Galeria Municipal do Porto

Music Between Companion Species
May - November 2023

Music between Companion Species is a series of concerts conceived and performed for and with dogs, their human companions and other more-than-human presences who may join these sessions. Inspired by Donna J. Haraway’s Companion Species Manifesto and by cientific studies about dog’s preferences for sound and music, the concerts will take into account these animals’ unique sensibilities and hearing capabilities. Curated by Lovers & Lollypops.

Curated by Lovers & Lollypops

Paulo Cunha e Silva Art Prize
17.06-20.08.2023

Created by the City Council as a tribute to the late Councillor for Culture Paulo Cunha e Silva (1962 – 2015), a central figure for the city’s artistic life, the award, held every two years in Porto, recognises the talent of new generations of national and international artists. This year’s edition underlines the Prize’s commitment to fostering creation and cultural exchange by establishing a partnership with three world-recognised residency programmes: Arquipélago Centro de Artes in S. Miguel, Azores, Cove Park, on Scotland’s west coast, and Pivô, in São Paulo, will all host one of the nominated artists, appointed by a jury of three members.

The Nominators for the 2023 edition of the Art Prize are:
Artist Ângela Ferreira, Jan van Eyck Academie Director Hicham Khalidi, and cultural programmer Tabitha Thorlu-Bandura.

With
Euridice Kala, Márilu Namoda and Luis Santos (nominated by Ângela Ferreira); Rouzbeh Akhbari, Kent Chan and Hira Nabi (nominated by Hicham Khalidi) and Maren Karlson, Malik Nashad Sharpe aka Marikiscrycrycry, and Eve Stainton (nominated by Tabitha Thorlu-Bandura).

Duet
Maria Paz and Joan Jonas
16.09 – 19.11.2023

Duet is an invitation for two artists to share an exhibition space. It started as a proposal for a young artist from Porto to think of an artist they would like to share an exhibition with. Recalling the impact of her survey show at the Serralves Museum, Maria Paz invited Joan Jonas to share the exhibition space of the Galeria Municipal do Porto. In this transatlantic exchange of generations, the two artists will reveal their common investigations of forms, colours and materials.

Curadoria de Filipa Ramos

The Sylvan and Harsh North
09.12.2023 – 10.03.2024

What are the meteorological patterns, the myths and stories, the rhythms, colours and shapes, the human and nonhuman inhabitants that make up the Iberian Northwest, in its reality and fiction?
Wondering about the rituals and expressive modes of people, animals, plants, elements and minerals, we went looking for the roots, terminations and tentacles of the Iberian Northwest, trying to locate the places where they might reside. In doing so, we considered the past but above all faced the present-future of these concrete and imagined spaces between seas, woods and settlements. The Sylvan and Harsh North is an exhibition that follows roads and lines of intensity, centrifugal forces that take us beyond Porto, towards those supposed margins where permutations erupt, to discover and share the references, stories, words and connections to these places with a long past and an even longer future.

Curated by Filipa Ramos and Juan Luis Toboso

Jonathan Uliel Saldanha

Leaflet

Curated by João Laia, GMP's ground floor is occupied by Surface Disorder, Jonathan Uliel Saldanha's first large-scale solo exhibition.

26.10.2024 - 16.02.2025

26.10

Surface Disorder, by Jonathan Uliel Saldanha

Musician, visual artist, sound and scenic creator, his artistic practice unfolds at the intersection of sound, gesture, voice, installation, performance and video, crossing pre-language, otherness and science fiction.

26.10.2024 - 16.02.2025

Photos: Renato Cruz Santos

Saturday, November 2, at 4 pm

Guided exhibition tour

On the first Saturday of every month, the Galeria Municipal do Porto holds a guided tour of the exhibitions.

Free admission.
Guided tour in portuguese: 3pm
Guided tour in english: 4pm

Saturday, December 7, at 4 pm

Guided exhibition tour

On the first Saturday of every month, the Galeria Municipal do Porto holds a guided tour of the exhibitions.

Free admission.
Guided tour in portuguese: 3pm
Guided tour in english: 4pm

Saturday December 7th at 4.30pm

Surface Disorder: Book launch with Jonathan Uliel Saldanha and Bragança de Miranda.

On the occasion of the exhibition "Surface Disorder" by Jonathan Uliel Saldanha, curated by João Laia, we are launching a publication on the exhibition project.

The presentation will also include a talk between the artist and professor and researcher José Bragança de Miranda.

Venue: BMAG Auditorium.

Free admission.

Photo: Dinis Santos

José A. Bragança de Miranda holds a doctorate in Communication Sciences from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, with an honours degree in ‘Cultural Theory’ from the same university. He is currently a Full Professor at Universidade Lusófona, a researcher at Cicant and a collaborator at ICnova (UNL). He was director of ECATI - School of Communication Sciences. Architecture, Arts and Information Technologies at Lusófona University. He curated the Ligações_Links_Liaisons project for Porto2001 - European Capital of Culture, in collaboration with Maria Teresa Cruz, which resulted in the book Crítica das Ligações na Era da Técnica (Tropismos, 2002). He was President of the FCT's Communication Sciences panel, President of the Icam Documentary Jury (2006), member of the BESfoto awards jury, member of the Luso-Spanish Culture Prize jury. He was curator of the commemorations of the 40th anniversary of 25 April for Porto City Council (2924). He has lectured in the areas of Cultural Theory and Contemporary Arts, Media Theory and Digital Aesthetics. The author of numerous essays and interventions in the most diverse areas of contemporary culture, his publications include the books Analítica da Actualidade, Política e Modernidade, Traços. Ensaios sobre a Cultura Contemporânea, Teoria da Cultura, Síntese, Albuquerque Mendes ou o Ardor da Arte, Queda Sem Fim, Envios. A Philosophical Experiment in Blogging, Body and Image and Jorge Molder. His latest book Constellations: Essays on Technique and Culture in Contemporaneity was published by Documenta in September 2023.

