This project started with a desire of investigating the profound relations expressed between artist and public in Gustave Courbet’s painting, L’Atelier du peintre, allégorie réelle déterminant une phase de sept années de ma vie artistique (1855), in a concrete space. Reconsidering them through the artistic practices of the participants, the painting would serve as a starting point, and from it the artists would establish a close relationship with the locale. The architecture of the place allowed me to de-center the exploration into ten individual projects, with ten artists/collectives— a continuous open studio in the format of an artist residency. In this way a dialogue could be entered into with one of the most controversial aspects of the painting— Courbet’s central positioning. The physical condition of the building, literally exploded, suggests a special relationship with the theatrical and performative, aspects of both of these are evident aspects in the painting. In the Steam Shop structure there is always a mixture between interior and exterior, revealing a potential encounter with the public and with the social and political aspects within the painting. Could the artists extend their practices to the local community, questioning the locale where their artistic production is being developed? The history of gunpowder production, the colonial war and its effect on daily working life during the Salazar dictatorship are other important aspects that actually encounter a parallel in Courbet’s life, himself a silenced critic of the reactionary regime of Napolean the third. My project within the collective Steam Shop Project was an installation/performance using video and audio where I return five ex-workers to their workplace, a now ruined gunpowder factory, (Fábrica da Pólvora de Barcarena). I interviewed them in a constructed public theatre concerning their work and the social-political conditions in Portugal before the 1974 revolution.