Activities 2021 — Next Performances

PLANTATION OF 7.000 TREES

Inspired by Joseph Beuys’s project “7000 Oaks” (1982), BoCA debuts a 10 year project, combining the plantation of new creations (both natural and artistic), curatorships, debates and conferences throughout different areas, forming a forest of thousands of artists and artworks. All artists and citizens are invited to plant a tree and name it.

GRADA KILOMBA

“O Barco/The Boat” is an installation by the artist Grada Kilomba, comprised of 140 blocks forming the shape of the bottom of a ship, a detailed drawing of the space that was created to accommodate the bodies of millions of Africans enslaved by European empires. Extended along 32 meters of the river, it invites the audience to enter a garden of memories, where poems rest over blocks of burnt wood. Three performance acts are expected during the biennial.

LUÍS LÁZARO MATOS

“Une vague joyeuse” is a project by Luís Lázaro Matos with a title that recalls the last scene of the film “Testament of Orpheus” (1960) by Jean Cocteau, in which a convertible car drives down a winding road while the passengers scream in joy, indifferent to the two policemen parked by the curb.

AGNIESZKA POLSKA

“The New Sun” brings the Polish artist Agnieszka Polska to Portugal for the first time. A projection of the sun personified as a cartoon character that speaks directly to the audience about scientific theory, poetry, natural disasters, trivial jokes and love songs. Here, the sun is everything you see before the final collapse of your system, your planet, your sunset - the last witness to your extinction, softly driving you towards the black hole of a last meditation.

AGNIESZKA POLSKA

In “I Am the Mouth”, a pair of lips partially submerged in turbulent waters floats while repeating soothing words, artistically reframing the viral Internet phenomenon of ASMR videos (Auto Sensory Meridian Response) - where sounds generated by trivial materials scratching against the microphone or whispering voices are amplified to stimulate pleasant tingling sensations on the nape.

ANNE IMHOF

“Untitled (Wave)” creates resonance between questions around ideas of the feminine, worship and immateriality. It refers also to the history of art and aesthetic discourse, particularly to the concept of the sublime associated with the romantic period of contemplation of nature, of bleak and desolate landscapes conveying the smallness of the scale of the individual before the grandeur of the universe.

ANASTASIA SOSUNOVA

Through a process of distortion and the interlacing of elements from old mythologies, hybrid identities and a society of surveillance, Sosunova produces alternative forms of “contemporary folklore”, exploring new narratives and ways of life that require rules, ethics, codes and agreements between living beings.

MÓNICA CALLE

In “Between Heaven and Earth", theatre director Mónica Calle picks as a starting point the writings of Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão and, under a BoCA's invitation, develops a new work for a natural setting: among the beach and dunes of the naturist beach of Costa da Caparica. An intimate and challenging experience for only nine spectators at a time.

GUS VAN SANT

Film director Gus Van Sant ventures into his first creation for the stage, a musical theater show inspired by Andy Warhol and his overwhelming talent for elevating images into icons, all while achieving worldwide celebrity status as persona and artist.

TÂNIA CARVALHO AND MATTHIEU EHRLACHER

The instruments played by Tânia and Matthieu, saxophone and erhu, and her collaboration with the Casa do Minho de Lisboa Folklore Group, enable the embrace of this new form of experimentation with tradition and songbook. The songs are dismembered from their original form to be placed in the construction of a sound journey.

DIANA POLICARPO

A serie of performances in the natural space, “I want to see my mountains” is curated by Delfim Sardo and Sílvia Gomes and proposes artists to look at the legacy of Joseph Beuys, while observing their own mountains, their own "selves".

KHALIK ALLAH

“IWOW” brings to Portugal the memorable photographer and filmmaker from New York, Khalik Allah, already described as a director of “street opera” and praised for a disarming view that unveils, with delicate mastery, a viscerally beautiful humanity.

RODRIGO GARCÍA

The Argentinean iconoclast, playwright and theatre director Rodrigo García returns with an audiovisual creation, written and produced remotely during the lockdown period. Not theatre, but a green screen (chroma key) and five exceptional performers materialise the director’s overflowing imagination. Angélica Liddell, Denis Lavant, Florencia Vecino, François Chaignaud and Volmir Cordeiro give themselves, body and soul, to this experiment.

