BERRU: creating unreal places with real possibilities
Co-funded by the
Creative Europe Programme
of the European Union
Creative Europe Programme
of the European Union
Culturgest offers an international program of contemporary theatre, dance, music, cinema and visual arts for a wide and diversified audience. It also develops an intensive discursive program and offers a wide range of participative events.
At Culturgest, we present a regular program dedicated to contemporary creation in the fields of theatre, dance, music, cinema and the visual arts and offer an educational program in all of these areas, aimed at audiences of all ages and social and cultural backgrounds. We also develop an intensive discursive programme about a large range of issues related to art, science, politics and society, in close collaboration with artists, scholars, universities and other organisations from civil society. Themes that we have been giving attention to and will continue to explore over the next years include: migration, cultural diversity and decolonization, gender and, not in the least, ecology and climate change.
We like to do things in collaboration and develop the program of Culturgest as part of a national and international network of partnerships and exchanges. We co-produce and host various independent festivals (the film festivals IndieLisboa and DocLisboa and the performing arts festivals Alkantara and Almada Festival), collaborate intensively with local and international universities and research centres, co-produce performances and exhibitions on a national and international level and open our doors for independent organisations and producers. All these collaborations are ways to enrich our work and deepen the impact and reach of whatever is created and organised together.
We seek to widen and multiply audiences for contemporary creation and debate and take active action to reach out to young people and culturally and socially diverse groups from our city. We try to include our audiences in what we do and look for different ways to stimulate participation.
Being part of ACT – Art, Climate, Transition touches on almost all of the above mentioned concerns, from international to issue based programming, and from audience development to the benefits of collaboration. As a final note: ecology is not only a concern in our program, but also a way of doing things: we work daily to reduce our ecological footprint and Culturgest’s environmental management is ISO 14001 certified.
Tempestade Mental (Brain-storm) is synonymous with a self-governed youth parliament. In this context, participants receive an interactive and permeable multimedia script. They can work on it freely – without the presence of adults. Indeed, for 90 minutes, they develop a laboratory for engaging in dialogue. Thus, reflecting and creating images of their own future.
The Interuniversity Center for the History of Science and Technology (CIUHCT, Lisbon PT) is establishing a series of initiatives to advance and disseminate new experimental modes of higher education and research, within the Anthropocene Curriculum. Indeed, Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science initiatied the Anthropocene Curriculum in 2013, and it is nowadays a collaborative network spanning around the globe.
“Slow disasters” are events whose damage and disruption result from factors developed over a long time, such as climate change, environmental degradation, desertification or wildfires. In this Conference, Scott Knowles addresses the topic of risk, governance, vulnerability and resilience in relation to slow disasters.
Ten years ago, historian Dipesh Chakrabarty published “The Climate of History: Four Theses”. This was the first of several Anthropocene-focused articles that turned out to be as influential as controversial. Indeed, Chakrabarty’s work fostered an extensive discussion on the relevance of political and socio-economic divisions between the northern and southern hemispheres, namely in the threats to survival.
Tempestade Mental (Brain-storm) is synonymous with a self-governed youth parliament. In this context, participants receive an interactive and permeable multimedia script. They can work on it freely – without the presence of adults. Indeed, for 90 minutes, they develop a laboratory for engaging in dialogue. Thus, reflecting and creating images of their own future.
Silence is not a luxury, but rather crucial to physical and mental health. However, we cannot celebrate silence acritically. Being silenced is what happens to the victims of abuse. Furthermore, the concept of bad noise is often controversial. Even silence has its politics. For two days, writers, artists, architects, astrophysicists and philosophers, all get together to discuss the importance of silence.
Daniel Christian Wahl’s live streaming conference on how to redesign the human impact on Earth. In Wahl’s perspective, both as a biologist and sustainable development expert, the capitalist system is no longer working for the majority of the world’s population. Would a new paradigm enable us to become more resistant to the test that the recent Coronavirus ordeal presents to the global economy?
Tempestade Mental (Brain-storm) is synonymous with a self-governed youth parliament. In this context, participants receive an interactive and permeable multimedia script. They can work on it freely – without the presence of adults. Indeed, for 90 minutes, they develop a laboratory for engaging in dialogue. Thus, reflecting and creating images of their own future.
Marlene Monteiro Freitas is internationally acknowledged by her virtuoso and expressive choreographs. Moreover, she is one of the most original and influential voices in modern-day choreography. In 2018, she was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale.
Silvia Federici is an activist, feminist, writer and teacher of Political Philosophy and International Studies at Hofstra University (New York). In this lecture, she examines the relationship between “witch hunting” and new forms of capitalist accumulation. Thus, this event follows the launch of her most recent and highly acclaimed book Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and the Original Accumulation, (Portuguese edition) published by Orfeu Negro.
The Greek choreographer Christos Papadopoulos took the natural phenomena of collective movements of birds and fish, as a starting point to create a dance performance. From there, he zoomed in on ions, electrically charged atoms, only to rediscover the same basic forces of attraction and repulsion that govern not only all existing life, but also all human relationships.
