Fields of Collaboration program

DAY 1 — NOV 19, TUE

10h00-10h35

Registration

10h30-10h50

Welcome

10h50 -11h50

Fire up your imaginary!

Chair: Raquel Ermida

Keynote Speakers: Catherine Quéloz and Liliane Schneiter (EN)

(HEAD/Research Platform and Doctoral Practice In Arts – Geneva, Switzerland)

The renewal of the notion of sharing through collaboration is activated by the imaginary of the arts and sciences. The modes of collaboration involve paying attention to the other (human and non-human) in order to create links and refuges. They question the powers that be while experimenting with other forms of institution, strengthening thus the perception of democracy.

The commoning inscribed in the process of collaboration offers a perspective on how to lead a “good life”, in sharp awareness of the cooperation between ecofeminism, degrowth, conviviality, voluntary simplicity, multi-species collaboration, etc. In this “troubled” and damaged world, it is necessary to weave links for the thread not to be broken up.

11h50-12h10

Coffee Break

12h10-13h30

Panel 1 — Building the common (EN)

Chair: Rui Matoso

Alexandra do Carmo - Regime Shifts

Carla Cruz - The Mill Stories, management as an art practice

Jenny Dunn - Community Makingtowards situated agency

By addressing pressing issues such as the disappearance of public space, gentrification and austerity in the funding of the arts, the panel will present three case studies of activist collectives and community centers that seek alternatives for commonal making in cities, by working together with those who inhabit them.

13h30-15h00

Lunch

15h00-16h20

Panel 2 — Feminist approaches in collaboration processes (EN/PT)

Chair: Giulia Lamoni

Camilla Paolino – Tracing the genealogy of collective and art-led thinking in the history of Italian neo-feminism (EN)

Alice Geirinhas e Susana Mendes Silva – Girlschool: process and practice (PT)

Madalena Lobo Antunes e Renata Ferraz – Rua dos Anjos revisited: a gesture in shared meta-interpretive textual conception stemming from joint creation in film (PT)

The second panelwill examine the activity of artistic projects and political collectives formed largely or exclusively by women, from a historical and practical standpoint, in order to tackle gender issues in the context of collaboration.

16h20-16h40

Break

16h40-18h00

Panel 3 — Questioning notions of authorship (EN/PT)

Chair: Susana Nascimento Duarte

Miguel Ferrão – Musa paradisiaca and Art & Language, practices as relation (PT)

Susana Viegas – Interceptors, Authors and Cinematic Fabulation (PT)

Sarah Fassio - Moving Authorship in the Digital Era: How Artificial Intelligence Based Art is Challenging our Attitude Towards Collective Authorship (EN)

The third panel will address how the exercise of collective creation can deconstruct, invalidate and remake the notions of author, authorship and authorial.

18h00-18h30

Coffee Break

18h30-20h00

Keynote Speakers: SOOPA (PT)

Chair: Maria Mire
 

An archive of videos, photos, sounds, and texts coming out of concerts and performances reveals the cosmological relationships of the multidisciplinary platform for international creation, SOOPA. Two elements of the group, Filipe Silva and Jonathan Saldanha, will give an overview of 20 years of collective creation and curatorial activity in the city of Porto and abroad. The work of SOOPA has regularly contributed to the artistic agenda of the city and has eventually spread beyond its original territory.

DAY 2 — NOV 20, WED

10h00-10h30

Registration

10h30-11h50

Roundtable: Collaboration in Portuguese art (PT)

Guest Speakers: António Olaio (Colégio das Artes, Coimbra), José Maia (FLP), Rita Fabiana (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian), Sandra Vieira Jürgens (IHA - FCSH)

Chair: Samuel Silva

Considering the relevance of collectivization processes in artistic practices in Portugal, this panel will firstly address the contributions made by collaborative groups/projects that emerged from the 1960s onward to the development of “unique collective models of production, self-management and dissemination of art” (JÜRGENS, 2016, p. 235), a then notoriously political gesture of resistance. In addition, the panel will discuss the different collaboration formats that appeared subsequently in the context of democracy and up to the present day, and which combine and develop aspects such as informality, cross-disciplinarity, the construction of an artistic community and the strengthening of an idea of independence.

11h50 -12h10

Coffee Break

12h10-13h30

Panel 4 - Experimentation in the Portuguese art context: from 1960 up to the present day (PT)

Chair: Mariana Pinto dos Santos

Eliana Santiago, Jorge Pereira and Susana Barreto – Reassembling an art school identity based on artistic dialogues and collaboration with its actors – Porto and ESBAP in the 1960s and 1970s

Mariana Gaspar – “Only enthusiasm matters…” research, experimentation and collaboration with Almada, Um Nome de Guerra [Almada, A Name of War], by Ernesto de Sousa

Sílvia Pinto Coelho – Collaborative Artistic Practices – Puzzle Practices, fitting game, or meeting game?

Departing from the analysis of collaborative processes in the Portuguese artistic context of the 1960s and 70s, this panel will look at the potentialities they offer to think about collaboration in areas such as artistic education, the visual arts and dance, both in their historical contexts and today.

13h30-15h00

Lunch

15h00-16h20

Panel 5 — Intervening in the public space (PT)

Chair: Margarida Brito Alves

Sónia Moura –  The synthesis of the arts, a collaboration model

Patrícia Rosas – “Grupo Acre Fez” – a collective in action from 1974 to 1977

Jorge Bassani – São Paulo 1970/80: The binomium ‘collective art and occupation of streets’

The panelwill focus on the ways through which collaborative artistic practices transform social dynamics, support or question political models, and alter the aesthetic experience of the city.

16h20-16h40

Coffee Break

16h40-18h00

Panel 6 — Tensions and disputes within structures of production and cultural creation (PT)

Chair: Cláudia Madeira

Vânia Rodrigues – Artists, producers and managers: the anatomy of a relationship

Rui Cepeda - Field notes on mediation as a collaborative-dispute resolution in collaborative art practices.

Ana Corrêa e Sezen Tonguz - The short lifetime of Artist Collective Lisbon Co-dance

The conference’s last thematic panel will discuss the challenges and conflict resolution strategies that emerge in the midst of collectives and cultural production organisms, in the sphere of performative and community arts.

18h00-18h30

Coffee Break

18h30-20h00

Keynote Speaker: Francisca Caporali (JA.CA - Belo Horizonte, Brasil) (PT)

Chair: Tobi Maier 

The founder and artistic co-coordinator of JA.CA, Francisca Caporali, will present the institution’s ten-year history, ever since the construction of its headquarters. The project is a result of two pivotal aspects: 1) Pedagogical and educational activity in arts involving the visit of external artists and researchers; and the collaboration with artists, students and the local community. 2) Promotion of critical debate on public policies, in order to maintain independent artistic initiatives, both by conducting research on constructive processes and the reuse of materials, and by strengthening networks of autonomous spaces.

Fields of Collaboration bios and abstracts

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Day 1 | NOV 19 | 10h50-11h50 | EN | Chair: Raquel Ermida

CATHERINE QUÉLOZ AND LILIANE SCHNEITER

(HEAD/Research Platform and Doctoral Practice In Arts – Geneve, Switzerland)

Fire up your imaginary!

The renewal of the notion of sharing through collaboration is activated by the imaginary of the arts and sciences. The modes of collaboration involve paying attention to the other (human and non-human) in order to create links and refuges. They question the powers that be while experimenting with other forms of institution, strengthening thus the perception of democracy.

