ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the People’s Assembly of Alges, established in May of 2013 in the Oeiras district, at Lisbon’s gates. It develops a framework for understanding the experience of recuperation through political composting – meant to represent a society’s capacity for self-building through practices of public repairing and social bricolage, thus paying attention to the relationship between the medium and the form of recuperation. The chapter argues that recuperation is characterised by a practice of recombination that goes hand in hand with the reconstitution of the public space. The ten print screens of verite scenes included in the chapter work as glimpses into what could be known, but also as forensic evidence of something simultaneously strong and vulnerable – the atmosphere of sharing. Social transactions and money were central subjects of discussion, defining the kind of space the factory would strive to be henceforth.
