Criatório
CRIATÓRIO ON CENTRAL ELÉTRICA
Central Elétrica is our creation space in the city of Porto, it has been increasingly prominent in our artistic project. The reactivation of spaces and the development of a program that wants to be indoors and out, reflect a dynamic programmatic composition and the desire to transform the Center into a reference place for the investigation of performing and transdisciplinary arts.
With the support of the Porto City Council, through the Criatório program, we were able to reinforce the Central’s programming, aiming at greater regularity and dialogue with the general public. We bet on the creation of a versatile territory in constant movement, expanding the creative possibilities, valuing a region that despite everything maintains a certain periphery: Campanhã.
Criatório is an annual municipal competition to support artistic creation and programming in Porto. This program’s main objectives are to contribute to the consolidation of the activity of artists and cultural agents from multiple artistic disciplines, who in Porto can find a favorable context for the development of their professional practice.
CRIATÓRIO PROGRAM 2021-2022
On April 9th and 10th, we held the SHORT CIRCUIT_ Younger Cycle, which reflects a desire for some time to contribute in a unique way to the field of thought and creation of projects dedicated to childhood and youth.
In this action we hosted the shows Álbum de Família, by Costanza Givone; The Great Invasion, by the Chaotic Company; the concert Há: Sound Direct, by João Ricardo de Barros Oliveira, the screenings of short films by the Inflatable Cinema and also the installation OVO, by the Atelier Rodabiba / WETUMTUM studio.
On July 15th, we held WATTS – Ciclo Sonoro, a program based on contemporary sounds from the national and international scene. Opening the night The Humm, second part of the environmental project by Sarnadas, a multidisciplinary artist based in Porto and one of the leaders of the Favela collective, followed by MONTES, a project by Venezuelan Arianna Casellas together with Brazilian @Kaue Grindi (BR), signed under the seal Lovers & Lollypops and ending the night Dj Lynce, one of the great names of Porto nightlife.
Between July 15th and 30th, we held the first stage of the Identidades Cycle, with the artistic residency of Diego Aramburo (BOL), one of the main directors in South America. At this moment, the Nelson and the Great Clown project (provisional name) was started, which will have the opening of a process in the 22 Volts edition (September).
CRIATÓRIO PROGRAM 2020-2021
PULSION | SOUND CYCLE
12 september 2020 | JAVIER DÍEZ ENA (ESP) + CLAIANA (CPV)
Concert with Spanish double bassist, thereminist and electronic musician Javier Díez Ena who, in his live performances, plays strictly live loops without using reproduction or pre-recording material; then we introduced Gui Lee, or better yet, Claiana, Cape Verdean musician an unavoidable figure in Porto’s nightlife.
04 september 2021 | FADO BICHA (POR)
Fado Bicha is a musical and activist project composed by Lila Fadista (vocals) and João Caçador (electric guitar and other instruments). The project, in all its aspects (thematic, lyrical, visual, musical), is based on a premise of subversion of the heteronormative rule. Even more so when the reference matrix and the subject on which they work is fado, a conservative musical style nurtured by a traditionalist medium. Through the alteration of poems already sung and the creation of new ones, spaces are created for the experimentation of non-normative narratives regarding gender and sexuality. It’s fado right down to the marrow, intense and torn, and it’s fag because it uses subversion as a language of identities so little represented.
15 may 2021 | MILTETO, Favela Discos (POR) & Marcela Lucatelli (BRA)
MILTETO, an informal orchestra driven by the Porto collective Favela Discos, is the crystallization of a shapeless path that is difficult to capture in all its dimensions, being just the last stage of an entity in mutation. A quasi-autonomous ethereal entity whose only anchor is collective improvisation with minimal restrictions or driving. Then, and for an unprecedented collaborative concert, MARCELA LUCATELLI & DIES LEXIC took the stage – a musical and performance project composed by Inês Tartaruga and Xavier Paes that develops its artistic exploration through a multidisciplinary practice of environmental science fiction.
19 april 2021 | DUAS VOZES, Pedro Augusto (POR)
In “Duas Vozes”, Pedro Augusto (Ghuna X, Live Low) debuts in the releases in his own name, with six themes of non-operatic music, or better, that do not fulfill a purpose other than to build a musical program that could be presented live without programming. The multimedia concert “Duas Vozes” was edited by the Lovers & Lollypops label. Music of a visual nature, the EP is a hybrid video-album-trip in which Pedro Augusto’s music is deposited in images created by Rafael Gonçalves.
