Index CUF sports clubs Keeping afloat About
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Keeping afloat

  • Documentation
  • Barreiro (PT)
  • August 2024 — October 2024
  • Thanks to PADA Studios
  • Supported by Culture Moves EuropeEuropean UnionGoethe Institute

After gathering information about CUF’s swimming club and visiting the abandoned pool in the industrial area, I began to reflect on how performance-driven we are in both sports and work. It also struck me how much prestige is associated with membership in a club.

I then took a photo of a resting worker, set against the backdrop of the abandoned pool. On the beaches of Setúbal, I found discarded swim boards, which I decorated using the cyanotype technique with images related to work: a tie, a coffee cup, office supplies, a photo of the workplace, and machine parts.

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The juxtaposition of once-functional corporate imagery with discarded pieces of swimming equipment underscores how human systems, once meticulously curated, can be reconfigured or rendered obsolete. In this sense, the printed kickboards become mirrors of our socio-economic transitions, calling attention to the ephemeral nature of both labor and leisure and inviting reflection on the factors that shape their intersection
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On the old industrial site of CUF, you can find all sorts of things. Old machine parts or leftovers from construction work
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I photographed the CUF logo in the archive, then printed it and cut it out. I then pasted it to the coffee cup, took a photo and printed it on a film sheet. I coated the kick board with cyanotype and put it in the sun with the filmsheet on top
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An archival photo I found in the CUF archive shows a man cleaning a tank containing acid chloride. CUF produced many raw materials
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A print of a corporate tie onto a kickboard is an exploration of authority in the realm of leisure. . By merging these objects, tthey draw attention to the absurdity of how work culture, with its structures and formal symbols, often infiltrates spaces intended for relaxation and freedom
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By positioning a worker in a boiler suit at the abandoned swimming pool, I show the fading of boundaries between labor and leisure. The coffee cup adorned with the company logo draws attention to the vestiges of corporate identity that linger even when the site is no longer maintained. Meanwhile, the cracked tile in her hands serves as a artifact of the pool’s decay, showing how once-structured spaces—and the promises they represented—can fracture over time. Together, these elements reveal the fragile nature of institutional environments and invite reflection on the forces that shape, then abandon, such places