Portugal

Is peace the ability to overcome conflicts? Yes, I’ll have to think about that for some time. Perhaps you could express it in that way. Perhaps it’s also about withstanding conflicts, being able to live with conflicts. It’s important not to end up thinking about RIGHT and WRONG, or that “only one of us can be right”, but rather to meet at the point where we have the same interests. Is non-violent communication a tool for achieving more peace? I wouldn’t say that it’s a tool. It has tools, but it’s actually much more of an attitude, or a way …

What drives a clown? Where does this energy come from? The driving force to leave everything behind and to say you don’t want to pursue your profession any more generates huge strength. It is the possibility to seek out and experience an absolute feeling of happiness. The path that I followed led me to a place where 20 people come together who write music, do choreography, who look for places that are abstract, who use a eucalyptus forest as a message and a stage. The impetus is different to 20 years ago. But the energy is the same. That you …

How did your interest in the environment begin? I started by being interested in the consumer society which was starting to emerge in Portugal in the mid-1980s. I started to work for Expresso and it had a section called Bolsa do Consumidor (Consumers’ Corner). We were in a closed society, a very restricted market, and, with the pre-accession to the European Union, we joined the market economy train and there was a boom of consumerism that was completely unprecedented and brutal, with no environmental legislation at that time. We ended up creating huge externalities and many negative impacts from the …

  Where did the inspiration for the
Boom Festival come from? From my youth in Goa in India, where I grew up. Goa was an international meeting point for Asia travellers and hippies, a melting pot for young people from many countries. There was a lot of music. Even in the 1970s, there was a big party on the beach at every full moon, with rock bands playing live. In the 1980s, travellers from Australia, Japan, Europe and America brought the latest avant-garde music with them from their own countries. They gave it to the people now known as DJs. They …

When they met, Artur was vegetarian and worked in the field of permaculture; Carla, who has been a crudivore for about two years, had been a vegetarian for 20 years, and worked professionally in teaching yoga, in functional medicine and macrobiotic cooking and Ayurveda. “I was interested in finding a location to open an organic grocery and Artur was looking for a place to open a vegan restaurant; we were both independent and started to look at shops and got to know each other better; we ended up falling in love,” Carla explains, with a twinkle in her eye. Their …

I you he she it, we you they. We are all throwing something away at this moment. It’s easy to say, isn’t it? Into the rubbish. Something away. Out of sight, out of mind. After me, the flood. Or maybe not? I’m standing in my kitchen collecting up the bottles from the past month. Eight empty wine bottles, and an empty bottle of olive oil. It’s the day I go to the glass container and clean up my apartment: bathroom, bedroom, living room, kitchen and study. I have also found a very practical solution for my used paper, which I …

Via Algarviana – Rota Vicentina – Rota do Pescador   Day 1 – Aljezur – Odeceixe (18 km) On this first day of April, the sky is as I know it in April: unsettled. For the last two weeks, I’ve been walking the 250 kilometres along the Via Algarviana, with little more than a sense of the Atlantic in the near distance. Now I can raise my nose into the wind, smelling salt and all sorts of colourful things by the wayside. The lines on the paper of my map indicate a further 350 kilometres, which I welcome with a …

You’ve travelled the world. Why did you choose to live in the Algarve? I arrived in Monchique after spending 15 years travelling with a backpack. Throughout my travels, I only ever bought a single ticket, but that changed when I arrived in the Algarve (laughs). I was with someone who lived in Monchique and I ended up staying. The same year, I started doing sand sculptures in countries like Belgium and Spain, and also in Albufeira. It was 1998 and I thought of staying because I liked, and still like, Portugal. Five years later, I started the FIESA project. Tell …

Can you tell us a story from your childhood? I was born and lived on a farm in Maia, an area close to Porto. We had a manure heap that we used to fertilise the land. We didn’t use a lot of packaging, we drank water from the well. We’re talking about 40 years ago. My grandfather made his own wine and bottled it. The bottles and flagons were recycled and refilled. There wasn’t the same amount of waste that we see nowadays. If you bought some shoes in a box, the box was used to keep something in. The …