Zoot Shoots

Do the Alberto

Inspired by a great encounter with Alberto Pimenta in 2007

Inspired by an encounter with Portuguese poet Alberto Pimenta, this editorial digs into the themes of equality, respect, surrealism, the irrational, the poetic and the revolutionary. The beauty of “just being” and doing what we want, can not be taken for granted. The liberty to produce what we want, when and where and how we want it — the freedom of speach, the freedom of image, the freedom of being what and how we want to be —it became something really fragile in our political reality even in Europe. Things which should be natural today in any country, but unfortunately they are not. So we embrace this liberty we have in Portugal and dedicate our editorial to the revolutionary poet Alberto Pimenta.

Film and photography Thomas Probosch

Beauty Antónia Rosa with Roewe Beauty

Assisted by Joana Lopes (makeup and hair) and Patricia Veloso

Styling and words Andrea Probosch

Music Tony Corlett

Talents Carolina Melicio and Naranha from Face Models

Special thanks to Pedro Trocades and to Misty

We met Portuguese poet, essayist, activist and performing artist Alberto Pimenta in 2007 during the production of the Lisbon edition of the MINI International Magazine. The German publishing house invited us at ZOOT to do the content production for the Lisbon edition. Journalist and writer Viriato Teles, was interviewing Alberto, here a link to the original text. At the end of six month photo, film, text and music production, the complete team and everybody involved was united during an unforgettable MINI International Magazine release party in Alfama, with the musician Kalaf on the cover including an exclusive CD with music from him and Buraka som Systema, they were also performing at the party. Here we had the chance to talk to Alberto Pimena and Viriato. Alberto´s sharp view on life impressed us, he was anti-conformity, anti-capitalism, and anti-moralism and kitsch. A very straight forward thinking mind, young at heart, even though he must have been well above 70.

Our conversation was in fluent German, as Alberto Pimenta spent many years in Germany, and was teaching at the Heidelberg University from 1960-1977. He was born in in Porto 1937, living in Lisbon and after returning to Portugal, he became a professor at Lisbon’s Universidade Nova. Pimenta’s literature, especially his poetry, is characterised by concretism and visualism, his work fuses poetry with graphic design. Alberto was part of an experimental poetry movement promoting vanguardist theories; he is a surrealist, satirist and experimentalist of modern Portuguese literature. In his book “Ascensão de Dez Gostos à Boca / Rise ten tastes in the mouth”, (1977) he expresses his social and political resentment with the Salazar regime, he was only returning to Portugal a few years after the 1974 Carnation Revolution and the end of the Fascist Salazar regime.

In the same year Alberto Pimenta organised his first happening as a performer at the Lisbon Zoo, where he locked himself in a cage near the monkeys with a sign reading “Homo Sapiens.”

Why did you decide to do the happening?
I’d been thinking about it for a long time. I’ve always been interested in performances, something that was done a lot in Germany, and I had this idea of locking myself in a cage at the zoo to think about what it’s like to cage animals. It reminded me of that beautiful poem by Rilke, The Panther, in which the animal wanders around and only sees bars. However, I couldn’t do it in Germany for two reasons: I lived in a small university town, like Coimbra, which had a small zoo, but it would be ridiculous to do it there – and it would be doubtful if I would be allowed to – because it would mean something else: the emigrant. It wouldn’t work, only in Portugal. I arrived in March and went there at the beginning of June, after receiving authorisation from the director, a very old man, admirable, one of those who were put in charge of those places for a while after the 25th of April.

—Alberto Pimenta in an interview with Diario de Noticias, 17th August 2019

Antonia Rosa´s makeup draws inspiration from surrealism and cubistic artwork, the unconscious and dreams. In search of freedom she find magic and strange and uncanny beauty in the unexpected. Thomas captures the fragmented compositions in a poetic yet blunt way. In film and picture he tells a personal story, inviting us to get to know the work from Alberto Pimenta.