People fleeing from slavery in Brazil would go to the places called Quilombo, in search of shelter. As a result, autonomous communities survived in a profound ecological relationship with the territory. Today, they still hold important practices and provide valuable knowledge. António Bispo dos Santos is a writer, a Quilombo-master, and a farmer.
Tempestade Mental (Brain-storm) is synonymous with a self-governed youth parliament. In this context, participants receive an interactive and permeable multimedia script. They can work on it freely – without the presence of adults. Indeed, for 90 minutes, they develop a laboratory for engaging in dialogue. Thus, reflecting and creating images of their own future.
Will we change human behaviour if we transform our idea of “energy”? 2021 marks the 35th anniversary of the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl, which took place on 26 April 1986. Considering the event from a philosophical perspective, we will look at the profound connection between different ways of obtaining energy. The catastrophe of our century not only lies in other nuclear disasters, but also in our continued adherence to a destructive structure for the production of energy, which is threatening to bring an end to various forms of life on the planet.
Faced with the ever more real prospect of an uninhabitable planet, it is urgent to imagine a closer, more inclusive and more generous relationship with nature and the non-human aspects of life. Inspired by a series of eco-feminist proposals, the historian Teresa Castro suggests that images and the cinema can help us to expand the limits of our attention, thus laying the foundations for an ecological reason.
The work of the artist Gabriela Albergaria focuses on understanding the acculturation of landscape and nature, through the migratory processes and globalization from the fifteenth century onward. The artist uses multiple typologies, such as: sculpture, installation, works for public space, drawing and photography. This exhibition provides an overview of her activity over the last 15 years.
The role and position of our planet has, once again, been profoundly shaken by the new sciences that reveal how human actions can cause the Earth to react in unexpected ways. If Galileo taught us that the Earth moves, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis have discovered a dynamic and self-regulated Gaia. And, once again, the whole organisation of society seems to be called into question. A lecture-performance by Bruno Latour and Frédérique Aït-Touati, in which the social and cosmic order is described as “heading towards an unparalleled political and economic collapse”, due to the climate crisis.
Networking as part of the ACT project is an important segment, in which partners are sharing and discussing the activities’ state of the art. This meeting was organised and hosted by Culturgest, Lisbon with participation of other project partners and representatives from: Arts Admin/London, Bunker/Ljubljana, Kaaitheater/Brussels, COAL/Paris, Domino/Zagreb, Kampnagel/Hamburg, NTIL/Riga, Theater Rotterdam/Rotterdam, and Lokomotiva /Skopje.
Séverine Kodjo-Grandvaux introduces an interdisciplinary project that brings together scientists, legal experts, artists and other professionals to think about the ties that bind humans and other living beings. Vibrating in the World invites us to imagine a presence on the planet that is both an embodiment of the self, and also – evoking Édouard Glissant and his philosophy of relation – the act of becoming sensitive to all living things and to our cosmic condition.
How has colonial history marked our relationship with nature? In a two late afternoons program, we gather several disciplines of knowledge to open the photographic archives of contemporary Portuguese history, trying to see them as documents that, simultaneously, reveal traces of multiple ecologies, and are the expression of how colonial history marked nature.
Based on photographs of scientific missions organised by the Portuguese Institute of Tropical Scientific Research (Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical (IICT)), and within the scope of project Photo Impulse, which focuses on photographic collections of Portuguese scientific and geodesic missions in Africa throughout the 20th century, this roundtable discussion establishes a dialogue between the epistemological perspectives of that colonial scientific past and contemporary ways of thinking philosophically, artistically and conceptually about the relationship of humans with plants and botany.
Marco Martins proposes in WILD a reflection on the use of the mask in ritualistic practices that, since time immemorial, collectively mark crucial moments in Europe, such as the equinoxes and solstices, integrating characters such as the Wild Man, the Bear, the Goat or the Devil.
Based on Marco Martins’ new performance, this debate hacks the multiple dramaturgies of masks. As a medium and stage for the figuration of the Other, masks show, hide and perform profound human technologies of the game. Face and mask differ and resonate with each other. From supernatural beliefs, masks deal with what fascinates and is feared, turning the wearer into hybrids beyond the culture/nature, animal/human and true/disguised dichotomies.
Transforming Energy presents the latest work by the Berru collective and investigates the potential of the oceans as an element capable of responding to the challenges that the energy crisis and the management of natural resources pose to us today. This is a Collection Europe project, promoted by the ACT partners COAL (FR) and Culturgest (PT), and it is presented in the framework of Portugal-France Season 2022.
As part of the Transforming Energy exhibition by the Berru collective and the Temporada Cruzada França-Portugal, Culturgest and COAL present a double conference, the theme being on oceans and the interaction of humans with this global – yet sensitive – ecosystem. At the Culturgest Gallery in Porto where the exhibition will be on display, there will be a discussion between Berru collective, Clara Amorim, a biologist and specialist in acoustic communication of fish, and Olivier Adam, a specialist in cetacean bioacoustics. The moderation will be conducted by Samuel Silva, artist and professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts at University of Porto.