TIAGO CADETE

In “Brasa”, Tiago Cadete traces one of the lines of his theatrical research, that of the enquiry and critical approach to the historical relations between Portugal and Brazil, accompanied by a group of creatives-performers from diverse backgrounds: Isabél Zuaa, Julia Salem, Keli Freitas, Magnum Alexandre Soares, Ana Lobato, Dori Nigro, Gustavo Ciríaco and Raquel André.

MILES GREENBERG

“Water in a Heatwave” is a new durational piece for eight performers and is the artist’s most challenging project so far, in terms of scale and duration. In pairs, the performers clash their bodies into each other atop a series of pedestals, creating numerous tensions within the space.

GABRIEL FERRANDINI

When releasing "Hair of the Dog", his first solo album, Gabriel Ferrandini brings to the Champalimaud Foundation's open-air amphitheater a performance that precisely reflects this state of openness to new artistic experiences: with the Gulbenkian Choir he explores the contemporaries possibilities of operatic singing, with the voices succeeding each other in successive loops (canon), raising issues of memory, traps and liberation.

ANDRÉ UERBA

Through deceleration, inhibition of the sense of sight and a kinetic and somatic approach to the body and its movement, André Uerba and the performers explore different ways to get to know and feel each other. Bodies that meet, coordinate and communicate non-verbally, opening a space that is understood as political.

FELIPE BRAGANÇA, TEATRO GRIOT, CATARINA WALLENSTEIN

Science fiction, tale and documentation are blended in this visual and theatrical performance about the memories of the Mueda Massacre, which happened in Mozambique in 1960.

ANTÓNIO POPPE E LA FAMÍLIA GITANA

“Música Cigana Camões Yanomami/A Soma dos Seus” consists of a performance/concert that combines the poetry of Camões, texts by Davi Kopenawa (from the Yanomami indigenous), with Gypsy Music. This encounter creates a communicative composition of original expressions.

KHALIK ALLAH

“IWOW” brings to Portugal the memorable photographer and filmmaker from New York, Khalik Allah, already described as a director of “street opera” and praised for a disarming view that unveils, with delicate mastery, a viscerally beautiful humanity.

VON CALHAU!

In the workshop "Tesourelha", the artists Marta Ângela and João Alves propose to form a listening group with the participants. During the two intensive days of the workshop, four listening sessions will take place, lasting 2h30 each. Each of the sessions will correspond to listening accompanied by a composition of sounds. No image. Each of the compositions will have as reference each of the four elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Air.

BERRU

A serie of performances in the natural space, “I want to see my mountains” is curated by Delfim Sardo and Sílvia Gomes and proposes artists to look at the legacy of Joseph Beuys, while observing their own mountains, their own "selves".

JONATHAN ULIEL SALDANHA

Jonathan Uliel Saldanha is a musician, visual artist, sound and stage creator. In “Atavic Machine” Jonathan operates for the first time in a vegetal space (of human construction) - the Lisbon Green House - the action of a sound and light machine, where the latent and fictitious characteristics from a remote and future time come together.

PAPILLONS D'ÉTERNITÉ (TÂNIA CARVALHO AND MATTHIEU EHRLACHER)

The instruments played by Tânia and Matthieu, saxophone and erhu, and her collaboration with the Faro Folklore Group, enable the embrace of this new form of experimentation with tradition and songbook. The songs are dismembered from their original form to be placed in the construction of a sound journey.

JOANA CASTRO E MAURÍCIA | NEVES

And yet we still move. Fragility as a capacity, as a poetic place, is the starting point of a performance that arises from the desire to shift the private to the public sphere. The choreographers and performers Joana Castro and Maurícia | Neves question and reconfigure the relationships between them, using as a base photographs from the personal archive of a romantic relationship that ended last October.

CARLOS AZEREDO MESQUITA

“Über Alles” is a durational performance in which the performers explore the history and the stories, iconographic and sociological elements in national anthems. Reflecting on the role that these songs have in the formation of the mythology of a nation and in the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion associated to this process.

ALICE RIPOLL

In “Lavagem”, the most recent work by the Brazilian choreographer Alice Ripoll and Cia. REC, reality and fantasy merge in a delirium, like an apocalyptic dream. With the help of buckets, water and soap, the performance looks into ambivalent imagery around the act of washing, critically observing the unravelling of scenic and historical elements.

