Artist Statement 

June 12, MACBA – Convent dels Àngels. Session: Experiencing the Anthropocene. A Transdisciplinary Journey Through Earth

Keywords: Live, Sound, Visuals, Performance, Sea, Climate Change, Improvisation

LIMBO (2021) is a Live Sound and Live Visuals performance that reflects on the rise of the sea levels environmental issue, its impact and effects in our cities and countries. Being both the visuals and the sound designs constructed in an improvised live performance, the method on which the performance itself is built – intrinsically connecting both media – has got layers of complexity, not only from a technical perspective. That synesthetic relationship is also indeed dialectic: how to construct a live sound thinking of a visual impact and how to construct a live visual to be “disturbed” by the sound. Or, in simpler terms, how to paint with music and how to play music with paint. From this, the voyage about our impact in the loss of our cities, of our biodiversity, on our heritage is a meditative, immersive, andreflective act, and a both personal and collective experience.

• André Araújo is a Musician/Visual Artist from Porto, PT. Since his childhood, he plays the Flute, culminating in his studies at the Conservatory of Music of Porto where he transitioned from classical music to Jazz and Improvised Music. That way, he joins the Koninklijke Conservatorium Brussel (Royal Conservatory of Brussels, Belgium) where he completes his bachelor’s degree in jazz (Cum Laude). His musical evolution in the Belgian capital, increasingly approaching electronic music, free jazz and improvised music, led him to feel the need to associate visual interaction components to his musical practice. Nowadays, he’s taking a master’s degree in Contemporary Artistic Practice at the University of Aveiro. He is developing projects and experiencing the way his music interacts in various ways, namely in Performance, Digital Video Art, Net Art, Installation, Virtual Reality, among others. http://www.andrearaujo.art
• Nuno Sousa is a multimedia student, with a degree in production of interactive content and multimedia, entered the erasmus program where he studied cinema on the Krzysztof Kieslowki Faculty of Radio and Television. His specialization is the modeling and rendering of 3d content, mainly interested in ceramic pieces and portraying people, moments or experiences in digital media. Over time he has collaborated in several projects predominantly as a Photogrametry freelancer, he is now starting a master’s degree in contemporary art.
• Marta de Menezes (born 1975) is a Portuguese artist, with a Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Lisbon (PT) and a MSt from the University of Oxford (UK). De Menezes is director of Cultivamos Cultura, the leading institution devoted to experimental art in Portugal and Ectopia, dedicated to facilitate the collaborative work between artists and scientists. Marta de Menezes has worked in the intersection of art and biology since the late 90s, in the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, and Portugal, exploring the conceptual and aesthetic opportunities offered by biological sciences for visual representation in the arts. Her work has been widely exhibited in major venues in all continents, presented in most anthologies devoted to bioart, discussed in doctoral dissertations, and considered an example of research in the visual arts. Among the most recent international exhibitions, de Menezes was invited for the 2019 Ars Electronica Festival: Out of the Box, and organized two 2020 Ars Electronica Gardens (Lisbon and São Luis). She was invited to be the official representation of Portugal at the London Design Biennale 2016 and exhibited at the Beijing Biennale of New Media Art 2016. DeMenezes was nominated in 2015 by Time and Fortune magazines for the Art and Technology Awards 2015.