Culture

"Terra Elétrica" theme announced for the next edition of The Forum of the Future

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The Forum of the Future closed today six days of authentic festival of thinking in Porto, with great names bringing thousands of people to the theaters in Porto. In the last session, dedicated to refugees, Rui Moreira took the Rivoli stage to announce the theme of the 2017 edition: "Terra Elétrica" that means "Electric Earth".

"Next year's Forum of the Future will build on our willingness to reflect on how Humanity interferes on Earth, on our impact on terrestrial balances - and how this manipulation affects our lives, our beliefs and values, but also the life of the beings that share the planet with us", explains the mayor, who is also responsible for Culture in the municipality, adding:" This is perhaps the most relevant topic to debate and discover contemporary art, its most interesting and even radical speeches , but also major innovations in numerous scientific areas - chemistry, geology, physics and astronomy "

In the next edition, the Porto City Hall intends to bring to Porto those who think and investigate this matter, and all its possibilities, in their professional and intellectual practices. The Forum will continue to look outside Europe, trying to understand human nature in all its cultural complexity and promises that the Forum's programming is aimed at all, of all ages and social classes, as has thus far been the case.

Rui Moreira also took the opportunity to thank the partners of the Porto City Hall at the Forum of the Future, in its third edition, namely the Casa da Música, the Serralves Foundation, the National Theater of São João, the University of Porto and also the Mala Voadora, which has collaborated in this edition. The mayor also thanked the public, for their wiling and cultured participation.

But this last session of the Forum of the Future 2016 is worth mentioning because it was  one of the most intense ever. On stage were a journalist from The Guardian, an expert on the refugee crisis, a Syrian refugee who video-documented his flight from the country to Europe and eventually became part of a BBC documentary and the mayor of Chios, a Greek city that has welcomed thousands of refugees from the Middle East.

A session that displayed powerful images and remarkable testimonies about the global problem of the war in Syria.

In the late afternoon, Joshua Oppenheimer's participation in the Forum of the future was one of the most impressive and preceded the closing session at Rivoli; Oppenheimer is the most notable and important new documentary filmmaker to emerge in this century and has been awarded several times for his work. The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence are two of his remarkable, shocking and in-depth reports, revealing the hidden history of the Indonesian Genocide in the mid-1960s. 

On Saturday, the theme of the war was also addressed through the project of the Israeli Eyal Weizman of Goldsmiths University, FORENSIC ARCHITECTURE, which investigates war situations, identifying authors and demonstrating hidden truths (see pictures above).