ViViFiCAR embraces the concepts of ‘living and staying’ as guiding axes for immersive residencies - activated by participatory creative strategies and encounters between artists and local communities.

In 2025, the Douro municipalities of Mêda, Torre de Moncorvo, and Sabrosa hosted Encontros Vivos, with three artist residencies. The artists lived in the homes of local families, with their project development and realization moderated by the curatorial team, Gabriela Vaz-Pinheiro, Jayne Dyer and Virgílio Ferreira, and supported by local mediators.

From Augusto Brázio’s lens emerges a body of work that reinforces the sense of human belonging within the surrounding ecosystem of Torre de Moncorvo. In James Newitt’s video installation, mining activity is examined as a metaphor—referencing past, present and future—while alluding to everything that remains beyond the reach of the distant gaze in Mêda. In Lara Jacinto's project, the portrait emerges with a dizzying magnetism that suggests the possibility of a tangible relationship with the experience of the other. The other is here, the immigrant, who recounts the history of a geography strongly marked by emigration.