No Lodo

Synopsis

The genesis of the project “No Lodo” (In the sludge) was the discovery of family albums in slide format, submerged in sludge after two flash floods. The speed with which the narratives present in the slides were lost was surprising and raised many questions: What do we do with these images now? The destruction created new images with new narratives and possibilities, but what are we really talking about when we speak of “destruction as creation” or “found object (ready-made)”? What relationship exists between these and our lives, or our habits in an increasingly digital but also increasingly disposable society? Can everything disappear in an instant? What is the place of our history and our memories? At a time when our collective memory is at such risk of being subverted, this is a project that makes us think. It is an artistic project but also an object for reflection. We understand that “No Lodo” meets the purpose of questioning and, in doing so, stimulating debate, critical thinking and, consequently, more active participation in society.

From these partially or totally corrupted images, Graça Santos and João Godinho develop a curation and editing work of the found material, proposing new visual and sound narratives that result in the publication of a photographic image book and the creation of a Radio-Art Performance, both entitled “No Lodo”, thus exploring the balance between narrative-image and matter-image, and their correspondence in the sound dimension, narrative-sound and matter-sound.

The residency at Sardanisca was a time for reflection on these questions, looking at the slides slowly and re-organize them into various narrative and artistic possibilities. In the future, we intend to bring the “No Lodo” project back to Sardanisca, in the format of creative workshops around the ideas of “Destruction as a creation tool” and “Found object / Ready made”, through the use of material from local photographic archives found in different formats, working on their narrative and plastic aspects, but also with other proposals after the launch of the book and the Radio-Art performance.

Team

Graça Santos (Oeiras, 1975), visual artist and bookseller, studied sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon (FBAUL) and painting at the School of Art and Design of Caldas da Rainha (ESAD CR), between 2002 and 2006. In 2023 she completed, also at FBAUL, the postgraduate course in Illustration and Visual Narrative. She is co-founder of the collective “Fitacola Collage” (2005) and founder of the project “Descolagem” (2021), both focused on analog collage, a technique in which she specialized. Over the years she has collaborated with several projects nationally such as “Arquitecturas Film Festival”, “LPP”, “Jornal Mapa”, “Laboratório d’Estórias”, among others, and also in several international collage projects such as “Paris Collage Collective”, “Contemporary Collage Magazine”, or “Paris Collage Festival” where she represented Portugal in 2024. Her work has been presented in several awards and exhibitions, notably the Guimarães Illustration Biennial, Guimarães Noc Noc Arts Festival, Festa do Avante Plastic Arts Biennial, Galeria Monumental Pequenos Formatos, Arte + Feminismo Editing Marathon, Atelier Open Amsterdam. www.descolagem.pt

João Godinho (Lisbon, 1976), composer with his work presented and awarded nationally and internationally, whose writing, in addition to classical music, encompasses aesthetics such as jazz, film music, fado and traditional Portuguese music. Among the multiple partnerships he is developing, the regular collaboration with pianist Joana Gama stands out, particularly in projects such as “Nocturno”, “As árvores não têm pernas para andar” and “Pássaros e Cogumelos”. In 2019 he premiered, at the Konzerthaus in Berlin and at the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon, the piece Alcance, for 5 Soloists and Symphony Orchestra (Jovem Orquestra Portuguesa, cond. Pedro Carneiro), a commission from OCPsolidária in partnership with CERCI-Oeiras, having in this context been awarded the European Composer Award 2019. Between 2007 and 2011 he worked at the Centro Cultural de Belém, first as press advisor and later as programmer in the area of music. He regularly collaborates with Rádio Antena 2, being the author and host of the programmes Fora de Formato (2019), Pausa para Dançar (2020-2022) and Quem canta assim (since 2023). In 2024 he composed music and sound design for the feature film Pai Nosso – Os últimos dias de Salazar, directed by José Filipe Costa.