The commoning inscribed in the process of collaboration offers a perspective on how to lead a “good life”, in sharp awareness of the cooperation between ecofeminism, degrowth, conviviality, voluntary simplicity, multi-species collaboration, etc. In this “troubled” and damaged world, it is necessary to weave links for the thread not to be broken up.

Catherine Quéloz is an art historian, researching the transformation of situated artistic practices, “minor” histories, the effects of social history and gender and post-colonial theories in art and the cultural writing of history. She is the co-founder (with Liliane Schneiter) of the CCC Master’s Program (Critical Curatorial Cybermedia Studies) and the Pre-doctorate/PhD Program at Haute École d’Art et de Design, in Geneva (2000-2015). Quéloz is honorary professor at HES-SO (Haute École Spécialisée de Suisse Occidentale) and a consultant for research projects on emergent cultures and the education economy. She supervises numerous PhD theses on artistic practice. She is a member of RPDP-A (a platform for doctoral artistic research), an artistic research NGO. In 2014, Catherine Quéloz received the Swiss art prize Méret Oppenheim.

​

Liliane Schneiter is an art historian specialized in Medieval and Modern Art, and a professor at HES-SO (Haute École Spécialisée de Suisse Occidentale). She has taught in numerous institutions, universities and alternative spaces. Her research areas include critical theory of history (Walter Benjamin, the Frankfurt School, contemporary transformations of sovereignty), moral and political history in continental and analytic philosophy, and the potential of networked art for civic action. She is the co-founder (with Catherine Quéloz) of the Master’s Program CCC (Critical Curatorial Cybermedia Studies) and the Pre-doctorate/PhD seminar at Haute École d’Art et de Design, in Geneva (2000-2015). She is a consultant for research projects on emerging cultures and the education economy. She is a member of RPDP-A (a platform for doctoral artistic research), an artistic research NGO.

Day 1 | NOV 19 | 18h30-20h00 | PT |  Chair: Maria Mire

SOOPA

(Porto, Portugal)

An archive of videos, photos, sounds, and texts coming out of concerts and performances reveals the cosmological relationships of the multidisciplinary platform for international creation SOOPA. Two elements of the group, Filipe Silva and Jonathan Saldanha, will give an overview of 20 years of collective creation and curatorial activity in the city of Porto and abroad. The work of SOOPA has regularly contributed to the artistic agenda of the city and has eventually spread beyond its original territory.

SOOPA is a proteiform, multi-cephalous, international art and music platform oriented around a collective of artists and thinkers; a sound, visual and performance laboratory with a longstanding activity based in Porto. SOOPA is a cosmos working in the fields of: autopoiesis, home-made science fiction, fabricated traditional cultures, the mapping of invisible territories, inner station jungle, radio magnetic animism and the great unsounded chaos. SOOPA’s activities include the production and release of music and publications, the promotion of concerts and conferences, and the creation of scenic and filmic pieces, in a continuous and multifaceted process of research. Founded in 1999 by Jonathan Saldanha, SOOPA is formed by Catarina Miranda, Dayana Lucas, Diogo Tudela, Filipe Silva, Benjamin Brejon, Frédéric Alstadt, João Pais Filipe and Nicolas Esterle.

Day 2 | NOV 20 | 18h30-20h00 | PT

FRANCISCA CAPORALI | JA.CA - ART AND TECHNOLOGY CENTER

(Ja.Ca - Belo Horizonte, Brasil)

The founder and artistic co-coordinator of JA.CA, Francisca Caporali, will present the institution’s ten-year history, ever since the construction of its headquarters. The project is a result of two pivotal aspects: 1) Pedagogical and educational activity in arts involving the visit of external artists and researchers; and the collaboration with artists, students and the local community. 2) Promotion of critical debate on public policies, in order to maintain independent artistic initiatives, both by conducting research on constructive processes and the reuse of materials, and by strengthening networks of autonomous spaces.

JA.CA – Centro de Arte e Tecnologia carries out research, projects and artistic experiments in Jardim Canadá, Nova Lima neighborhood, Belo Horizonte Metropolitan Region and in other partner cities and institutions. The initiative began in 2010 as a project of international artist residencies, having been consolidated and formally constituted as a non-profit civil association with the goal of promoting and disseminating culture and art in 2013. Since its foundation, Caporali has executed and managed all of JA.CA’s projects. Nowadays, alongside the activities developed in Jardim Canadá, JA.CA carries out the Educational Program of the Banco do Brasil Cultural Center and the Bolsa Pampulha (Pampulha Grant), in partnership with the Municipal Foundation of Culture - Belo Horizonte and the Pampulha Museum.

Day 2 | NOV 20 | 10h30-11h50 | PT | Chair: Samuel Silva

COLLABORATION IN PORTUGUESE ART

Roundtable with António Olaio, José Maia, Rita Fabiana and Sandra Vieira Jürgens.

Considering the relevance of collectivization processes in artistic practices in Portugal, this panel will firstly address the contributions made by collaborative groups/projects that emerged from the 1960s onward to the development of “unique collective models of production, self-management and dissemination of art” (JÜRGENS, 2016, p. 235), a then notoriously political gesture of resistance. In addition, the panel will discuss the different collaboration formats that appeared subsequently in the context of democracy and up to the present day, and which combine and develop aspects such as informality, cross-disciplinarity, the construction of an artistic community and the strengthening of an idea of independence.

António Olaio (artist and professor, Universidade de Coimbra)

António Olaio is an artist and Professor at the Department of Architecture of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of Coimbra. He is the director of the College of the Arts of the University of Coimbra. His work has been exhibited in solo shows in Coimbra, Lisbon, Porto, Guimarães, Mallorca, New York, Berlin and Frankfurt. As a researcher, he explores the conceptual potential of art as an object and instrument of reflection, namely regarding the relationships between the individual and space, plastic experience and architecture. He has published, among others, “I think differently now that I can paint”, which reveals the breadth of his conceptual intervention as an artist, and “Ser um indivíduo chez Marcel Duchamp”, which, through Duchamp’s work, highlights the work of art as production of thought.

José Maia (artist and curator, Espaço Mira)

José Maia (curator), also know as Manuel Santos Maia (artist) was born in Nampula, Mozambique. He lives and works in Porto. He has a Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts – Painting, by the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. He exhibits regularly since 1999. He has organized and co-organized solo and collective exhibitions throughout the country. Since 1998 he regularly organizes debates, talks and conferences with creators operating in different artistic fields, curators, artists, critics and historians.

Rita Fabiana (curator, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian)

Rita Fabiana holds an MA in Art History by Université Paris I – Panthéon- Sorbonne and a Post-graduate Degree in Curatorship and Exhibition Organization by the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon. She is program coordinator at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum since 2016. She works as a curator since 2006, and has developed projects with Portuguese and international artists such as Zineb Sedira (ongoing), Yto Barrada, Ana Jotta and Ricardo Valentim, Emily Wardill, Ricardo Jacinto, André Guedes, Leonor Antunes and A kills B, among others. She curated the retrospective exhibition of José Escada, co-curated the retrospectives of António Ole and Túlia Saldanha and she was executive curator for the project Plegaria Muda by Doris Salcedo. She contributes regularly to catalogs and collaborated with art magazines such as Contemporânea and OEI (Stockholm), among others. She has cooperated in seminars of Curatorship and Exhibition Organization (University of Coimbra) and in 2018 she collaborated with the Malmö Art Academy as an external jury to the MFA finalist projects.

