the relationships and interchanges between theatre and the visual arts during the 20th century. What appealed me the most was the correspondance with the avant-garde movements (futurism, dadaism and constructivism) in the 1960s. Also the bizar shortfilms of René Clair and some dreary fragments of Samuel beckett's work really grabbed my attention.

If people are interested, you can watch the short-film 'Entr'acte'
(1924) from Réne Clair here: entr'acte de réne clair

Maybe in a few weeks i'll return for the Berardo collection, the folder says: 'It offers a true panorama, in means of exploring visual artistic creation from the early 20th century to the beginning of the 21th century, especially from Europe and North America.' The collection includes works from abstraction, figuration, surrealism, pop art, hyperrealism, minimalism, conceptual art, sculpture, installation, contemporary photography and video. I heard it's also an inspiring journey through modern and contemporary Portuguese art, so keeping all of that in mind, I think it's definitly worth another trip to Belém.