recent activities
Bridge
(2025)
Johan Sandborg
Through a dialogue with an historical archive the project seeks to construct a fluid story of a confined landscape on the point of transformation. Through the negotiation of a multitude of images the project constructs a narrative that transcends the photographic vision as evidence, and questions whether vision can be more than comparable to the ground of an archaeological excavation. Through the use of the photographic essay as a method the intention is to try and interpret the changeability of the urban landscape.
As teleperformances do Perforum Desterro enquanto pesquisa artística
(2025)
Yara Guasque
Desenvolvimento de investigação artística em teleperformance entre os anos de 1999 e 2001, quando não existia uma taxinomia adequada.
As teleperformances do Perforum Desterro partiram da pesquisa da linguagem intermídia da telecomunicação síncrona. As teleperformances foram a prática artística e, paralelamente, subsidiaram o levantamento teórico sobre telepresença realizado como parte de meu doutoramento no Programa de Pós-graduação de Comunicação e Semiótica da PUCSP (COS).
O Perforum nasceu em São Paulo das ideias de Artur Matuck acerca dos “Colaboratórios de Mídia e Performance” a serem criados em diferentes cidades. No segundo semestre de 1998 cursei a disciplina Escrituras Eletrônicas, ministrada por Artur Matuck na pós-graduação da Escola de Comunicação e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo, ECA/USP. Entre minhas idas a São Paulo, passei a fazer parte do grupo de pesquisa da disciplina, antes mesmo de ingressar oficialmente como doutoranda em um Programa de Pós Graduação. Parte dos integrantes atuaram no início do projeto Perforum. Paula Perissinoto e Ricardo Barreto, fundadores no ano de 2000 do Festival Internacional de Linguagem Eletrônica, FILE, Tereza Labarrère, Otávio Donasci, o artista criador das videocriaturas, Edson Luiz de Oliveira, Cesar Barros, Suzana Moraes. Outros, como Daniel Seda, aderiram ao grupo mais tarde. O Perforum no ano de 1999 se bifurcou em Perforum Desterro, coordenado por Yara Guasque pela Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina, UDESC, e Perforum São Paulo coordenado por Artur Matuck pela USP. Os dois grupos desenvolviam colaborativamente scripts como proposição de interação e performance a distância.
Warping Protest: Increasing Inclusion and Widening Access to Art Activism Utilising Textiles
(2025)
Britta Fluevog
Art activism is powerful. Also known as activist art, protest art, visual activism, artivism and creative activism, it changes lives, situations and is and has been a powerful weapon across a whole spectrum of struggles for justice. Teresa Sanz & Beatriz Rodriguez-Labajos(2021) relay that art activism has the unique ability to bring cohesion and diverse peoples together and it can, as Zeynep Tufekci notes, change the participants (2017). As Steve Duncombe & Steve Lambert (2021) posit, traditional protesting such as marches or squats are no longer as important as they once were. As a result of my own lived experience in activist activities, I very much agree with Andrew Boyd & Dave Oswald Mitchell (2012) that the reason people use art activism is that it works, by enriching and improving protest.
In the past, when I lived in a metropolis and was not a parent, I used to be an activist. Now I no longer have immediate access to international headquarters at which to protest and I have to be concerned with being arrested, I am hindered from protesting. This project is an attempt to increase inclusion and widen access to art activism. By devising methods which include at least one of the following: that do not require on-site participation, that can take place outside the public gaze, that reduce the risk of arrest, that open up protest sites that are not “big targets”, that include remote locations, that involve irregular timing, my thesis aims to increase inclusion and widen access to art activism to those who are underserved by more mainstream methods of conducting art activism.
Textiles have unique properties that enable them to engage in subterfuge and speak loudly through care and thought(Bryan-Wilson, 2017). They have strong connotations of domesticity, the body and comfort that can be subverted within art activism to reference lack of this domestic warmth and protection(O’Neill, 2022). Being a slow form of art-making, they show care and thought, attention in the making, so that the messaging is reinforced through this intentionality in slow making.
recent publications
As long as the Sun lasts
(2025)
Erica Bardi
As Long as the Sun lasts was published in 2025 in form of artist book in collaboration with Chippendale Studio. It is a research about comets' behaviour and their capacity of switching on and off in relation to their proximity to the Sun, transforming themselves from cold asteroids into luminous objects with their comas and tails. So I started looking for comets in my daily reality, investigating a connection between me and them, building a narrative on several temporal and physical levels. I began by observing comets as cold, rocky objects until their transformation into luminous bodies, recreating them with objects from my everyday life, trying to identify with them during their journey towards the Sun.
Monochrome
(2025)
Julija Matic
Occupying a space whilst being one ourselves.
The materiality of the body coming in a state of symbiosis with the places it chooses to position itself and the objects it chooses to surround itself with.
Deconstruct and reconstruct. Remove parts of yourself, shed skin, cut your hair, change your weight, add others, change.
The transfiguration of one’s materic flesh, in the progressive becoming one with the environment that surrounds it.
The research begins from the consideration of the body taken as material, as a space, a meeting point between exteriority and interiority. The body that shares its own materiality with the places it finds itself in; they influence eachother.
Flows, gravity and chaos: an artistic investigation into atmospheric phenomena, matter and cosmology
(2025)
Martino Allegretti
This research explores the dialogue between the individual and natural phenomena through an artistic process that focuses on flow as a dynamic and generative element. The interaction between water, pigment and support-usually 50% or 100% cotton fibre paper-is configured as a field of visual investigation in which chance and physical forces play a decisive role. The work begins with the use of watercolour, the movement of which is influenced by both natural and industrial elements, such as stones or artificial structures, which alter the liquid's path and colour distribution.
A fundamental aspect of the research is the investigation of the relationship between the flow of water and atmospheric events. The direct intervention of rain, wind and humidity introduces unpredictable variables that transform the painting process into an open and constantly evolving experience. The idea of flow is thus configured as an essential artistic element, capable of reflecting the changing nature of matter and time.
From these experiments, the research extends to the study of gravity and its implications in the movement of pigment, drawing parallels with cosmological dynamics such as black holes and white holes. The action of the gravitational field and the tension between attraction and expulsion become visual metaphors that find expression in the creative process.
In order to structure and document this investigation, notebooks, notes and parallel experiments are used, which are fundamental tools for outlining a method capable of reconciling individual technique with the randomness of external factors. The aim is to find a balance between control and unpredictability, developing a visual language that restores the interaction between artistic gesture and natural forces.
In parallel, the project involves experimenting with materials other than paper, such as textiles, membranes and other porous or water-repellent surfaces. The introduction of these elements broadens the possibilities of interaction between water, pigment and support, generating new visual and tactile effects that amplify the dialogue between matter and physical phenomena.
Set in an international context of artistic and scientific exploration, this research proposes an interdisciplinary reflection on the relationship between art, nature and physics, redefining the role of the artist as interpreter of the forces that govern our universe.