Hybrid Counter-Monument for Democratic Resistance
Associação Cultural Arterializa
Portugal
This open participatory digital platform aims to give voice to the citizens’ memory about the Portuguese dictatorship, in particular the anti-democratic repressive institution Technical School of the International and State Defense Police (PIDE). Following the recent erasure of its physical ruins, the platform enables citizens to contribute with testimonies, many from the last living generations who directly experienced the dictatorship, creating a space for expanding the collective memory while enabling democratic resistance and continuous civic agency.
An open-access bilingual (PT/EN) participatory digital platform designed to contextualize and share citizens’ testimonies about the living memory of the Portuguese dictatorship.
It is part of an ongoing participatory art project that emerged after the recent demolition of the ruins of the repressive institution PIDE Technical School.
The project unfolds in three phases.
The 1st phase, 2024-2026, consisted of co-creation workshops to develop counter-monument proposals for the site and a public vote on the final proposal.
The 2nd phase, the focus of this application, is the development of the digital platform, enabling citizens to share testimonies, access expert historical contextualisation, and explore documentation of the participatory project and methodologies, as well as an interactive virtual iteration of the counter-monument. Accessible through partner websites and social media, it extends the participatory process beyond the physical site, geographically and temporally.
The 3rd phase will be the installation of the public counter-monument at the site where the PIDE Technical School once was, incorporating QR codes linking the public artwork to the digital platform.