THE TIME OF THINGS
Communitarian projet

Civil Parish of Calde (Viseu, Portugal)
October – December 2025

A production by Binaural Nodar, in partnership with the Municipality of Viseu, through the Linen Museum of Várzea de Calde, with the Civil Parish Council of Calde and integrated into the European project Tramontana Network, co-funded by Creative Europe program of the European Union.

Everyone lives surrounded by objects that carry more than just their physical matter — they bring with them stories, memories, and affections that span generations and often cross territories.

In this third edition of “O Tempo das Coisas” (The Time of Things), we turn our attention to this complex heritage, focusing particularly on objects that have been preserved by ancestors who lived in a self-sufficient rural environment, from farm tools to traditional crafts and objects from family life, but also to those that bear witness to the social changes that rural communities have experienced in recent decades, especially the experience of emigration.

These objects, kept with care and affection, reveal a silent conversation between the distant past of our ancestors and the more recent past of social transformations.

The deep connection to the land, to the natural rhythms and traditions that shaped rural life, bear tangible witness to an essential way of life that, although now distant from the objects of modernity, continues to pulsate in the memories of many families and in the collective identity.

On the other hand, the objects brought from the lands where many left in search of new opportunities—in Switzerland, Germany, Venezuela, France—are living symbols of these trajectories of change and adaptation. They bear the marks of work, coexistence, and concrete experiences lived in these places, and are, at the same time, bridges between here and there, between what remained and what was built far away. Some of the objects kept by families therefore reflect how life was redesigned in a social setting very different from that of these people’s origins.

“The Time of Things” invites us to listen to the voices that these objects hold. By sharing the stories that accompany each of them, family and collective memories will be honored and, who knows, the sense of belonging and self-esteem of the groups involved will be strengthened. Loving and caring for these objects is, after all, loving life itself—the life that has been lived, the life that is being lived, and the life that is hoped to be lived.

In this edition of “O Tempo das Coisas” (The Time of Things), organized in collaboration with the Municipality of Viseu, through the Museu do Linho de Várzea de Calde (Linen Museum of Várzea de Calde) and the Junta de Freguesia de Calde (Civil Parish Council of Calde), a community itinerary of encounters is proposed, where sharing, sound recording, and photography will come together to give voice to these objects and the stories they hold. The result will be a photographic and multimedia exhibition, to be inaugurated by the end of the year, offering everyone the opportunity to discover and feel the diversity of emotional memories through the things that accompany us.

The curators of this project invite the population of the various villages in the civil parish of Calde to choose an object of affection, one that bears witness to their family history or the changes that have shaped their lives, so that, as a whole, “O Tempo das Coisas” can constitute a space for dialogue between the past and the present, between rural life and life in other places, between memories and possible futures.

Credits:

Original idea: Luís Costa
Methodological and technical design: Luís Costa
Photographic records and multimedia device: Ana Margarida Ferreira and Nely Ferreira
Interviews and sound recordings: Ana Margarida Ferreira and Nely Ferreira
Graphic design: Liliana Silva
Transcription and writing of texts: Andreia Mota