Backstage charts the relationship between our Studio and one of the most dynamic cultural institutions in the city of Porto, its municipal theatre — Teatro Municipal do Porto (TMP), between 2014 and 2021. Looking back through the extensive archive — analogue and digital — from this seven year collaboration, we decided to bring to light all the test projects as well as the process for the final results that went to press.
Revisiting and reevaluating 35,000 files allowed us to reconstruct a continuous visual panorama of the assets we created for TMP over that period of time. But it also brought to the forefront the many attempts, varied approaches, advances and setbacks that each project entailed.
The book lays out all the projects that were realised, in their various phases, along with the respective iterations that preceded them, in all their procedural density. Thus it exposes the sheer volume of work that led to solutions, supplementing the apparent simplicity of the final image with the fundamental complexity from which they derive. This is why the book is titled "Backstage". It reveals the preparation, the many actions that come before stepping out onto the stage.
With this book we wanted to make visible the work that is typically eclipsed by the solutions that go on display. We also render visible many proposals that never reached the public eye, preliminary solutions since abandoned or even proposals that were rejected. We present the projects systematically, with technical details, and with corresponding references to the digital archives. To organise and codify this inventory, all the images reproduced in this book under a silver filter constitute trials for the final work, which appears contiguously and is given prominence by being set on a white background. We add to this controlled sphere some testimonies of the imponderable effects of time, which caused a poster of “Crash Park” to collapse, for example, or added a concentric relief to the poster for “A Quiet Evening of Dance”.
Backstage is also a tribute to the various players of both the TMP and SEA who, with their effort and dedication, have managed to bring the objectives set for each challenge to a successful conclusion.
