LIFE ITSELF IS THE GOAL | 17 December, Online

António Pedro Lopes (Ponta Delgada, 1981) works as an artist, cultural manager, programmer and curator. He is the co-founder and co-artistic director of the music and art festival Tremor, on the island of São Miguel in the Azores, together with Lovers & Lollypops and Yuzin. He has directed festivals and artistic projects in Portugal and Europe, in the contexts of contemporary dance, performing arts and music. In 2021-23, he was the artistic director of Ponta Delgada – Azores 2027’s bid to European Capital of Culture. In 2020, he co-created MAPAS with Gui Garrido, a cultural center on wheels, with nomadic, decentralized and digital outreach programming in the municipality of Leiria. In 2019, he co-founded the Fabric Arts Festival with Jesse James, Michael Benevides and Sofia Botelho, in the city of Fall River, United States, which he co-curated until 2021. As a dance and theater artist, he has participated in dozens of shows, workshops, artistic residencies and conferences around the world, having collaborated, among many artists, with Jérôme Bel, João Fiadeiro, Marco Berrettini, Gustavo Ciríaco, Raquel André and the Iranian company Virgule Performing Arts. He has a degree in Theater from the University of Évora, a diploma in choreography from Forum Dança, a postgraduate degree in Cultural Management and Sustainability from the University of Coimbra, and is currently studying for an MBA in Arts Innovation at the Global Leaders Institute in Washington DC, with the support of the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD).

Gui Garrido attended the Fine Arts course at ESAD (Caldas da Rainha). From 2004 to 2006, he studied Contemporary Dance at the Forum Dança e Impulstanz in Vienna, Austria. As a choreographer, he created the following duets: ” I WANT MORE FANS YOU WANT MORE STAGE” with António Pedro Lopes (2008), ” a couple dance” with Mia Habib (2009), ” Still Difficult Duet ” (2007) and ” Still Standing You” (2010) with Pieter Ampe. He created his first solo “GO JOHN” in 2011 and premiered “BEST BEAST” in January 2012, his first piece as a choreographer. The play “A COMING COMMUNITY”, a collaboration with Hermann Heisig, Nuno Lucas and Pieter Ampe, also premiered in May 2012. He collaborated with Paula Diogo, Cláudia Gaiolas and Jan Machacek, for the installation “Try Romance” which premiered in November 2013 in Marseille European Capital of Culture, and in 2015 he created “Bits and Pieces put together to present a semblance of a whole” for the BTB group at TanzHaus Dusseldorf. Between 2007 and 2009, he was the programmer of the cycle of young choreographers within the scope of the Festival A Fábrica (Porto). With António Pedro Lopes, he organized Sweet & Tender Collaborations (Porto 2008), an artistic residency for 45 artists from all over the world for 1 month. This project was a partnership with the São João National Theater among other national and international entities. In 2012, at the invitation of Culturgest (Lisbon), he created the CELEBRAÇÃO project with António Pedro Lopes. A cycle dedicated to young national choreographers and reflection on the conditions of artistic work in national territory. In 2014, he co-founded the A PORTA festival, a multidisciplinary festival that takes place in Leiria and since 2015 he has been part of the team at the TREMOR festival in São Miguel, Azores. Between 2017 and 2020, he was the producer of the tour network for the new Portuguese music SUPER NOVA. In 2019 and 2020, he joins the team at the Fabric Arts Festival, in Fall River, Massachusetts, Boston. In 2020, together with António Pedro Lopes, he created the MAPAS project and in 2021, with the cooperative CCER MAIS, they created NASCENTES, a project in the village of Fontes in Leiria. He was the artistic director of the project Sob o Same Céu, financed by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation under the PARTIS program. (Artistic Practices for Social Inclusion), and developed several projects for Leiria City Hall (Museum Festival, Floresta Viva, Ágora, among others). He is interested in continuing to develop cultural and social projects and developing his work as a curator and programmer of various artistic projects.

Artist and researcher. Non-binary lesbian. Their spaces of practice combine essayistic writing and performance, whether in creation, teaching, research or the organisation of public programmes. They have organised a series of lecture-performances dedicated to the relationship between language and geology, presented internationally in various artistic spaces, theatres and academic contexts: ‘Anthroposcenes’ (2017) with João dos Santos Martins, ‘Geophagy’ (2018), and ‘Fossil’ (2020). One of their most recent works – ‘Spillovers’ (2023) – proposes a fabled and collective reinterpretation of ‘Lesbian peoples: Material for a Dictionary’ (1976), an iconic work of lesbian feminism by Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig. Ritó is currently completing a PhD in Artistic Studies and Anthropology with an FCT scholarship, focusing on the Anthropocene and perceptions of humanity-nature. Natálio has a degree in Choreographic Arts (Paris VIII University) and a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology (PUC-São Paulo). They have published academic articles, artists’ texts and independent publications linked to their research. In 2019, at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Ritó co-organised an indigenous film exhibition with indigenous filmmakers and curators, together with a collective platform of researchers and activists from Portugal, namely Ailton Krenak. Since 2020, Ritó has been the coordinator of Terra Batida, a network of people, practices and knowledges in dispute with forms of ecological and political violence and policies of abandonment. Since 2023, they have been collaborating with least – an arts and ecology laboratory based in Geneva – on the project ‘Peau Pierre’ (Stone Skin), a long-term project focusing on eco-queer pedagogies in co-creation with local associations. They have also coordinated two four-monthly laboratories with Alina Ruiz Folini for young people aged between 18 and 25, in the context of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Educational Service’s Imagina (Imagine) project (2022-23). Associate artist of Associação Parasita, a structure funded by the Portuguese Republic – Ministry of Culture/Directorate-General for the Arts between 2023-2024.