Sandra Vieira Jürgens (curator and professor, IHA, DHA, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa)

Sandra Vieira Jürgens is a Post-Doc Researcher (funded by FCT) at the Art History Institute (IHA-FCSH, NOVA University of Lisbon), since 2015. She is currently a Professor and coordinator of the Post-Graduate Degree in Art Curatorship at the NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities, NOVA University of Lisbon. She directs the online magazine “Wrong Wrong” and the digital platfrom “raum: residências artísticas online” (both projects by Terceiro Direito – Associação Cultural). She is the author of the book “Instalações Provisórias: Independência, autonomia, alternativa e informalidade. Artistas e exposições em Portugal no século XX” (2016). She created, directed and edited “Artecapital”, an online publication specialized in contemporary art (2006-2013). She was the editor of Número Magazine (2001) and Artes & Leilões magazine (2007-2010). She coordinated the national and international communication of official Portuguese representations at the Venice and São Paulo Biennials, in the areas of art and architecture (2008-2010), at the Direcção-Geral das Artes/Ministério da Cultura.

PANELS

Panel 1 | Day 1 | NOV 19 | 12H10-13H30 | EN | Chair:Rui Matoso

BUILDING THE COMMON

The panel Building the common will address pressing issues such as the disappearance of public space, gentrification and austerity in the funding of the arts, with three case studies of activist collectives and community centers.

Regime Shifts

Alexandra do Carmo (alexandradocarmo@gmail.com)

IHA, FCSH-NOVA

Abstract: It is within the current debate on the nature of socially engaged art, the prevalent re-evaluation of its authorial modes and a better understanding of the of artists third generation institutional critique, that I am reflecting on the collective Not an Alternative (NAA). I will analyze its articulation with the fast disappearance of a public sphere, the creation of commonality through a reinvention of public platforms and the cross fields of activism in ecology and art.

NAA has been researching, discussing and implementing projects since 2004, “a hub of experimental, special research and relationship-building between artists and organizers, especially those involved in struggles concerning land use, housing, gentrification, and displacement. Placing an emphasis on symbolic markers that could be shared across different sites and struggles” (McKee, 2016).

A 2009 project in collaboration with Picture the Homeless, distinguished itself as having fully implemented an art practice that extends itself onto the social— aiming to critically expose the severe housing displacement operated by the capitalist bank system, which resulted in an escalating foreclosure situation in NYC. In 2014, inspired by the actions of Liberate Tate, NAA begun The Natural History Museum project, a parallel critical institution to the history and ideology of natural history museums, acting in the form of exhibition, panel discussions and events, a mobile apparatus addressing environmental concerns.

NAA recruited its audiences and the scientific community in an effort to progressively voice a latent public desire of changing the way these institutions are portraying and guiding generations with respect to our involvement with the ecological crisis we are living through.

This essay focuses on NAA ́s methodologies of collaboration, investigating the possibility of their art proving itself as part of the same social and political interaction that it communicates with and helps to reveal.

Alexandra do Carmo lives and works in Lisbon, she is currently enrolled in a PhD in Artistic Studies at Universidade Nova de Lisboa FCSH, and she is a fellow of FCT and Nova University. She Studied at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, and Pratt institute, both in New York, and at Ar.Co in Lisbon. Most relevant projects include: The Green Studio at IC19, (2018) at Sismógrafo, Porto, Studio Socialis (2014), at Carlos Carvalho Gallery (CCG), Lisbon; Everything was captured (even the movements of the goat), 2011, at Quadrum Gallery, Lisbon; Office/Commercial (2008) CCG; A Willow (Or without Godot), 2006, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. Her practice is focused on the studio as a conceptual field of study—the studio as a lens through which to investigate relations between artist and public, revealing the dynamics, conditions and limits of authorship. Her main area of research is the concept of Artistic Autonomy for Public Use, in the North American artistic social practices.

The Mill Stories, management as an art practice

Carla Cruz (carlabarroscruz@gmail.com)

i2ADS/FBAUP

Abstract: Between February and June 2016, I was involved, as an associate researcher for Goldsmiths University of London and funded by the Cultural Engagement Fund of the Arts and Humanities Research Council - UK, in the community hub The Mill. During that period, I investigated the genesis of The Mill and the impact that this hub has on the community in terms of the reception and production of art and culture in North London, Walthamstow. My research also looked at the relation between austerity measures and funding policies for the arts and culture in the UK.

The Mill is a community hub that emerged through local initiative following a campaign to save a public library when it became financially unviable. Despite of the 4 years the community campaigned to save the library the local council placed the building for public auction. This mobilized local activists to ensure the building would remain open for community purposes. Their action led to, in 2011, the opening of The Mill. In order to bring to light a fuller picture of The Mill's history, I interviewed activists, volunteers, staff, activity leaders and users, which resulted in a website, the publication of a scientific paper, and a deeper collaboration with the community center and integration as a member of its governing bodies. For Fields of Collaboration, I would like to present a poster related to this experience: “How do I make community-inspired art?”, and talk about my role as an artist and researcher in the life of a community hub, its potential and limits, and the invisibility of my artistic practice in this context.

Artist, researcher and educator, based in Porto. Cruz has a PhD in art practice by Goldsmiths University of London, supported by FCT. In 2016, she was awarded an Associate Researcher fund by the AHRC Cultural Engagement Fund, to focus on a London-based community hub, The Mill. Cruz develops since 2011, with António Contador, the artistic project Finding Money, and coordinates since 2007, with Ângelo Ferreira de Sousa, the Associação de Amigos da Praça do Anjo. Cruz co-founded the feminist collective of artistic intervention ZOiNA (1999-2004), and Caldeira 213 artist-run space (1999-2002); between 2005 and 2013 she coordinated the feminist exhibition project All My Independent Wo / men.

Community Making towards situated agency

Jenny Dunn (jennyrdunn@gmail.com)

University of Nicosia

Abstract: Community Making is a project developed as a response to and in collaboration with the community of the Dorset Estate in East London, exploring the lived experiences of the residents in the area through a cultural programme of interventions and events.

In this presentation I will present the project and the communal making of the CTRA Cart, a deconstructed community centre built as a mobile cart with Columbia Tenant’s and Resident’s Association. Acting as a focal point and providing amenities, the cart enabled a summer program of events which occupied space through commoning; cooking together, history discussions, gardening, art activities and cultural exchanges. These events were a testing ground of what could happen in the shared green areas, bringing the life of the estate out into its public spaces.

I will discuss the project’s wider social context; my experience as an artist as well as resident of the estate, developing trust and a relationship with other residents in order to achieve something together; and the politics within community. 

This type of practice is about fostering connections, shared journeys and ultimately community and a sense of belonging, but the strategies and methods of practice have the potential for a new system of working together; flat hierarchies, shared ownership and authorship and local autonomy that create a model for society in a larger sense.

Jenny Dunn is an artist and spatial designer, working collaboratively with communities to create alternative realities where more democratic, ecological and creative ways of working can be practiced.

She graduated from Manchester School of Art in 2010 with a BA (hons) in Interior Architecture and worked for 8 years in design and architecture before completing an MA in Art and Social Practice in 2018. Jenny is currently teaching and working on the project Phygital at The University of Nicosia in Cyprus developing makerspaces with local communities and open source principles.

