May 06
Welcoming by the Alkantara team around a brunch, followed by a local tip session with artists from Lisbon.
May 07
Tour by Paulo Pascoal, one of the local curators at CAM, of Julianknxx’s individual exhibition, Chorus in Rememory of Flight at CAM.
May 7-9
Me for Dinner
Workshop with Gaya de Medeiros
In Me for Dinner, the artists explored the performer’s relationship with autobiographical material, identity, and audience interaction. Drawing on a range of embodied and vocal practices, the artists were invited to reflect on their presence and performative strategies through movement (inspired by Gyrokinesis), voice work (influenced by Francesca Della Monica), and performative approaches such as Vogue. The sessions also included group discussions around performer–audience dynamics and a viewing of excerpts from Dad for Dinner, a performance that integrates an audience member into the piece. Designed as a space for creative exchange, vulnerability and experimentation, the workshop encouraged the artists to engage in honest dialogue and shared artistic inquiry.
Some artists also had one-to-one sessions with Gaya de Medeiros to discuss about their project.
A trans woman, dancer, drag queen, choreographer, producer, and director based in Lisbon, Gaya de Medeiros is trained in animation, ballet, contemporary dance, and dramaturgy. She danced with Companhia de Dança do Palácio das Artes for nine years and has created three solos (É o amor outra vez, Proteína Desnaturada and After Party). She was the cofounder and producer of Rede Sola de dança. She has choreographed for Drag Taste Lisbon (2019-2021).
In 2021 she founded BRABA, a platform that aims to support initiatives in the trans/non-binary community.
Gaya de Medeiros © Jose Fernandes
May 10
The artists met Raquel Lima, member of Common Stories Advisory Board.
In the afternoon, the artists walked Lisbon with the Batoto Yetu Cultural and Youth Association. The tour unveils Lisbon’s African character, present in the many visible and invisible memories and traces throughout the city. The tour ended with a Mozambican dinner at the atelier of sculptor Makando Frank Ntaluma.
More information about Batoto Yetu Cultural and Youth Association here.
May 13-16 (morning)
Physical warm up sessions were led by local artists: Diego Bragà and Inés Vooduness, two CommonLAB 2024 artists, and Gio Lourenço.
A Preliminary Guide to Artistic Kinship
Workshop with Sarah Lewis-Cappellari
This workshop delved into some of the consequences/politics of the socialized roles the artists play as an artistic collective. The artists employed performative techniques to explore possibilities for artistic collaboration by utilizing a set methodology where they rotated authorship and temporarily inhabited each other’s artistic identities. How will the work be read/impacted/informed if the artists release themselves from past notions of artistic identities? How can the artists begin to understand an artistic approach so that they might find a common language for artistic collaboration? In this workshop each participant shared an artwork that they have conceptualized/realized and then someone else presented it as their own.
Based in Lisbon, Sarah Lewis-Cappellari (PhD, UCLA) is a researcher, curator, dramaturg, and teacher whose work engages the interface of performance, contemporary art, colonial visual economies and Black and Caribbean Studies. Previously based in Berlin, she worked with the art & science collective Mobile Academy as one of its primary curators and researchers. Sarah has also researched and worked with collaborative art practices as a member of the performance collective Lewis Forever which presented work at Performance Space 122 and the New Museum in NYC, SOIT in Brussels, Agora and Sophiensaele in Berlin, and Tanzhaus nrw in Düsseldorf. Most recently she has been invited to guest lecture at Maumaus and the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, as well as in the curatorial master’s programme at Zurich University of the Arts. Sarah currently teaches critical theory to master film students in co-creation and innovation for social change at the IFS in Cologne.
May 17
A brunch feedback session ended this first module, with the presence of Gerhardt Haag, director of africologne and the next host of the Lab in June.