The present times are made up of many historical layers that tend to project into the future. Some of them inherited from more or less recent pasts mark our daily life, reflected both in the connections we establish with each other, and in the forms that relationships and conflicts linked to the present economy and geopolitics take – the current war in Ukraine is an example of this. In this series we look at some of these layers from the historical angle and the concept of empires, starting with a perspective that addresses the current remains of history linked to the Portuguese colonial empire, addressing other forms of empires: the American and the Soviet, which took place in in the 20th century, China's past and present, and we end with an invitation to look at the history of space travel in light of the history of Empires.

PROGRAMME

4 NOV
Decenter the empire, Repair the future
Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, Patrícia Martins Marcos, Victor de Barros, Ana Lucia Araujo, Cristina Roldão, Rui Gomes Coelho
Inês Beleza Barreiros, Patrícia Martins Marcos, Pedro Schacht Pereira e Rui Gomes Coelho

15 NOV 
USA: Imperial Way of Life?
Amedeo Policante and Raquel Ribeiro

15 NOV
Smooth and irresisteble? Holywood imperialism
Rui Lopes

23 NOV
Russia: Imperial breaks and Continuities
Jochen Hellbeck and Yuri Slezkine

23 NOV
Echos of the empire - Musical representations of Russia
Paulo Ferreira Castro

7 DEC
China: Yesterday and Today
Wang Hui

15 DEC  online
Empire in Space
Pedro Machado