Saturday December 7th at 6pm

"Surface Disorder": Concert MAU SANGUE - HHY & The Macumbas + Lunar Ring.

HHY & The Macumbas and artificial intelligence-based generative art collective Lunar Ring collaborate to create a real-time audio-visual tapestry that transcends the boundaries between the organic and the synthetic.

Highlighting the possibilities of improvisation, MAU SANGUE combines an exploration of the limits of rhythm with an investigation into the spaces of mechanised perception.

HHY & The Macumbas are an enigmatic and psychedelic sonic experience. Over the course of 15 years and 4 albums, the band has built a discography defined by hypnotic melodic cycles, percussive rhythms that distort time and space, and echoes that extend to the limits of perception.

Venue: BMAG Auditorium.

Free admission.

Photo: Rui Pina

Saturday, January 4, at 4 pm

Guided exhibition tour

On the first Saturday of every month, the Galeria Municipal do Porto holds a guided tour of the exhibitions.

Free admission.
Guided tour in portuguese: 3pm
Guided tour in english: 4pm

Saturday, January 11, at 3pm

"Surface Disorder": Guided exhibition tour with Aida Castro

Aida Castro's practice brings together diverse productions that explore hybrid methodologies between practices (visual and written) and speculative knowledge. Her research has explored the archaeologies of media-bodies, a term that emerged in the project (de)MONSTRAS: imaginaries, corporealities and amphibious materialities, to study figures, materials and imaginaries in demonstrations of hybrid and technical bodies.

Venue: Galeria Municipal do Porto

Free admission, subject to room capacity.

Aida Castro is a researcher, teacher and artist with a PhD in Communication Sciences: Communication and Arts from the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the New University of Lisbon. She is currently a guest lecturer at the Multimedia department of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, where she teaches on the bachelor's and master's programmes. She is a member of ICNOVA, where she coordinates the research project (de)MONSTRAS: imaginaries, corporealities and amphibious materialities (2024). She is also a collaborator with I2ADS, where she co-programmed VIDEODREAMS: Practices of the Imaginary (2022, FBAUP).

She has been working with Maria Mire as an artistic duo since 2017, having co-edited issue 59 of the Journal of Communication and Languages, with the theme "Media-Bodies: Matters and Imaginaries" (2023), and the book DEAD LINK: mediations of artistic practices (2021), for Interact: Online Journal of Art, Culture and Technology.

Thursday, January 16 at 7pm

Simulation and Hallucination: What comes after art? - Talk with Zachary Mainen, Gonçalo Guiomar and Jonathan Uliel Saldanha

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence-based technology has allowed machine learning models to insert themselves into practically all forms of sociocultural relation and production. With their deep historical links to neuroscience, these brain-inspired models have demonstrated an uncanny ability to simulate what were previously thought of as singular human faculties such as language, image production and, in some sense, abstract reasoning.

As with a human brain, these artificial intelligence models are also able to hallucinate, and it is within this hallucination surface that a series of collaborative projects, developed in the context of digital therapeutics research in the Champaliamaud Centre for the Unknown, was born.

In this discussion, neuroscientists Zachary Mainen and Gonçalo Guiomar, together with artist Jonathan Uliel Saldanha, come together to discuss how their work fits in the interstices of their fields of practice and in what ways these objects have influenced their research.

Venue: BMAG Auditorium

Language: English. There will be simultaneous translation into Portuguese.

Free admission, subject to room capacity.

Photo: Renato Cruz Santos

Saturday 15th February at 4.30pm

Artist talk with Amy Ireland

Amy Ireland is a writer and theorist best known for her work with the technomaterialist transfeminist collective, Laboria Cuboniks, whose Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation (2018) has been translated into 18 languages. With Maya B. Kronic she is the author of Cute Accelerationism (2024).

Amy currently works as an editor and translator for the UK contemporary art and philosophy publisher, Urbanomic.

Venue: Galeria Municipal do Porto.

The presentation will be held in English.

Free admission, subject to room capacity.

Saturday, February 15, at 6pm

Live Act by Nsasi

In the context of the public programme for Jonathan Uliel Saldanha's "Surface Disorder", Galeria Municipal do Porto presents Nsasi, a musical artist who brings us the undergroung echos of Uganda.

Their sound combines traditional rhythms and sound palettes with the universe of ultra-modern and disruptive music. Their acoustic cosmos is recognised by the ability to alternate contrasting sounds, carrying listeners on a journey through different times and genres. The result is a dynamic landscape where acid beats collide with Kiganda percussion and East African rhythms.

This "Enfant Terrible" from the picturesque and deeply conservative town of Jinja, Uganda, gained an early reputation for questioning norms, developing subversive DJ sets, between slowed-down dance anthems, glossy R&b's and dynamic experiences in fringe clubs.

Venue: Galeria Municipal do Porto

Free admission, subject to room capacity.

Image: Juho Reinikainen