CIRCUIT BREAKER | AUDIOVISUAL CYCLE
14 october 2020 | THE BODY AS ARCHIVE , Michael Maurissens (ALE) + Talk
Michael Maurissens’ documentary is based on research that considers the ways in which the dancer’s body can be considered an archive. Is a dancer’s body just a repository of forms of use? Do dancers create, accumulate and carry knowledge – where is it stored and what do they explore through their practice? How are cultural and social contexts reflected in a dancer’s body? After the screening, we held two fingers of conversation with Gonçalo Mota.
17 november 2020 | MEU CORPO É POLÍTICO, Alice Riff (BRA) + Talk
First feature film by director Alice Riff, addresses the daily lives of four LGBT activists who live on the outskirts of São Paulo. Paula Beatriz is the principal of a public school. Giu Nonato, a young photographer living in a transitional phase in her life. Linn da Quebrada is an actress, singer and theater teacher. Fernando Ribeiro, a student and telemarketing operator. Based on the characters’ intimacy and social context, the documentary raises contemporary questions about the trans population and their political disputes. After the exhibition, we held two fingers of conversation with the Brazilian researcher, transfeminist, Helena Vieira.
STEAM | PERFORMING CYCLE
10 december 2020 | LA BÊTE A.C. D.C, Wagner Schwartz (BRA)
From 2005 to 2020, before Coronavirus, Wagner Schwartz manipulated a plastic replica of Lygia Clark’s Bichos (1960) sculptures in galleries, theaters and museums. The public was invited to participate. In December 2020, after Coronavirus, a new version of La Bête appears in the middle of a pandemic, especially dedicated to 21 Volts, Criatório. This time, the audience and the artist wore masks. Alcohol gel and gloves were available. A Covid-19 exam was taken prior to the experiment. Did the barrier gestures remain?
13 january 2021 | TIJUANA, Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol (MEX)
Tijuana portrays the experience of Gabino Rodríguez, converted for six months into Santiago Ramírez, a resident of Tijuana (Baja California), under specific conditions that separated him from his usual world (from which he remained incommunicado), while working for a salary minimum in a local factory.
Tijuana is part of the project “Democracy in Mexico 1965-2015”, a series of 32 pieces (one for each state of the Republic) that investigate the relevance of this concept from different geographies. A complex mosaic of realities called Mexico.
03 setembro 2021 | O NARRADOR, Diogo Liberano (BRA)
According to Benjamin, death is the sanction of everything the narrator can count. It is from death that he derives his authority. Thus, more than sharing a look at death, this work seeks precisely to start from death to find a renewing look at the experience of being alive. Dramaturgy is born from a mixture of distinct narratives (dramatic scenes, poems, exchanges of emails, memories, letters, stories), it affects and rewrites itself in the face-to-face meeting between the performer, the space in which it presents itself and the audience for the which is intended.
03 september 2021 | OUTRO LADO É UM DIA, Carolina Campos (BRA) & Márcia Lança (POR)
The other side is one day, gestures that do not stop ending, various actions that begin and end, words, phrases, situations caught in the middle. A play that starts from a text written in real time where futures are imagined from a dystopian present that looks like fiction. On the other hand it’s a day, truth and lie meet and confuse each other, time is not linear, it’s a tangle of times and situations that keep ending and starting over.
HEAT | TRAINING CYCLE
02 – 18 march 2021 | Laboratory A THE PRESENCE OF MEMORY – FILES AND VOICES, Joana Craveiro (POR)
A laboratory around memory and creative practices of working with it – from the discovery and analysis of archives, oral testimonies, and also following the example of other artists and researchers in these matters. Understanding the past as a country under discovery (David Lowenthal described it as “a foreign country”), memory thus becomes a place of conflict and reconstitution at the same time. Enzo Traverso refers to it as a “shipyard under construction”. It is precisely in this territory of possibility – of constructions, omissions, erasures and rewritings – that the artistic work around memory and its representations, artifacts and voices, can be a fertile place for discovering new readings of each person’s personal history – and, even more comprehensively, the collective history in which our lives are inserted and to which they contribute.
TURBINES | OPEN CALL
12 – 30 july 2021 | Residencie APOCALYPSO, Luara Learth Moreira (BRA)
Between December 16, 2020 and January 10, 2021, applications to the CRL Residency Program – Central Elétrica 2021 – Criatório were open. The selected project was APOCALYPSO, by Luara Learth Moreira in partnership with Acauã El Bandide & Odete. In it, they aim to think of the apocalypse as a possibility of removing the veils that cover the unprecedented constructions of the colonial world, tearing off layers as a way of destroying it, making its asymmetric structures of death visible. At the same time, they want to summon the visibility and opacity of underground images, buried by the hegemony and violence of this toxic invention of a racist cis-hetero colonial world. Racialized queer bodies play a central role in this work, as they are the main space for invoking the images and rituals they intend to create.
On July 27, at 7pm, the final exhibition of the APOCALYPSO residency took place.