Panel 2 | Day 1 | NOV 19 | 15h00-16h20 | EN/PT | Chair: Giulia Lamoni

FEMINIST APPROACHES IN COLLABORATION PROCESSES

The panel Feminist approaches in collaboration processes will examine the activity of artistic projects and political collectives formed largely or exclusively by women, in order to tackle gender issues in this context.

Tracing the genealogy of collective and art-led thinking in the history of Italian neo-feminism (EN)

Camila Paolino (camilla.paolino@gmail.com)

CCC Master Program / HEAD-Genève

Abstract: In October 2018, alongside a group of art practitioners and researchers, we initiated b-side feminism: a transcription marathon, a collaborative practice-based research project exploring via operations of radical listening and collective transcription a set of audio archives from Rivolta Femminile (RF). This was a radical neo-feminist group founded in Rome in 1970 by Carla Accardi, Elvira Banotti and Carla Lonzi. The archive contains audiotapes recorded between 1970 and 1972 by the members of RF while practicing autocoscienza together and constitutes the subject of our collective transcription “marathon”, performed by our transversal, transnational and transgenerational group of womxn. This project allowed us to trace back the genealogy of the collaborative approach and collective stance within the history of Italian neo-feminism, unearthing and reflecting on the legacy of the feminist collective subjects emerging against the still male-dominated sociocultural and artistic framework of the 1970s. Focusing on the roman context, the paper will explore the practices, strategies and methodologies of three neo-feminist collectives, which integrated a considerable number of artists within their bodies and whose actions targeted the art world: Rivolta Femminile; Cooperativa di via del Beato Angelico; Collettivo di via Pompeo Magno. The paper will investigate a series of political and visual strategies implemented by these women-only collective bodies, from the way they employed typography in order to undo individual Authoriality (and therefore Authority, but also hierarchies and ultimately Power), to the occupation of art spaces and galleries, to the way the dialogical collective practice of autocoscienza was employed to elicit content for artistic production. The aim of the paper is also to question the meaning and limits of the collective approach within feminist politics and practices today, and imagine strategies to overcome or escape the binary system of inclusion/exclusion that the group format entails – mainly in the context of identitarian struggles.

Camilla is based in Geneva, where she works as researcher and curator since 2014. In 2016, she graduated from the CCC Research-based Master Program (HEAD-Genève), where she currently works as assistant and researcher. In 2015, she co-initiated the independent art space TOPIC, together with the collective you know who and, since 2017, she co-runs the artist-run space one gee in fog. In 2018, she has also integrated the PLATTFORM’s curatorial team, and initiated the practice-based research project b-side feminism. a transcription marathon. So far, Camilla has worked on curatorial projects in Switzerland, as well as in Bucharest, Athens, Detroit, Jakarta.

Girlschool: process and practice (PT)

Alice Geirinhas (gxalice@gmail.com)

Coimbra University, CiEBA e i2ADS

Susana Mendes Silva (sms@uevora.pt)

Évora University, i2ADS

A Girlschool is a performative classes project about art and sexuality created by the artists Alice Geirinhas and Susana Mendes Silva in 2016. Since then they presented their classes — using diverse media — within several art exhibitions and festivals. In the text Processo Girlschool, Susana affirms that Girlschool "is a space of freedom: a school «about the beautiful» — as Alice once called it — without fees or credit points, an inclusive and egalitarian space".

Since each of them has their own autonomous artistic practice, we would like to explore what connnects them, how they opperate as a collective, how they establish a collaborative artistic practice with the participants, what are their ethical and political concerns on developing this project, and how the fact of being both professors has influenced the way they build this very particular school.

The presentation will be a performative conference. Both artists will be on stage and through a conversational structure a number of pre-recorded questions will be asked in order to make them unveil their co-autorship work process.

Alice Geirinhas is a visual artist and an assistant professor in FCTUC's course of Design and Multimedia.

Alice has a degree in Sculpture at FBAUL, a Master degree in Contemporary Artistic Practices at FBAUP, and a PhD in Contemporary Art at the Arts College of the University of Coimbra. The thesis entitled "The way I am, Visual Mapping on a First Person: Document and Index", is about visual autobiography and artistic practice which interconnects the feminism thinking, drawing and its narrativity in diverse media.

Her graphic work is publish in several books: Alice (1999), A Nossa Necessidade de Consolo é Impossível de Satisfazer (2003), The Cabinet of Dr Alice (2014), Visual Manifest (2016), IF #7 (2019).

Susana Mendes Silva is a visual artist, a performer and assistant professor at the University of Évora in the Landscape Architecture BA and MA.

Susana studied Sculpture at FBAUL (Lisbon, PT), and in the MPhil/PhD Fine Art (Studio Based Research) at Goldsmiths College for which she was awarded a Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation grant. She has a PhD based in her practice — "Performance as an Intimate Encounter" — by the College of the Arts of the University of Coimbra. Her work incorporates elements of research and archival practice that leads to the creation of works whose historical and political references become visible as exhibitions, actions and performances that employ a wide variety of media.

Rua dos Anjos revisited: a gesture in shared meta-interpretive textual conception stemming from joint creation in film (PT)

Madalena Lobo Antunes (mlobo.antunes@gmail.com)

CRIA-FCSH-UNL

Renata Ferraz (renataferraz.info@gmail.com)

CAPES - Brasil/ CIEBA-FBAUL-University of Lisbon

This paper, written collectively, is the extension of a dialogue about a film object created from a shared experience by one of its authors with a third person. The film, directed by Renata Ferraz and Maria Roxo, is a visual object that results from an experience in shared creation in film, between two women from very different contexts. After participating in a film, as an actress, playing the role of a sex-worker, the director, Renata Ferraz, develops an interest in the experience of those women, and becomes committed to making a film with one of them. Two women making a film together: one of them a director, Brazilian and a PhD researcher; the other, a sex-worker from a different generation, with a life story between Mozambique and Portugal, and a story first of privilege, and then of deprivation.

The first dialogue, between Renata and Maria, is the creation of a film which exposes its process. The second dialogue is what happens when Renata Ferraz and Madalena Lobo Antunes discussed the possible solutions for the difficulties in shared creation offered by ethnography. Indeed, the ethnographic method and, in particular, ethnographic film, aspire to something similar to what Renata envisioned. The shared experience with Maria made Renata rethink the theoretical framework for their shared dialogue: Maria brought with her her life-story and a desire to tell it, making a crucial gesture that would determine the course of the film. Renata and Madalena return to the reflection about the film, with an additional contribution: considering the context of each of the director-characters. This second dialogue stems from the first, and includes Renata’s and Maria’s experience, but also brings with it Madalena’s theoretical contributions, which stem from thinking about the relationship between documentary and ethnographic film, present in Jean Rouch’s films and in David Macdougall's writing (as in Macdougall 2006), among others, already present in Renata’s PhD monograph; and recontextualized in an essay written by Maddalena from an anthropological perspective. At this point, other inputs which reflect the perspective of artistic practices were added on, such as the ones by Rothenberg and Fine (2008) and Schneider and Wright (2014), from the social sciences’ perspective, and those by Borriaud (2006) and Bishop (2012), art critics and historians whom consider the growing trend in contemporary artists desire to reflect on the other in their work.

