PAR(s) – Artes Performativas & Imagem Online

In 2020/2021 season emerged the need to slow down and develop new presentation formats and, above all, new creation formats and working modes that will allow us to continue to consolidate artistic works, in the current reality. The Teatro Municipal do Porto invited 8 artists for a special collaboration, designed specifically for online platforms, where a film director and a performing artist, in pairs, in an equal relationship , were invited to create a new digital object that crosses their universes and discourses.


PAR(S) 1
Cláudia Varejão & Joana Castro — Ø ilha

The Ø ilha [Ø island] is composed of several landscapes within a single landscape. They are territories lived and shaped by interior and exterior time. There are no privatized territories on this island. They are landscapes that cannot be accommodated: they expand through encounters, clashes, pressures and frictions. Between silence and intimacy, new islands are sculpted, in a possible encounter between life and death.


PAR(S) 2
Pedro Neves Marques & Teresa Coutinho — Correspondência

“Jung says that over the course of our life we come across archetypes. The Emperor walking up a steep street ahead of us. The Hermit sitting next to us by himself in a movie theatre. The female Pope handing us a book that will deeply change us. I watched you from afar, and I asked myself: The Hanged man? The Mad man?” A correspondence between two strangers based on the importance of the symbolic in their lives: both retrieved that ancestral relation in the hope that they would better accommodate their grief or love. At a time of symbolic misery, such representations seem ways to expand our perception of not only what surrounds us, but also of who we are after all: also representations, ready to deeply influence those crossing our paths. "A New New Age is necessary".


PAR(S) 3
Sofia Arriscado & Costanza Givone — Lapso

I got beans instead of teeth
I poured the blood in a bottle
I dressed my tongue to wash the dishes
I exchanged a kidney for a bar of soap
I offered the nipple to Sant’Agata.
I lost the leather curtains that enclose the room.

Cláudia Varejão was born in Porto and studied at the Creativity and Artistic Creation Program of Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in partnership with the German Film und Fernsehakademie Berlin and the São Paulo International Film Acadamy. She also studied Photography at AR.CO in Lisbon. Claúdia is the author of the short film trilogy Weekend, A Cold Day and Morning Light. Ama-san, a portrait of japanese divers, was her feature debut, receiving dozens of awards around the world, followed by In The Darkness of the Theater I Take Off My Shoes, a film that shows the intimacy of a group of dancers in a dance company. Amor Fati is her latest film scheduled to premiere in 2020 and in Wolf and Dog, in development, she will return to fiction. Cláudia's films have been selected by and awarded at the most pretigious film festivals, including Locarno, Rotterdam, Visions du Reel, Cinema du Reel, Karlovy Vary, Art of the Real - Lincoln Center, among many others. Besides her work as a filmmaker, she developed a career as a photographer and she’s a guest professor at AR.CO and Catholic University of Porto. Her work, whether in film or photography, documentary or fiction, lives from its proximity to those portrayed.

Joana Castro (1988, Porto) develops her work between dance, performance and sound, presenting them in Festivals in Portugal, Belgium, France and Germany. Began her studies in dance at Balleteatro Professional School in 2003, attended the course PEPCC (Choreographique Creation, Dance Research and Training Programme) in Forum Dança in 2008, received a scholarship from NEC in 2009 and in 2013 with the support of Foundation Calouste Gulbenkian, participates at DanceWeb Schoolarship Programme of Impulstanz Festival (Vienna, Austria) and in 2016/17 studies at postgraduate course in specialization of performance art at University of Fine Arts at Porto. As a performer collaborated with Né Barros, Joclécio Azevedo, Carlota Lagido, Victor Hugo Pontes, Ana Borralho and João Galante, Mariana Tengner Barros, Flávio Rodrigues, Joana Providência, among others. In 2012 represents Portugal at Les Repérages/Danse à Lille and with the support of the Foundation Calouste Gulbenkian integrates the choreografic residency “Correios em Movimento/Dança em Trânsito in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. At the moment is in creation of a new project RITE OF DECAY to première at GUIdance Festival 2020, on tour with SU8MARINO, developing a performance DARKTRACES to première at the DDD - Festival Dias da Dança, at Porto, and in collaboration with Maurícia | Neves with the piece and STILL we MOVE, to première in September of 2020.

