This video is the result of the collective transdisciplinary work carried out by the team of six researchers from the ‘(H)OUVE’ project during the first IN2PAST Doctoral School, the ‘In2Future Boot Camp: Towards an Ecology of Heritage Practices’, held in Évora between May 18 and 24, 2024, in partnership with Festival Imaterial and Évora 27 – European Capital of Culture, and which brought together 33 PhD students from the seven research units that make up the IN2PAST consortium.

Drawing on Anthropology, Communication, Arts, Architecture, History, Archaeology, Biochemistry, and diverse areas of study such as colonial collections, fresco and ‘false fresco’ mural painting, or scientific heritage, the project was developed from scratch in less than a week.

In order to answer the challenge of (re)thinking techniques and devices for archiving or cultural transmission that constitute heritage, underlying the notion of the anarchive, while at the same time contemplating the motto of Évora_27 – the affirmation of VAGAR as another art of existence for Humanity – the team chose to ‘listen to what one day “was”’ (‘ouvir o que um dia “houve”’).

(H)OUVE is a collection of sonic identities around Évora’s past, in particular of the Roman Temple. The project mainly reflects the role of non-human agents in the construction of heritage, the action of micro-ecologies and the landscape, but also of past and present uses, thinking of heritage as a living, dynamic space in permanent mutation and construction.

Project (H)OUVE was first presented in public at the Garcia de Resende Theatre, in Évora, on May 24th, 2024, as part of the boot camp/Festival Imaterial’s session ‘Heritage Anarchives in Évora: Towards an Ecology of Practices’.

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‘Listening to what ‘was’ can help our minds to ‘wander’, in space and time, and perhaps to find voices and sounds never heard before.’