Why do we buy into the idea of the island as closed? What might become possible by recognising the many worlds already moving an island?

Assembling a Moving Island was a public art programme curated by Dani Admiss for the 2018 Walk&Talk Festival in the Azores, bringing together six commissions across São Miguel.

In art, science and culture, islands have often been imagined as isolated worlds: bounded places, natural laboratories or utopias separated from the wider world. Yet islands have never existed independently of the movements that shape them. Their histories are entangled with colonial expansion, migration, trade, scientific experimentation and the circulation of people, materials and ideas.

Taking São Miguel as its starting point, Assembling a Moving Island proposed another way of understanding the island: not as a fixed territory, but as an assemblage continually made and remade through relationships extending far beyond its shores.

Six temporary public artworks explored what passes through the island's borders and boundaries, and how these movements shape its histories, environments and possible futures.

The commissions ranged from a maritime signal painted across Ponta Delgada's harbour wall, recalling the story of a woman who crossed the Atlantic disguised as a male sailor, to a series of travelling billboards confronting the island's colonial and political histories. Elsewhere, an algorithm attempted to predict an ocean wave, a collectively built pavilion became a place for sharing local memories, and an experimental instrument investigated the island's seismic vibrations.

A speculative garden brought these questions into the future, using climate projections and botanical histories to consider how São Miguel's ecology might change over the coming century.

Together, the artworks approached the island as something in motion, shaped by encounters between different histories, technologies, species and forms of knowledge. They explored the limits of how places are represented and understood, while inviting people to encounter the island through unfamiliar perspectives.

Format : Public art commissions, site-specific installations and participatory research

The Six Commissions

GEORGIANA — Navine Khan Dossos: A large-scale maritime signal painted along Ponta Delgada harbour, recalling Georgiana Leonard and the histories of women navigating male-dominated maritime worlds.

Atropelos — Luiza Prado and Daniel Rourke: A sequence of evolving public billboards across São Miguel, exploring colonial histories, political power and the ways language and images can silence or challenge established narratives.

Wave 0 — Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles: An audiovisual installation at Museu Carlos Machado using oceanographic data and a predictive algorithm to question the limits of modelling and the desire to anticipate the future.

Révéler — Camposaz: A temporary seating and viewing structure built collaboratively in Vila Franca do Campo using locally sourced and found materials, creating a gathering place for stories and memories.

EYE LAND BAND WIDTH (When the Earth Whispered) — Shift Register (Jamie Allen and Martin Howse): An experimental installation using lasers, mirrors and an interferometer to investigate the seismic movements of São Miguel and the limits of human perception.

Declimatize — Sascha Pohflepp and Chris Woebken: A speculative garden developed with local botanical knowledge and climate research, exploring how the island's plant life might respond to possible future climates.

People & Partners

Curated by: Dani Admiss

Commissioned and presented by: Walk&Talk Festival, São Miguel, Azores

Commissioned artists and collectives: Navine Khan Dossos; Luiza Prado and Daniel Rourke; Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles; Camposaz; Shift Register (Jamie Allen and Martin Howse); Sascha Pohflepp and Chris Woebken.

Sites included: Ponta Delgada harbour, Museu Carlos Machado, Vila Franca do Campo, Arquipélago Contemporary Arts Centre and Parque Urbano de Ponta Delgada.

Research and community collaborators: Local workshop participants, botanists and climate researchers; the CLIMAAT project; and scientific collaborators supporting the individual commissions.

Assembling a Moving Island was part of the Public Art Circuit at Walk&Talk Festival 2018.