I’m wind, fire, leaf, and tree
I’m spirit, passion, and dream
I light, I heat, I spark
I power.
I’m matter and force
I’m actuality, instability, vitality
I’m mutation and movement
I change form, place, and meaning.
You can extract and exploit me but not destroy me
You can ignite and transfer me but not conceive me.
I’m anywhere and nowhere
Here and there, now and then
I’m Gallery Energy.
Together with artists, musicians, poets, scientists, and writers, Gallery Energy will appear and reappear, running, singing, flying, and dancing, across library halls and market stalls, movie theatres and recording studios, wastelands and romantic gardens.
Gallery Energy is a year-long cycle of concerts, talks, and walks arranged in four threads presented by Galeria Municipal do Porto.
Science is Art
Considering how science and art discover and interrogate the world, I bring researchers out of the lab, inviting them to share their knowledge about themes that matter for the present of art such as fear, reproduction, and modern alchemy.
April 8: Marta Moita, Principal Researcher in Behavioral Neuroscience at the Champalimaud Foundation, Lisbon. She studies the mechanisms of fear conditioning.
July 22: Patricia Saragüeta, researcher at Buenos Aires’ Institute of Biology and Experimental Medicine. She studies the hormonal regulation of the feminine reproductive tract.
November 11: Emanuele Coccia, Associate Professor at the EHESS in Paris. His research focuses on conceptions of life and the ontological status and normative power of images.
Imaginaries
Understanding imaginaries as devices to conceive the present, desire change, and create the future, I invite germinal contemporary thinkers to present a source of imaginary key for the present.
April 29: Teresa Castro, Professor of Cinema Studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle—Paris 3. She investigates the relationship between cinema and animism, ecocriticism, and vegetal life.
June 22: Saidiya Hartman, writer and academic focusing on African American studies. She is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
October 21: Claudia Rankine, poet, essayist, and playwright, author of six collections of poetry, three plays and numerous essays and collaborations. Rankine is Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University.
Commented Concerts
Conceiving the concert as a conversation, I invite musicians to discuss their stylistic choices, aesthetic influences and references through performance and dialogue. Notes will range from gong resonances to cultural exchanges, and the exploration of cosmic ancestral forces.
May 28: João Pais Filipe, percussionist and sound sculptor from Porto. He constructs percussive metal instruments, such as gongs or cymbals, exploring their sculptural and acoustic properties.
June 19: Invernomuto, whose work traverses moving images and sound, integrating sculpture, performance, and publishing. With their project Black Med, they intercept the sonic trajectories that cross the Mediterranean, tracing their movement and accommodating their narratives.
September 30: Nkisi, electronic musician, producer, and artist whose performances overlay African rhythms, hard European dance tropes, and synthesizer melodies to reorder the hierarchy of the senses and discover how the body and memory are affected by sounds and rhythms.
Grazes and Grazes
I’ll take you through pathways where nature and the city meet, guided by the attentive gaze of artists and botanists whose research traverses medicine, cuisine, and sustainability and whose perspectives challenges taxonomic and topological conventions.
July 9: A Recoletora brings together botanists, nutritionists, chefs, artists, and designers in a collaborative, itinerant project to recover edible wild plants and reintegrate them into diets and eating habits.
October 8: Landra pays tribute to acorns, called landras in the Iberian Northwest, the duo has committed to a practice of living and making attuned to the rhythms and matters of nature.
Conceived by Filipa Ramos with Juan Luis Toboso, Matilde Seabra, and Isabeli Santiago.