Madalena Lobo Antunes is a researcher at CRIA (Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia – FCSH/NOVA). With a Phd in Portuguese Literature, funded by the FCT, she recently presented a dissertation with the title: «De tanto pensar-me»: a consciência no Livro de Desassossego de Fernando Pessoa, she is also a member of the “Estranging Pessoa” (“Estranhar Pessoa: um escrutínio das pretensões heteronímicas”) research project. She has published essays on the role of urban space in European modernism and has also written about the social role of literature, namely reading the Book of Disquiet according to Marx’s theory. More recently, she enrolled in an MA in anthropology and is currently devising a project on the symbolic value of the art work.

Renata Ferraz Researcher academic-director-actress, Renata Ferraz holds a PhD in Arts (Performing Arts and Moving Image), University of Lisbon. Her doctoral research was funded by CAPES (Brazil), the title of her thesis was Criação fílmica partilhada entre um personagem que realiza e uma realizadora que atua:o processo de construção da Rua dos anjos. Renata holds an MA in Multimedia Art - Audivisual (FBAUL) and a BA in Performing Arts (IA-UNESP). She has published articles and book chapters on film, multimedia, and performing arts. She has also produced films collectively with artists and people who traditionally don’t participate in the field of creation. Currently, she is a member of the CIEBA - Centro de Investigação em Belas Artes, (University of Lisbon) and of the LabCom.IFP (University of Beira Interior)  and is finalizing the feature-length film Rua dos anjos, financed by ICA.

Panel 3 | Day 1 | NOV 19 | 16h40-18h00 | EN/PT | Chair: Susana Nascimento Duarte

QUESTIONING NOTIONS OF AUTHORSHIP

The third panel will address how the exercise of collective creation can deconstruct, invalidate and remake the notions of author, authorship and authorial.

Musa paradisiaca and Art & Language, practices as relation (PT)

Miguel Ferrão (miguelnogueiraferrao@gmail.com)

IFILNOVA FCSH/NOVA

Musa paradisiaca and Art & Language are two collective artistic projects which, since their foundations (2010 and 1968, respectively), were developed through collaborative practices in association with the notions of conversation and polyvocality. This permanent dialogue is operated by all the involved agents in both projects, including the artists acting as their representatives, the invitees who take part of them, and the material, conceptual, image-based or language-based objects produced in the context of these two artistic practices. Their plural, variable and always incomplete configuration promotes a constant redefinition based on a self-description process, accomplished with and through others. This principle of alterity is also reinforced by the performative character of both artistic practices, manifested across their public presentations. This aspect is particularly developed within Art & Language’s “theory installations” or within Musa paradisiaca’s “numbers”, a series of podcasts launched online. In the first case, a group of invited actors perform the recorded words of Mel Ramsden and Michael Baldwin (Art & Language’s representatives to date), as if they were the artists themselves, using an audio reproduction system and simultaneous lip mimicking. In the second case, the construction of scripts based on the rewriting of previously transcribed conversations, in the form of dialogues or monologues, brings together, in other voices, the words spoken in the presence or with the participation of Eduardo Guerra and Miguel Ferrão, Musa paradisiaca’s representatives. In this setting, we propose to question the nature of this self-descriptive configuration, discussing its relational paradigm and the corresponding consequences for the ontological limits of the two artistic practices here in concern.

Miguel Ferrão (Lisbon, 1986), holds a BA in Painting by FBAUL, a MA in Philosophy-Aesthetics by FCSH-UNL, and currently is a PhD candidate in Artistic Studies - Art and Mediations by the same institution. Since 2010, partners with Eduardo Guerra as Musa paradisiaca, an artistic project shortlisted for EDP Foundation's New Artists Award (2013) and Sonae Media Art Prize (2015). Collaborated as curatorial assistant with ZDB Gallery (2008-2010) and coordinated the programme “Aguêdê-Alê” in São Tomé and Príncipe (2010-2013).

Interceptors, Authors and Cinematic Fabulation (PT)

Susana Viegas (susanaviegas@fcsh.unl.pt)

FCSH/NOVA

How to relate the strong presence of the ‘politique des auteurs’ in Deleuze’s Cinema books with his notion of ‘collective assemblage’? If the filmmaker is considered the author of a film, it is also true that it is the result of a collective effort. There is, however, film practices questioning the two positions: for example, a documentary of fabulation, a film in which a nonprofessional actor plays himself and tells us his true story, defines itself by a triple implication filmmaker-film-viewer. The function of the ‘interceptors’ is the collective assemblage of the filmic fabulation. Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up (1990) raises some doubts: is Sabzian just a creation of Kiarostami (a paternalist view, accordingly to Foucault) or is it Sabzian who has the control over the film by telling us his story (in indirect free speech, would say Deleuze)? There is a combination of forces towards the collective assemblage. All the actors are interceptors. The film itself reveals to be story-telling, in the sense that it is caught in “the flagrant offence of making up legends” (Deleuze, The Time-Image), at the same time that real characters fabulate themselves.

Susana Viegas is a Researcher in Philosophy of Film at Nova University of Lisbon. She received a Ph.D. in Philosophy (Aesthetics) from Nova University of Lisbon in 2013 with a dissertation on Deleuze’s philosophy of film. She has finished a Postdoctoral research project in 2019 at Nova University of Lisbon and Deakin University, “Rethinking the Moving Image and Time in Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy,” supported by the FCT. Susana Viegas is editor/founder of “Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image”.

Moving Authorship in the Digital Era: How Artificial Intelligence Based Art is Challenging our Attitude Towards Collective Authorship (EN)

Sarah Fassio (Fassio@europa-uni.de)

Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) – Chair of Cultural Management Viadrina

Since the sale of “Portrait of Edmond De Belamy” at Christie’s auction house for $432,500 in October 2018, the question of artistic authorship involving AI has reached a new level. Created using artificial intelligence, the artwork by Paris-based arts-collective Obvious was informed by a data set of over 15,000 portraits from the 14th through the 20th centuries. The event received international attention: for the first time in history, an auction house sold AI-art, resulting in a debate on authorship – collective as well as human versus computational. On the traditional art market, sales statistics as well as auction catalogues show a preference for individual creators. As more AI-art enters the art market, the current attitude towards authorship needs revising. In the case of “Portrait of Edmond De Belamy”, we can identify a number of potential co- authors including the arts-collective as well as the algorithm creators. Up to this point, artistic projects involving AI were created for experimental reasons rather than for the purpose of generating sales. However, with AI-art emerging as a highly traded commodity on the art market, the question of authorship is no longer just a symbolic one. The legal situation concerning collective authorship involving machine-based learning varies from one country to another and demonstrates the need for transboundary legislation.

Sarah Fassio (M.A.) is a research associate at the Chair of Cultural Management at the Europa- Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) with several years of professional experience in Berlin’s art and gallery scene. She studied Art History at the Freie Universität Berlin and holds a French-German double master’s degree in Arts and Cultural Management. Her academic research focuses on interdependences between a digitalized art market and the impact on the status of the artwork.

Panel 4 | Day 2 | NOV 20 | 12h10-13h30 | PT | Chair: Mariana Pinto dos Santos

EXPERIMENTATION IN THE PORTUGUESE ART CONTEXT: FROM 1960 UP TO THE PRESENT DAY

The fourth panel will look at the potentialities offered by projects of the 1960s and 70s to think about collaboration in areas such as artistic education, the visual arts and dance, both in their historical contexts and today.