Teresa Coutinho (1988, Porto). She is an actress, creator and playwright. She has a degree in theatre – performance from ESMAE (Higher School of Music and Performing Arts) and completed her studies at the Lisbon Theatre and Film School. She created Solo (2021), O Eterno Debate [The Eternal Debate] (2020), E comparar-te a um Dia de Verão? [Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day] (2018), a performance for children based on William Shakespeare with Maria Bayley and Joana Bagulho, Ways of Looking (2017), based on John Berger with Guilherme Gomes, Agora era Eu [It Was My Turn] (2017), a performance for children with Pedro Moura, Indicação para se perder [Directions to Get Lost] (2014), based on Marguerite Duras, with Constança Carvalho Homem, and the micro performance Amanhã à Mesma Hora [Tomorrow at the Same Time] (2012). Her works place particular emphasis on gender, identity, and power issues, and on the boundaries between reality and fiction. She worked with Tiago Rodrigues, Faustin Linyekula, Natália Luiza and Beatriz Batarda as assistant director. She worked as dramaturgy assistant in the performance Aurora Negra (2020) [Black Dawn], at Teatro Nacional Dona Maria II (TNDMII). She curated the on-line children programme “Apanhar o Sol” [Catching the Sun] at the invitation of LU.CA – Teatro Luís de Camões in 2020. She coordinates the poetry series “Clube dos Poetas Vivos” [Living Poets Society] at TNDM II. She is often invited to take part in poetry-related festivals as an actress, programmer and moderator.

Pedro Neves Marques were born in Lisbon and are a visual artist, director and writer. They have presented their films and works at art institutions such as Tate Modern, Serpentine Galleries and Gasworks in London; High Line, Anthology Film Archives, SculptureCenter and e-flux in New York; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Jeu de Paume and Kadist Foundation in Paris; Castello di Rivoli, V-A-C Foundation and PAV in Italy; Botín Foundation and Matadero Madrid in Spain; Guangdong Times Museum, Yinchuan Biennale and Guangzhou Image Triennial in China; Museu Coleção Berardo and MAAT in Portugal; Gwangju Biennale and Liverpool Biennial, as well as at film festivals such as Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, IndieLisboa, Doclisboa and Mix Brasil, among many others. They co-founded the poetry publishing house livros do pântano, in which they published the poetry book Sex as Care and Other Viral Poems (2020). They have published articles in e-flux journal, The Baffler and Art Agenda, as well as in books by publishers and museums such as MIT Press, Sternberg Press, Archive Books, HKW and SESC São Paulo. They co-founded the online video channel inhabitants with artist Mariana Silva. They received the Present Future Prize at the Artissima art fair in 2018 and were shortlisted for the Pinchuk Future Generation Art Prize 2021. [text written in non-binary language at the request of Pedro Neves Marques]

Sofia Arriscado studied film direction at ETIC – Technical School of Image and Communication (Lisbon), audio-visual post production at Restart (Lisbon) and philosophy at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto. She works with documentary record, video art and experimental film, collaborating with music, theatre and dance artists since 2006.  
She was camerawoman and editor in the film Jovens de Atenas [Youth of Athens], by Pauliana V. Pimentel, and camerawoman in the film Eco da Víscera, by Jonathan Uliel Saldanha. 
She directed the short films Ou-topos (2013) and Fasma (2017), among others. She was part of the International Competition selection committee at the film festival Porto/Post/Doc (2016-2018). In 2020, she published the fascicle Dez Maçãs in Ficha Técnica, a project by Gabinete Paratextual. 
She co-founded the experimental film cooperative Laia. 

Costanza Givone has a master’s degree in scenic arts and a post-graduate degree in contemporary dance from ESMAE – Higher School of Music and Performing Arts (Porto). She also attended c.e.m (Lisbon) and CPDC (Florence), and studied theatre at Teatro del Giglio (Lucca). In her artistic journey, she highlights having studied under N. Karpov, Simona Bucci, Sofia Neuparth, Alexej Merkushev (Derevo theatre), Gey Pin Ang and Gabriella Bartolomei, and having worked with and performed for Madalena Victorino, Aldara Bizarro, André Braga and Cláudia Figueiredo. In 2006, she co-founded the company Zaches Teatro to further the study of the relation between the body and the object, the mask and the puppet. Aside from performing, she has developed personal projects in collaboration with artists from several fields since 2012: Exposição (premiered at TMP, Porto, 2021), Fogo Lento (winner of the Isabel Alves Costa Creativity Grant 2018), Famílias (a satellite project by Circolando), Tempo Rói (premiered at TAGV, Coimbra, 2015), Santas de Roca (produced by Artemrede, 2013), Salomè ha perso il lume (Scenario Award finalist, premiered at FIMFA). Between 2015 and 2019, thanks to the projects Espírito do Lugar 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 and Derivas, under the artistic direction of André Braga and Cláudia Figueiredo, she carried out site-specific works in Porto and Coimbra. She is a co-founder and the artistic director of the cultural association Fogo Lento.