Spring Seminar and Summer School on Art & Cinema 2024

Porto Summer School on Art & Cinema 2024: June 17–21
It Wasn’t Cabral: Reviewing Historical Silences and Omissions. Guests: Dino D’Santiago, Flavio Gomes, Jaime Lauriano, Keila Serruya Sankofa, Lilia Schwarcz, MC Carol, Sonia Gomes and Welket Bungué. Curators: Lilia Schwarcz, Nuno Crespo and Daniel Ribas.

Wrapping up the annual program of conferences, concerts, exhibitions and performances, the Summer School returns to the School of Arts in June 2024. The title is inspired by a song by MC Carol in which the singer, in a poetic gesture, draws attention to the need to change the historical narrative of the construction of Brazil: “Professor, I’m sorry / but I’m going to say / this year at school / things are going to change / nothing against you / don’t get me wrong / who discovered Brazil / it wasn’t Cabral.”

This program is not about Brazil, but about the need to think critically about history and stories, exploring how a significant number of contemporary artists have contributed to changing the paradigms of narrative construction that define us as human beings belonging to communities with different artistic, cultural and spiritual expressions. It is precisely in order to think about the silences and omissions that persist in our discourses that we have brought together diverse artists, filmmakers, activists and intellectuals.

The ambition of this program is to build a space for debate where together we can think about historical narratives and the way in which artists from different geographies and cultures have been key drivers in broadening and transforming official history. It’s not about revising or rewriting history(s), but thinking about how other subjects, other bodies, other objects can be added to that history(s) so that we can progressively build a broader and more diverse picture of the world, its inhabitants and its processes of transformation. 

Participant applications: May 15, 2024. Detailed info here. 

Call for workshops: Following the main guidelines for this year’s Summer School, we invite artists, scholars and collectives to submit a proposal for a three hours workshop (deadline: April 30) to take place during the mornings of the School. Detailed info here.

A joint initiative: School of Arts, Universidade Católica Portuguesa; CITAR—Research Centre for Science and Technology of the Arts;​ University of São Paulo and the Princeton University. With the support the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).

Spring seminar 2024 History(ies) of Art: May 8–10
Keynote speakers and artist talks: Joana Cunha Leal, Erika Balsom, Rosângela Rennó, Cyril Schäublin and more TBC. Organizing committee: Daniel Ribas, Luiz Camillo Osorio, Nuno Crespo and Pedro Duarte.

At the end of the 20th century, Jean-Luc Godard created his Histoire(s) du cinéma. The French filmmaker’s work explained, through this plural in parentheses, that it would no longer be possible to think of cinema in a single history. There were several histories. It thus defined the tone of a thought for art, especially in the 21st century, which this Spring Seminar will investigate: plurality in the relationship with history. 

The seminar’s objective is to think about the historicity of works of art after the end of traditions that intended, in a totalising way, to fix their meaning chronologically. It is now a question of examining strategies for visually articulating a subterranean memory in a permanent reconstruction process. As opposed to rejecting history, the question arises about the possibilities of its critical updating. What can be found in the ruins of the past? Just melancholy? Or does the energy of the present release from them (as Benjamin thought)? And what does the present do to these ruins that can still be heard? 

Call for papers: February 26, 2024. Detailed info here.

A joint initiative: School of Arts, Universidade Católica Portuguesa; CITAR—Research Centre for Science and Technology of the Arts; PUC—Rio; CAPES Print; Grupo de Arte, Autonomia e Política. With the support the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).