Reassembling an art school identity based on artistic dialogues and collaboration with its actors – Porto and ESBAP in the 1960s and 1970s

Jorge Brandão Pereira (jmpereira@ipca.pt)

ID+ University of Porto

Susana Barreto (susanaxbarreto@gmail.com)

ID+ University of Porto

Eliana Penedos-Santiago (elianapenedossantiago@gmail.com)

ID+ University of Porto

This paper stems from the evidence that collaboration in art practices is one of the main sources of knowledge transfer within a group of artists who graduated from the Porto School of Fine Arts (ESBAP), from the 1960s to the late 1970s.

The research, enhanced throughout the research and fieldwork of the project “Wisdom Transfer” (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029038), includes interviews and fieldwork with former art and design students and lecturers, which are the primary actors at offering a direct first- person testimony on how the cultural, political and social landscape was presented. Collaboration is a keyword in these testimonials and it is recurrently mentioned among the interviewees as the main axis for artistic and personal enrichment. Collaborative practices can be found in various means such as: (i) teaching methodologies; (ii) sharing art studios (“atelier”) where masters, lecturers and students met exchanging thoughts and ideas, in different locations outside ESBAP, where philosophy, literature and art assembled; (iii) the strong interpersonal relationship within the school; and (iv) the fact that the graduation from ESBAP at the time – architecture, painting and sculpture – shared pedagogical content, strategies and cultural contexts. This reveals that this combination of different and yet very close contributions can help to trace the profile of a distinguished generation of artists and designers that led the transition from practice to the academy, starting from individual legacies to the construction of a collective identity of the art school of Porto.

Worthy of note the rise of interest in knowledge transfer studies, such as the current project Wisdom Transfer. It is not fortuit that this rise happens in a time of less one-to-one analogic collaboration as opposed the one described in the past 60s and 70s. Has collaboration’s meaning changed over time?

Jorge Brandão Pereira - PhD University of Porto 2015, MA University of Porto 2007. Adjunct Professor, School of Design, Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave, Portugal. Researcher, ID+ Research Institute for Design, Media and Culture. Currently working in two FCT/EU-financed projects within Horizon 2020. Prior experience with EU projects, including INTERREG-SUDOE. Research coordinator, “The Mediated City” project, part of AMPS – Architecture, Media, Politics and Society, UCL. Executive Director of the United Designs Alliance.

Susana Barreto - PhD and PostDoc in Design at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts Currently in the coordinating team of two research projects, Wisdom Transfer: towards the scientific inscription of individual legacies in contexts of retirement from art and design higher education and research, and Anti-Amnesia: Design research as an agent for narrative and material regeneration and reinvention of vanishing Portuguese manufacturing cultures and techniques. Professor in Design at the University of Porto.

Eliana Penedos-Santiago - PhD in Drawing, Faculty of Fine Arts - University of Valencia Design Researcher in Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto. Currently in the team of the research project, Wisdom Transfer: towards the scientific inscription of individual legacies in contexts of retirement from art and design higher education and research.

“Only enthusiasm matters…”1 research, experimentation and collaboration with Almada, Um Nome de Guerra [Almada, A Name of War], by Ernesto de Sousa

Mariana Marin Gaspar (marianagaspar@hotmail.com)

IHA - FCSH/NOVA

Abstract: In this proposed paper, I will seek to identify and problematize a set of questions that emerge from the understanding of collaboration as both a methodology of action and a programmatic attitude and principle, one that potentially eradicates the compartmentalization of knowledge and the consequent contamination between genres and styles. This will be based on a critical approach to the mixed media work – Almada, Um Nome de Guerra [Almada, A Name of War] (1969-1972), conceived and directed by Ernesto de Sousa, in a working process which, being as experimental as critical, as playful as pedagogic, generates an aesthetic and social space that is eminently collaborative, not only in that it integrates the creative participation of other artists such as Jorge Peixinho and Carlos Gentil-Homem, but also due to the expanded and open-ended nature of the project which, among other propositions, invites the spectator to join in, adding not only readings but also actions as the constitutive features of the artwork.

Almada Negreiros, who has given name and intent to the project, and himself taken to be an accomplice in this pursuit (a film with Almada and not a film about Almada), is conjured up in various ways, as text and image, trace and sound, symbol and icon, celebrating a unity of thought and a multiplicity of forms that also gives occasion to critically revise and update the meanings of Portuguese history, culture, and art. In the context of a dictatorship, and among a generation craving change, though already in a time of rupture and fertile experimentation, Ernesto de Sousa stood out as an unparalleled figure, one committed to his own country, in a glocal sense, and engaged with his time, between tradition and avant-garde. Calling for the importance of getting together and of a sense of the collective in opposition to individualism, both in the exercise of criticism and in his “aggregate” practice, de Sousa always privileged the imagination, the relationship between art and life, and the meeting that turns itself into a happening, for the fruitful sharing that generates knowledge. In this sense, Almada, Um Nome de Guerra, can be understood not only as an artistic manifesto but, above all, as an ode to liberty.

Mariana Marin Gaspar holds a Licentiate in Art History from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities (FCSH - Universidade Nova de Lisboa) and a MA in Communication and Arts by the same Faculty (2013), with the thesis: Retomar percursos que o tempo interrompeu: uma leitura dos Encontros de Fotografia de Coimbra (Traveling down the roads not taken: a reading of the Coimbra Photography Encounters). Currently, she is a PhD student in History of Contemporary Art at FCSH-UNL (FCT - Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology - scholarship); the provisional title of her PhD thesis is Borderlands: word-image interaction in Portuguese contemporary art. She is an integrated member of Art History Institute (IHA), namely of the Contemporary Art Studies Group (CAS). She also cooperates with the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning of the University of Lisbon (IGOT-UL), in the context of the project “AGORA, Encounters between the city and arts: exploring new urbanities”. Aside of the Academy, she has an active participation on a social project of cultural development, within the scope of visual arts, based in the town of Alvito, Alentejo – EGA,  Alvito General Studies and Inter.Meada, Artistic Residencies); her contribution to this projects has been essentially of curatorial, organizational and educational nature.

Collaborative Artistic Practices – Puzzle Practices, fitting game, or meeting game?

Sílvia Pinto Coelho (silvia.tengner@gmail.com)

ICNOVA-FCSH/NOVA

Abstract: What phenomena of dissent or politics are these puzzles connected with? I say “puzzle” thinking about the double meaning that the English word may have: construction by concrete fitting of pieces, and "puzzle" working as a paradox that allows operation without crystallization, i.e. to make a metastable balance last as an encounter.

Some phrases in the movie became pieces of my own memory that help developing research maps more closely linked to choreographic thinking as well. From these key phrases, and from the research and study of some colleagues more specialized in collaborative arts, I will approach an area also linked to choreographic thinking by drawing on the story line that connects the Judson Dance Theater and the Grand Union Group, for example, with the events On the Edge, and Crash Landing, in the 1990s and the collective experiences of RE.AL-João Fiadeiro (1992-2019).

A non-place may be the antithesis of the canvas as a signed place, the place of the author. The activity of the Puzzle Group approached the non-place, or rather, a place that admits multiple inscriptions. A battlefield of a "war" with diplomatic resolution. Strategies that anticipate the eventuality of a conflict. The rupture always imminent. (Cf. Paulo Cunha e Silva, 2001).

We were workers of an idea. We were the workers of history collecting the waste of others [performing artists]. (Cf. Fernando Pinto Coelho, 2001).

