MULTIDISCIPLINARY AND UNIVERSAL: THE BALANCE OF BOCA SUMMER SCHOOL 2024

“Workshops are spaces to prove that philosophies, different thoughts and actions always find new life in one another. That’s why we have to keep sharing everything we learn.” The words of multidisciplinary artist Niño de Elche, summing up Sculpting the Voices workshop at CCB, also summarise perfectly the purpose of the BoCA Summer School. And this was how its eighth edition came to an end, reaching a total of 79 participants, with a very enriching diversity of proposals in 2024.

The Huni Kuin indigenous collective, which translates as ‘True People’ and inhabits the rainforest area between Brazil and Peru, brought their traditional performance and musical practices to MAAT in three different moments. And the BoCA Summer School 2024 opened on 5 July, bringing together Zenira Neshane, Sabino Dua Ixã and Txaná Nixiwaka in a conversation about the artistic and social practices that guide the Huni Kuin Cosmovisions. This was followed, on the 6 and 7, by the workshops Body and Nature, proposing, from an Amerindian perspective, a reflection and practice on the role that art can play in strengthening bodies, and Chants in the Huni Kuin Cosmovision, an immersive experience with exercises where voice and melody are instruments and vehicles for being in the world, constituting bodies and living well.

In August, Gabriel Chaile brought to us The Engineering of Necessity. On Friday 30, through a talk at MNAC in Chiado, and on Saturday 31, the Argentinian visual artist welcomed us into his studio to show how objects can be adapted to different uses and contribute to triggering social and political transformations. His oven sculptures were also highlighted, works of art that establish new connections between people, the preparation of food and the rituals of sharing.

Portuguese dancers and choreographers Sofia Dias & Vítor Roriz brought Distortion to the CCB for three days of training between 19 and 21 September. Working on the relationship between gesture and voice, the duo invited us to feel the physical and emotional limits, to look for the place of transition between familiarity and strangeness.

Finally, between 15 and 17 October, Niño de Elche came to teach us how to Sculpting the Voices. The Spanish artist – multidisciplinary and undisciplined – brought us a three-session workshop that allowed us to realise the transformative power of the voice. Sharing the fundamental question of time and space for all the arts. ‘Time as something perennial, in which we are immersed, and space understood as carnal, spiritual and spatial architecture”.

Every year, prestigious national and international artists and thinkers lead workshops and talks in various theatres, museums, cultural centres and natural spaces in Lisbon. The BoCA Summer School fosters a space for encounter, dialogue and new futures, with the support of DGArtes, the GDA Foundation, Millennium BCP Foundation and Lisbon City Council..