About

Installed in the old Freixo thermoelectric plant, CRL – Central Elétrica is a centre of residences and artistic creation that seeks to reframe a part of this deactivated industrial pole, pulsating and generating other forms of energy.

CRL – Central Elétrica marks a new beginning of an artistic project with a long path of activity. Merging into a single acronym CiRcoLando and CentRaL, CRL pursues two core lines of action – own creations x residences and programming – in an articulated manner, believing that the integrated development of both areas generates unique ways of thinking and doing both.

With artistic direction by André Braga and Cláudia Figueiredo, CRL – Central Elétrica adopts the transdisciplinary line of this duo of artists and takes to a new place its option for an open structure and connected with the projects of many more artists.

How to make a project always emergent has been an inspiring principle. The ruptures and relaunching of new cycles have marked our path. CRL – Power Station constitutes one of these new beginnings, reflecting a great impulse given to CentRaL without the nucleus of creation and diffusion losing its radiance and centrality, rather instigating that the various areas are increasingly interpenetrating and contagious.

At the core of CRL – Central Power’s thinking is the idea of ​​a permanent laboratory, a place to investigate, experiment, create and share. A place for risk, for developing ideas and testing possibilities. A place of intersection of generations and geographies, of artists at different stages of their journey: more or less emergent, more or less consolidated.

The performing arts, body and movement arts have a prominent place in Central, with the areas of thought, music, and cinema being another of the regular presences. Disciplinary intersections are one of the hallmarks of the project, arguing that openness to the other and the sharing of its practices is one of the strongest means of structuring singular languages.