The more you look, the more you see

Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.
David Lynch

FESTIVAL VERÃO AZUL is one of casaBranca‘s main projects and it is dedicated to promoting contemporary and transdisciplinary creation and performing arts in the Algarve. The 12th edition of Verão Azul is a multi-layered lab where performance art, sound and the visual arts come together to challenge aesthetic and conceptual definitions. This year’s programme brings us reflections on the human body – in its political, social, urban and post-human dimensions – addressing the ethical implications of its hybridisation with technology. The programme also addresses the relationship between ecocriticism and global interdependence, reflecting on the ways in which art can create, or give visibility, to networks connecting individuals, communities and ecosystems.

The dense and hypnotic soundscapes that run through this edition takes us somewhere between structure and improvisation. We’ll have performances, concerts, DJ sets, film screenings and other activities to think about the virtual possibilities of human expression, questioning what’s ‘real’, and the place and identity of the human body in an age of technological hyperconnection and overexposure. In this landscape of sliding realities, we call out the unique vision of David Lynch (1946-2025), who was a master of exploring the cracks in everyday life, and the mysteries hidden beneath the surface of the visible world. 

With artists from Portugal, Spain, Greece, Poland, Romania, Scotland, Brazil and Uruguay, VERÃO AZUL continues to bring innovative and experimental projects to audiences in the Algarve, wishing to consolidate its founding mission of fostering cultural dialogue and rooting new dynamics in the region. 

The festival is also committed to raising awareness and shape new audiences through multiple strategies: this year, in addition to the many shows, it will also include in its opening the screening of the documentary Queendom by Agniia Galdanova, in partnership with the Cineteatro Louletano (Loulé). Candela Capitán’s show SOLAS, in Portugal for the first time, takes place in partnership with Teatro das Figuras (Faro) and includes a bus trip taking the audience from Lagos to Faro, where it is invited to experience a sound installation by Guilherme Curado. And of course, as in previous years, we will also have conversations after the shows.

Verão Azul’s programme also extends beyond the spaces normally used for cultural events, with the exhibition Salaris – Fictions from Salt (at the rock salt mines in Loulé, with the artists Victor Gonçalves, Maura Grimaldi and Natália Loyola, and the Alfaia Gallery), a concert by David Leitão and Inês Defalc at the Municipal Swimming Pools (Loulé), and other activities at the Antigo Armazém do Carnaval (an old Carnival warehouse) in Loulé (with Gustavo Sumpta, Despina Sanida Crezia, and Not Binary Code).

It is at this crossroads between thought and action, and in stressing the strength of the self, the collective and the city, that the Festival Verão Azul chooses to present itself, as a living platform where art can challenge, unsettle and redefine.

 casaBranca Associação Cultural