Bunkers, urban guerrillas and “robberies” in Lisbon

Artistic collective Estrela Decadente

Abstract

The artistic collective Estrela Decadente has territorialized the center of Lisbon since 2016 with artistic practices inscribed by independent culture, self-organization and activism. The artistic locations of the collective seek divergence with the homogeneous and financialized city, they constitute a medial apparatus marked by a do it yourself and lo-fi urban aesthetics, thus raising a provisional and underground topography. The coordinates of Estrela Decadente are spaces-bunkers, and its lexicon is warlike and communitarian. These locations are temporary and difficult to access, but they are manifested with occasional calls for communitarian participation. They circulate in specific spaces of cultural and political associativism, signaling their own territory, connecting strategies of street art, such as posters and bombing, with periodic independent publications aligned with ongoing artistic, social and political issues. Through the urban performance of the collective, this article critically looks at the localizations inscribed by the collective Estrela Decadente in Lisbon with the bunker as apparatus of their art and urban activism.