This conference is part of a program of two debates on eco-acoustics and energy issues related to the ocean, bringing together French and Portuguese researchers and artists. On the 15th of September 2022, before the opening of the Berru collective exhibition at the Vidéoformes festival, a second roundtable will take place at the Clermont-Ferrand University with the Berru collective, Roberto Gamboa, researcher at the University of Lisboa, specialist in marine energy production, among others, moderated by Elise Aspord, co-founder of the Vidéoformes festival and researcher at Clermont-Ferrand University.
The synergies and challenges that the encounter between the biological and technological worlds presents have been at the center of attention for the berru collective. Their works tend to combine living and non-living structures, whose interaction allows us to understand the complexity of these same structures and speculate on their potential collaborations in creating sustainable systems. This is a Collection Europe project, promoted by ACT partners COAL and Culturgest, in the framework of the Portugal-France Season 2022.
Who has the right to define what human rights are? There’s no easy answer. Ideas about what is right or wrong in the way people organise and interrelate vary greatly from culture to culture, and the possibility of a communion of values is all the more difficult the more one tries to achieve a “universality”. Choosing a group of people who can define human rights poses a problem of representativeness and, with regard to the representation of minorities, highlights the limits of democracy itself. Furthermore, the limits of what is considered “human” raises doubts, insofar as rights of other entities directly involved in human action should be considered.
Imagine yourself on a beach, or not, watching it from above. The scorching sun, sunscreen, shiny bathing suits, and sweaty bodies. Weary limbs sprawled lazily on a mosaic of towels. Imagine the occasional shouts of children, laughter, the sound of an ice cream van in the distance. The musical rhythm of the waves in the surf, a soft sound. The rustle of plastic bags swirling in the air, then floating silently, like jellyfish, below the waterline. The roar of a volcano, or an airplane, or a speedboat. Then a chorus of songs: everyday songs, songs of worry and boredom, songs of almost nothing. And below them: the slow creak of an exhausted Earth, a sigh.
Ôss is how you say ‘bone’ in Creole. It is also reminiscent of the expression OSS, common among karate practitioners, which refers to ideas such as pressing, pushing, supporting. What interests us in this show is the bone as a keeper of ancient secrets, revealing anatomical orientations, a structuring box for soft and fragile parts. Building a strong skeleton, where the foot serves as the brain, the heart serves as an elbow, and the knees are a liver and an ear, will naturally be possible for us, since the difference between hard and soft matters little.
A diptych on violence and beauty, Fúria (2018) and Encantado (2021), the two most recent shows from Brazilian choreographer Lia Rodrigues, are awe-inspiring statements about our ever-accelerating times, and powerful indictments as much as they are messages of hope. In Fúria, the frenzied presence of all eleven dancers from the company evokes a world of violence, but also the incessant struggle against all forms of oppression, through an unrelenting succession of images built and demolished. Conceived at, and born out of the favelas of Maré in Rio, Fúria lies where Carnival parade meets archaic procession and protest march.
A diptych on violence and beauty, Fúria (2018) and Encantado (2021), the two most recent shows from Brazilian choreographer Lia Rodrigues, are awe-inspiring statements about our ever-accelerating times, and powerful indictments as much as they are messages of hope. Encantado [‘enchanted’] is synonymous with charmed, and mesmerized, but in Brazil it also refers to entities that exist in realms of perception from the Afro-Brazilian culture. The encantados exist somewhere between heaven and earth, in the jungle, the rocks, rivers, seas, and all the surrounding flora. They turn nature into a sacred place. Will we be able to re-join the enchanted world where we can reunite with our own, and other living creatures in all their diversity?
Warming up to Philippe Descola’s conference, Culturgest shows Composer les Mondes (‘composing the worlds’) a film written, shot and directed by Eliza Levy. Her subject is Descola himself, and the thinking that made him a noteworthy anthropologist. Which should be our starting point to rethink the world with an aim of changing it? Descola devoted his life in anthropology to the study of how human beings form their worlds. He began his investigation in the Amazon region, and then he focused his attention on Europe, seeking to understand how us from the modern world managed to turn the Earth increasingly less habitable.
Philippe Descola’s comparative anthropology focused on the relations between humans and non-humans revolutionized the landscape of human sciences, and had great impact on ecological thinking. Par-delà nature et culture (Gallimard, 2005) was a landmark in his work, as well as highly influential for anyone concerned with the connections that link nature and culture. Published in 2021, Les formes du visible (‘The forms of the visible’) sets the ground for a figurative anthropology and reflects on the ability of each culture to conceive images and figurative devices. Revisiting his first book, Descola resumes the theory of four basic ontologies that govern the variation in collective life. Each one – animism, naturalism, totemism, and analogism – draws its own line between human and non-human. Les formes du visible earned Descola the Martine Aublet Foundation award in 2021.
Manifestos para Depois do Fim do Mundo takes inspiration from the curatorial work of Hans Ulrich Obrist. Seven actors perform manifestos written during the new millennium. The show takes place along different spaces in and outside the main building. Favouring intimacy, each manifesto is performed for a limited audience at a time, when tradition would have it read in loud tones from a platform. The show was born from a desire to spread considerate words that speak of our times. Some hopeful, some denouncing, they are words from the world, and from everyday life.