In the end we were only two technically solving a problem. (Cf. Gerardo Burmester on the completion of a two-handed puzzle group oil painting, 2001).

Sílvia Pinto Coelho is a choreographer, and researcher at ICNOVA-FCSH, Lisbon. Currently working on a Post-doctoral project, her research concerns choreographic thinking, dance studies, performance studies, and experimental choreography. She holds a PhD in Communication and Arts, a Master degree in Contemporary Culture and New Technologies (2010), a degree in Anthropology (2005), a Bachelor degree in Dance Performance (1996) and did the professional contemporary dance course in Forum Dança (1997/1999). Coelho has been developing her professional activity as a choreographer, dancer, and performer since 1996. Since 2015 she teaches the seminar “Dance in Context” in the Performing Arts master degree at FCSH-UN Lisbon.

Panel 5 | Day 2 | NOV 20 | 15h00-16h20 | PT | Chair: Margarida Brito Alves

INTERVENING IN THE PUBLIC SPACE

The next panel, Intervening in the public space, will focus on the ways through which collaborative artistic practices transform social dynamics, support or question political models and alter the aesthetic experience of the city.

The synthesis of the arts, a collaboration model

Sónia Moura (soniamoura@gmx.net)

IHA - FCSH/NOVA

This article aims to spotlight a specific typology of collaboration in the arts – the collaboration between architects, painters, and sculptors – in the light of the concept that became known internationally in the second post-war years as synthesis of the arts, placing it within the political and social sphere at the moment of its highest prevalence.

The synthesis of the arts is a recurring notion in the history of art, constituting one of the central themes of the avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, such as the group De Stijl and Bauhaus, which in diverse ways sought to transcend the separation between the arts by suppressing social and artistic hierarchies. In its origin, this concept recovers the romantic idea of ​​Gesamtkunstwerk, formulated by Richard Wagner in the nineteenth century apropos the unification of the arts in the opera. The resurgence of this concept and artistic practice after World War II triggered a debate in which various sectors of the international artistic community, especially in Europe and the Americas, actively participated as the urgency of reconstruction of the European territory created a favourable platform for dialogue between architects, painters, and sculptors around common ideals: the renewal of the discourse related to modern art and the transformation of the public space of cities into social and human aspects in contrast to the rationalist and functional tendency of modern architecture.

Framing the resurgence of this debate in space and time – chronological and political – this article also attempts to extend this phenomenon to the Portuguese context, considering that the involvement in this debate by Portuguese architects and artists has been reflected in teaching and architecture.

Sónia Moura is a PhD student in History of Art at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of Nova University of Lisbon, where she is a researcher at the Institute of History of Art with a fellowship from the Foundation for Science and Technology.

Master’s Degree in Artistic Studies - Museum and Curatorial Studies from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto (2013), and a Degree in Architecture from the Lusíada University of Porto (2001). Currently researching the collaboration between architects, painters, and sculptors in the light of the concept which spread internationally in the second post-war years as synthesis of the arts, analysing the involvement of Portuguese artists in the practice and debate associated with it.

“Grupo Acre Fez” – a collective in action from 1974 to 1977

Patrícia Rosas (prosas@gulbenkian.pt)

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

This paper aims to examine, comment and discuss the collaborative interventions by Grupo Acre, formed immediately after the revolution of 25 April 1974, and consisted of the three Portuguese artists: Clara Menéres (1943-2018), Joaquim Lima de Carvalho (1940) and Alfredo Queiroz Ribeiro (1939-1975). This collective acting in the urban public space, highlighting the street as the main place, performing ephemeral actions with a visual, political and social impact. With humor and irony, between 1974 and 1977, the group carried out six art ‘actions’ intervened in the public space. They were intended to be provocative and to destabilise established interests and widespread public apathy.

 “Circles Action, Urban Guerrilla” was the first action of the Group, in August 1974, in rua do Carmo in Lisbon: they painted the pavement of this street in the centre of Lisbon. In October of the same year, in the “Clérigos Tower Action” in Porto, the group held out a yellow plastic tape from the top to the bottom with their usual signature: “Grupo Acre Fez”. Following the same action, they sent to the press the “Press Release no. 1”, claiming the action, and reaffirming the collective’s purposes. In the beginning of 1975, they announced and distributed the “Artist Diploma” to anyone who deserved this distinction. Ernesto de Sousa highlighted the group in a text about this initiative.

In April 1975, the group claimed a non-existent Museum of Modern Art, by occupying a mansion in rua Marquês da Fronteira, in Lisbon. The “Press Release no. 3” was issued alongside this action. The police acted and Clara Menéres was arrested. During the Summer of 1975 there was another action: “Action Manhole covers”; the group produced several prints from manhole covers.

During the VI International Encounters of Art in Caldas da Rainha, in 1977, they performed “Monument to 16 March” and “Tombstone Unveiling Action”. On this last action, they fixed a marble tombstone in a façade, bringing us to the reality, with a starting point: the myth of D. Sebastião, king of Portugal.

Grupo Acre defended the freedom to create, an ‘Art for all, created by and for everyone’.

Patrícia Rosas is curator at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum – Modern Collection, where, since 2019, she coordinates the installation of the permanent exhibition of the Modern Collection. Her recent curatorial work includes: on Iraqi Art, the collective show, Art and Architecture between Lisbon and Baghdad (2018); the exhibition on Portuguese and British Art and the cultural context of the 60s, Post-Pop. Beyond the commonplace (Gulbenkian main exhibition gallery, 2018); Lines of Time. The Gulbenkian Collections. Contemporary Paths (Gulbenkian main exhibition gallery, 2016); or the solo exhibitions on Salette Tavares and Júlio dos Reis Pereira: Salette Tavares: Spatial Poetry (2014); Homage to Julio (2013).

She is the executive coordinator of the first Portuguese digital Catalogue Raisonné of the painter António Dacosta. She holds a MA in History of Contemporary Art from FCSH-UNL (2009), in Lisbon. Currently, she is a PhD student on the Artistic Studies – Art and Mediations course, at FCSH-UNL.

São Paulo 1970/80: the binomium collective art and occupation of streets

Jorge Bassani (jbassani@usp.br)

Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism – University of São Paulo

At the end of the 1970s, when the military dictatorship in Brazil was showing the first signs of exhaustion, in the largest metropolis of the country a cultural scene was set up with groups of artists who subscribe to their works. They undertake their attacks collectively not only to oppose the idea of authorship in the visual arts, but especially to enhance their languages and actions in order to reach the urban scale and their formal and functional codes.

Influenced by the previous generation who clandestinely oppose the military regime, the new groups propose to go out in the sunlight and actively participate in games of the urbanity construction. These groups include the 3 Nós 3, Manga Rosa and Viajou Sem Passaporte, active in the same period. None of them associated with graffiti or mural “urban art”, they operated three-dimensional spatial and body systems, defining their artistic expressions on city streets as urban interventions.

This presentation proposes an interpretative look at the actions of these groups between 1977 and 1882 accompanied by a documentary visual path of the time in order to achieve assessments on three particular issues, all concerning the binomial collective artistic X urban culture: 1. Strategies and methods of urban interventions, the experimentation of procedures; 2. Collective work as a political practice (polis-ica); 3. Definition of other perceptive dimensions beyond enlightenment aesthetics that persists until the twilight of modernity.

