Programmes
Commented Concerts
Commented Concerts
Conceiving the concert as a conversation, I invite musicians to discuss their stylistic choices, aesthetic influences and references through performance and dialogue. Notes will range from gong resonances to cultural exchanges, and the exploration of cosmic ancestral forces.
Commented Concerts / Saturday, May 28, 7pm
Sun Oddly Quiet — João Pais Filipe
Musician and sculptor João Pais Filipe introduces his process of creation and exploration of sound through a session with percussion instruments, many of them designed and built by himself. While exploring the relationship between materials, gestures and sounds, João Pais Filipe reveals how his travels across Africa, Asia and South America informed his heterogeneous, complementary cadences and sound mantras.
João Pais Filipe is a percussionist and sound sculptor from Porto. He develops his artistic activity in Porto, where he constructs percussive metal instruments, such as gongs or cymbals, exploring their sculptural and acoustic properties.
Commented Concerts / Sunday, 19 June, 9pm
Black Med, Chapter IV & VI — Invernomuto
Inspired by Paul Gilroy's “Black Atlantic” theory, which sees the Atlantic Ocean as the reflection of a political and cultural system based on the socioeconomics of slavery, historian Alessandra Di Maio defined the “Black Mediterranean” as a territory of subordination, racial oppression and geopolitical dispute. Based on these theories, Invernomuto created Black Med, a project of DJ set sessions in which texts and references dialogue with sound pieces, grouped into themes such as migration, periphery, interspecies or alternatives to technology. Black Med, Chapter IV features a diversion through the Persian Gulf and Black Med, Chapter VI is based on David Abulafia’s essay “Mediterraneans”.
The moment counts with the collaboration of Sismógrafo, which will present a solo exhibition of the artistic duo, on the previous day, and on Friday a screening of two documentaries at Passos Manuel Cinema.
The work of Invernomuto (Simone Bertuzzi and Simone Trabucchi) spans from moving images and sound to sculpture, performance and publishing. With Black Med, they intercept the sonic trajectories that cross the Mediterranean, tracing their movement and accommodating their narratives.
Commented Concerts / Friday, 30 September, 7:30pm
Invisible Gestures — Nkisi
Nkisi explores gestuality as a form of spatial writing whose power expands into the dimension of the invisible through the dynamic and responsive properties of sound in the context of improvisation. From these speech-generating movements, Nkisi investigates the complex articulations between the nature of memory, abstract thought and the infinite reality of fractal worlds. Integrated within the scope of The Secret Institute project, the sound performance Invisible Gestures invokes the ancestral forces of nature and the cosmos, through the continuous study of hand movements, combined with improvisation in ritual performance, amplified by sounds, invocations and rhythms.
Nkisi (Melika Ngombe Kolongo) is an electronic musician, producer, and artist whose performances overlay African rhythms, hard European dance tropes, and synthesizer melodies to reorder the hierarchy of the senses and discover how body and memory are affected by sounds and rhythms.
Commented Concerts / Tuesday, November 8, 9 pm
Arto Vs Arto — Arto Lindsay
Not even Arto Lindsay knows how an Arto Lindsay concert will unfold. The exact amounts of continuity and interruption, noise and harmony, frustration, humour and euphoria are dosed and distributed live and in unpredictable manners. Improvising, singing, attuning and disattuning himself to others shape Arto Lindsay's practice during the last four decades. The concert, in collaboration with bassist Melvin Gibbs, will be an unpredictable event.
Arto Lindsay bridges music and art with his work. As a member of DNA, he contributed to the foundation of No Wave while as bandleader of Ambitious Lovers, he subverted and radically changed Pop music. Through his collaborative practice, he has worked with artists such as Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Animal Collective, Matthew Barney, Caetano Veloso and Rirkrit Tiravanija.
Arto Lindsay bridges music and art with his work. As a member of DNA, he contributed to the foundation of No Wave while as bandleader of Ambitious Lovers, he subverted and radically changed Pop music. Through his collaborative practice, he has worked with artists such as Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Animal Collective, Matthew Barney, Caetano Veloso and Rirkrit Tiravanija.
Commented Concerts / Friday, January 27, 7 pm
Shafts of Sunlight — Lamin Fofana
The future is uncertain. The road is constantly changing. Our encounters with the world compel us to experiment and create new concepts and things that will help us imagine a different existence, a way out of the turbulence and brutality. Shafts of Sunlight is an open-ended improvisatory performance-installation with fragments and debris from extended studio sessions. It is a disruption of the linearity of historical time, what historian Robin D. G. Kelley refers to as Blues Time; it is simultaneously the past, the future, and the timeless space of the imagination.
Lamin Fofana is an artist and musician currently based in New York and Berlin. His music explores issues of movement, migration, alienation, belonging and what lies beyond our reality. His interest in history and the present, and his practice of transmuting text into the affective medium of sound, manifest in live multi-sensory performances and installations with original musical compositions.
Lamin Fofana is an artist and musician currently based in New York and Berlin. His music explores issues of movement, migration, alienation, belonging and what lies beyond our reality. His interest in history and the present, and his practice of transmuting text into the affective medium of sound, manifest in live multi-sensory performances and installations with original musical compositions.