CAPICUA

“A Tralha” is a quasi-monologue about hoarding. An essay about waste and obsoleteness, presented as a personal narrative. A reflection about the objects that surround us, that serve as a kind of extension of ourselves, containing our memories and functioning as an interface between us and the world.

ALICE RIPOLL

Brazilian choreographer Alice Ripoll proposes a theoretical-practical workshop: a first part, where she presents her way of directing and choreographing, sharing experiences and methodologies; and a second part, in which the dancers and creatives of Cia REC present practical exercises developed in creative and improvisation processes. A unique opportunity to get together with one of the most significant artists of contemporary dance.

PAN DAIJING

Cited as one of the most uprising figures in the current avant-garde, Pan Daijing is for the first in Portugal with “Half a Name”, a site-specific music performance for the National Pantheon. Pan Daijing takes on the expansive sound and visual documentation of her large-scale performances. Deconstructing moments of memories, the piece explores the possibilities of the performative archive, as well as its practice in experimental narrative.

DAYANA LUCAS

A serie of performances in the natural space, “I want to see my mountains” is curated by Delfim Sardo and Sílvia Gomes and proposes artists to look at the legacy of Joseph Beuys, while observing their own mountains, their own "selves".

LASTESIS

The artistic, interdisciplinary and feminist collective of women from Valparaíso (Chile) LASTESIS is dedicated to disseminating feminist theory based on performance. They travel to Portugal for the first time to work with 80 women and dissidents of different ages and backgrounds, in a performance that seeks to address the claim to the right to a life free from violence.

BRUNO LATOUR AND FRÉDÉRIQUE AÏT-TOUATI

A conference-performance by the philosopher Bruno Latour and sociologist and stage director Frédérique Aït-Touati, in which the social and cosmic order is described as “moving towards an unparalleled political and ecological collapse”, as a result of the climate crisis.

TIAGO CADETE

In “Brasa”, Tiago Cadete traces one of the lines of his theatrical research, that of the enquiry and critical approach to the historical relations between Portugal and Brazil, accompanied by a group of creatives-performers from diverse backgrounds: Isabél Zuaa, Julia Salem, Keli Freitas, Magnum Alexandre Soares, Ana Lobato, Dori Nigro, Gustavo Ciríaco and Raquel André.

RODRIGO GARCÍA

The Argentinean iconoclast, playwright and theatre director Rodrigo García returns with an audiovisual creation, written and produced remotely during the lockdown period. Not theatre, but a green screen (chroma key) and five exceptional performers materialise the director’s overflowing imagination. Angélica Liddell, Denis Lavant, Florencia Vecino, François Chaignaud and Volmir Cordeiro give themselves, body and soul, to this experiment.

FRÉDÉRIQUE AÏT-TOUATI e PATRICK LAFFONT-DELOJO

Based on the stage experiments that Frédérique Aït-Touati and Bruno Latour have been conducting together for the past ten years, the workshop proposes to explore these questions through different mediums (video, scenography, philosophy, architecture, cartography, drawing), and to share with the participants the different tools that the troupe has been exploring for several years in the form of scenic and graphic research - a gaïa-graphy.

JOANA CASTRO E MAURÍCIA NEVES

E ainda assim nos movemos. A fragilidade enquanto potência, enquanto lugar poético, é o ponto de partida para uma performance que surge da vontade de deslocar o campo privado para o público. As coreógrafas e intérpretes Joana Castro e Maurícia Neves questionam e reconfiguram a relações entre ambas, tendo como base fotografias de arquivo pessoal de uma relação amorosa que encontrou o seu fim em outubro passado.

RODRIGO GARCÍA

The Argentinean iconoclast, playwright and theatre director Rodrigo García returns with an audiovisual creation, written and produced remotely during the lockdown period. Not theatre, but a green screen (chroma key) and five exceptional performers materialise the director’s overflowing imagination. Angélica Liddell, Denis Lavant, Florencia Vecino, François Chaignaud and Volmir Cordeiro give themselves, body and soul, to this experiment.

GUS VAN SANT

Film director Gus Van Sant ventures into his first creation for the stage, a musical theater show inspired by Andy Warhol and his overwhelming talent for elevating images into icons, all while achieving worldwide celebrity status as persona and artist.

SARA BICHÃO

A serie of performances in the natural space, “I want to see my mountains” is curated by Delfim Sardo and Sílvia Gomes and proposes artists to look at the legacy of Joseph Beuys, while observing their own mountains, their own "selves".