Jorge Bassani (artist and architect - São Paulo, 1959) works with urban art since 1977, participated in the first actions of the collectives in the city with the Alienarte and Manga Rosa Group. 1994–97, master with the dissertation “The artistic languages and the City"; 2002 - 05, PhD thesis “The function is communication”; 2015-2019, “Free-Teacher” thesis “From artistic interventions to urban political action”. Teacher and Researcher at the Project History and Aesthetics Department of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo, where he coordinates GeMAP -Urban Mapography Study Group.

Panel 6 | Day 2 | NOV 20 | 16h40-18h00 | PT | Chair: Cláudia Madeira

TENSIONS AND DISPUTES WITHIN STRUCTURES OF PRODUCTION AND CULTURAL CREATION

The conference’s last thematic panel will discuss the challenges and conflict resolution strategies that emerge in the midst of collectives and cultural production organisms, in the sphere of performative and community arts.

Artists, producers and managers: the anatomy of a relationship

Vânia Rodrigues (vaniamariarodrigues@gmail.com)

University of Coimbra / CEIS 20

Building on the author’s concrete work experience, one questions the status quo of the relationship between artists and producers by examining their role in theatre companies and other performing arts organizations in Portugal. This focus upon the (collaborative?) relationship between artists, producers and cultural managers will help us look into the organization and work models in the art and their underlying assumptions. Based on a wide range of recent interviews to producers and managers working in theatre and dance, we will be arguing for the need to experiment new models of work in the performing arts which take in consideration a ‘collaboration’ ethos and avoid the pitfalls of self-exploitation. While upholding the urgency of interrogating the prevalence of hierarchical work practices in the arts, it advocates for the need to reconsider production and cultural management roles and their place in cultural and artistic organisations as well as for the need to rescue production and cultural management roles from the technocratic drive. Finally, it relates these challenges to the wider cultural policy framework: the possibility of moving towards cultural policies of the commons, transcending a sectoral approach provides an invaluable occasion to fundamentally reframing the relations between artists, producers and citizens.

Vânia Rodrigues. Porto, 1979. Cultural manager. Consultant and lecturer in the fields of strategic planning, programming, cultural management and internationalization to various cultural and artistic organizations, in Portugal and abroad. Until 2018, responsible for the strategy, management, co-programming and international touring of the theatre company mala voadora. Strategy Advisor for Artemrede 2014-2108. Member of ENCATC - European Network on Cultural Management and Policy,  European House for Culture and of the Municipal Council for Culture of the city of Porto. Master in Cultural Policy and Management by City University of London (2009). Currently doing a PhD in Artistic Studies - Performing Arts at the University of Coimbra.

Personal blog: https://biccristalescritanormal.blog

Field notes on mediation as a collaborative-dispute resolution in collaborative art practices.

Rui Cepeda (rui.cepeda@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk )

Institute for Cultural Practices, The University of Manchester

The guiding line in my proposal is the idea of ‘mediation’. ‘Mediation’ as a critical and managerial intervention (in the process or in the communicative relationship between the distinctive parts) is not a predicament that only affects me as an art manager. It is a problem that has an effect on society as a whole since knowledge is expanding beyond traditional frameworks. ‘Mediation’ is a term used extensively in the legal system when regarding the process of conflict management between two parties. From an academic perspective regarding the ways in which the legal system approaches mediation it has been defined “as the act of a third person who interferes between two contending parties with a view to reconcile them or persuade them to adjust or settle their dispute.” The involvement of external elements, i.e. artist(s), in the hosting community through the engagement in collaborative art practices might originate a position of collaborative-dispute, instead of an adversarial-dispute. My dilemma, as a producer/curator is to consider mediation from a position in where conflict and confrontation still did not have happened. Which on one side might increase the understanding of the community relative (socio-cultural) positioning, and, on the other, might lead to an increase in socio-political empowerment and increasing civic participation. To grasp a comprehensive understanding of mediation within the aesthetic field, I will be referring in this presentation to two contributions that were collect from a set of interviews done with direct reference to practical outcomes, which had taken the form of socially engaged art projects or collaborative art practices.

Rui G. Cepeda is a PhD candidate at the University of Manchester. Prior to working on his PhD, he led the Trienal in Portugal, and has been working as an art curator and producer with small-scale art organisations in England and online. Since 2007, he has focused his practice, both as an art producer and critic, on the exploration of artistic processes in where collaboration and confrontation operate; in delivering aesthetic moments that are community-building mechanisms; and, in complementing communicative cultural actions that inform powerful stories, while giving communities their own voice. He writes regularly to international art magazines and newspapers.

The short lifetime of Artist Collective Lisbon Co-dance

Ana Corrêa (ambcorrea@gmail.com )

CE3C/FCUL

Sezen Tonguz (sezentonguz@campus.fcsh.unl.pt)

GECAPA/CLEPUL

Based in Lisbon, Co-dance was a collective of Portuguese and immigrant artists who shared a rehearsal space, offering mutual support for creation, research and experimentation. Co-Dance emerged of a will to create a community, to share creative practices and to identify and look for alternative ways together to be able to get around difficulties of creating artistic work independently. Co-dance aimed to provide artists with a sustainable structure that would allow them to make connections, grow and strengthen ties, both with each other and with the local community. The collective was constituted of artists from different nationalities and with different educational and professional backgrounds in dance, theater and performance, who develop creative work in different strands: research, creation of shows and performances, and teaching. After renting and common management of a room at Atelier Real, construction of a non-hierarchical self- management model began, meeting individual needs but maintaining the collective as core and motor, until its dissolution in the spring of 2019, corresponding to the eviction of Atelier Real.

Two of founding members Co-dance Ana Corrêa and Sezen Tonguz propose a reflection on the organization of the collective, analyzing the events between January 2017 and May 2019. Being a collective of up to 10 members with a diversity of artists, what were the challenges and conflicts in trying to set common goals (for example, providing its members with the physical space to connect, share, research and / or perform, inspire connections between artists, and provide artist support services)?

Sezen Tonguz has a BS in Environmental Engineering, studied culture and arts management and contemporary dance. As an artist and producer, she collaborates with various international artists. Her works were presented in Europe, Turkey, Brasil and U.S.A. In 2018, she was a guest curator for creation of a series of artistic residencies at Forum Dança in scope of Artista-Curador by Ezequiel Santos. She is the founder and international projects coordinator of informal artist network (Re)union since 2015.

In 2019, she was awarded withDanceWEB Scholarship in scope of Impulstanz Vienna International Dance Festival, with the mentoring of Anne Juren & Annie Dorsen in dialogue with Mette Ingvartsen and was a jury member for “Internationalization of Dance” at Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. She holds an MA degree on Communication and Arts at New University of Lisbon (NOVA, 2015) and is a PhD student at Artistic Studies - Art and Mediations, she continues her research and activity on artistic research and curatorial practices in performing arts.

Ana Corrêa has a BS in Plant Biology and PhD in Ecophysiology from the University of Lisbon. She began her dance training in Granada (Spain) in 2009 with the collective Enclave. In 2013 she dedicates herself to dance and performance creation, becoming part of the Enclave collective, and in 2014-2015 she attends FIA- Intensive Training Accompanied at C.E.M. She is currently developing projects in dance and solo performance and in collaboration with Julia Salem (Brazil-Lisbon) and Fernando Pelliccioli and Carlos Osatinsky (Berlin-Argentina), and research in Plant Physiology and Mutualisms at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon.