Of art
and technology
9—19 May '24
Braga, Portugal

Surface

INDEX is a Biennial of Art and Technology, part of the program of the city of Braga as a UNESCO Creative City for the Media Arts. We are interested in exploring artistic practices and critical thinking in which technology assumes a central role.

The 2022 edition of INDEX will thematically explore the notion of Surface. Either as visual platforms or haptic entities, boundaries or interfaces, zones of emergence or extraction, Surfaces represent vital elements of both human and natural ecosystems. They also constitute powerful metaphors for artistic practices concerning technology, raising important issues that urgently need to be addressed.

Comprising exhibitions, performances, conferences and educational contents, Index presents a particular perspective on Art and Technology in Contemporary Art, placing the Surface at a central level.

Curators

Luís Fernandes

Performance Programme Curator
Exhibition Programme Cocurator

What exactly does the relationship between Art and Technology mean? What is the perspective on this relationship that we defend as our own?
Contemporaneity has brought an admirable set of technological techniques and devices that have reinvented our relationship with others and with the world, inevitably spilling over into the realm of Art, establishing with it a problematic relationship. The imbalance between technological proficiency and artistic relevance has fed dubious interpretations and generated fallacious expectations in the relationship between Art and Technology. This discrepancy is often translated into a tendency to polarize the two concepts and to consider superficial the artistic object that is sustained by a technological base.
It was precisely from the ideas of superficiality and surface that we set out to think the program of Index 2022, and in them we found a set of interesting perspectives. From visual to haptic elements, limits or interfaces, emergence or extraction zones, surfaces represent fundamental elements of human and natural ecosystems, as well as being powerful metaphors for technology-related artistic practices.
Paradoxically, the urgency of extracting ores such as lithium, and the consequent destruction of the respective natural ecosystems – as seems possible very close to us, in the region of Montalegre – is based on the incessant proliferation of technological apparatuses and on the promise of the use of green energy. Index proposes a discussion and reflection on this problematic, through its exhibition, performance and critical thinking dimensions.
But it also suggests something more. The generalization of the use of technological means in artistic practice has meant that some of the works that most excite us, and that we present here, are not considered works that fall within the domain of Art and Technology. Could this be the harbinger that the increasingly natural and recurrent use of advanced technology in artistic practice will dictate the end of this disciplinary segmentation?

Luís Fernandes

Luís Fernandes (1981) is a musician, sound artist and curator based in Braga, Portugal. His work is developed within the domains of musical composition, performance and art curating. He’s a teacher on Minho University’s Visual Arts degree and Media Art master degree.
Besides a consistent work in the exploratory electronic music domain, he has collaborated with a wide range of artists in the past years, including some key figures of modern portuguese music and international artists, such as Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Rhys Chatham and Toshimaru Nakamura.
He was guest lecturer at Berklee College of Music – Valencia, Elektra – Festival d’arts numériques (Montreal), Serralves Foundation, Off the page – The Wire, Universidade Católica Portuguesa and Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo (Porto).
Luis Fernandes is also the artistic director of Semibreve Festival, since 2011, gnration, since 2014, and Index – art and technology biennial, since 2019. He was part of the application committee of the Braga UNESCO Creative City for the Media Arts (2015-2017) and is responsible for the artistic coordination of the project. He’s part of the ENCAC (European Network for Contemporary Audiovisual Creation) and EMAP (European Media Art Platform) curator’s committee alongside representants of Ars Electronica (Linz), LABoral (Gijón), CDN Montpellier (Montpellier), Club Transmediale (Berlim) or Onassis Cultural Centre (Athens). He has commissioned works to artists including Phill Niblock, Mark Fell, Stephan Mathieu, Ryoichi Kurokawa, Tarik Barri, Hans- Joachim Roedelius, Jim O’Rourke, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Sarah Davachi, AGF e Zimoun.

Liliana Coutinho

Conference Programme Curator

A surface like a membrane, porous, vibrating, mobile, a permeable and malleable contact space, of transition between different areas, revealing relationships, different modes of existence and perception: this was the understanding of surface that guided the design of the route we take in this program of conferences and talks. Surfaces where imaginaries, poetics, aesthetic propositions with technology intersect, but also with a specific context that is both local and takes us to meet problems with a historical and planetary dimension, which are those involved in the current plans for lithium extraction in northern Portugal, a fundamental mineral for the technological transition considered indispensable to face the current context of climate change. At this juncture, we will appeal for consideration that, beyond technologies, we urgently need to reactivate our capacity to imagine together.
To do so, we will go through meetings that will invite us to reflect about the responsibility of our imagination, when we design technologies and bring into the world objects that, even when they appear with a specific function, express us in our relationship with others, both with humans and with what is not human, but planetary, thus contributing to a certain state of the world. We will listen to how artists participating in INDEX 2022 bring the question of surface into their work, how they relate to aesthetic, but also geopolitical, economic and philosophical issues, implicated in their projects and in the conditions of production of their paths. We will find social and environmental movements and political scientists. Computer engineering and artificial intelligence will meet aesthetics. Philosophy will appear several times, inviting us to amplify our understanding of the notion of surface, but also to imagine differently, to conceive a world where it is no longer indispensable to drill, to extract, to “go deep” in order to bring forth the energies we need to live. We will consider the unexplored powers of the surface, we will turn representations about the stability of the places where we live upside down, and we will also appeal to magic, not against reality, but as a way to preserve its possibility, to restore its movement and, to us, the ability to contribute to the weaving of possible worlds to inhabit.

Liliana Coutinho

Liliana Coutinho (Lisbon, 1977) is a curator and programmer of Debates and Conferences at Culturgest, in Lisbon. Doctor in Aesthetics and Art Sciences by Univ. Paris 1, she is a researcher at the I.H.C. – FCSH/UNL. She co-edited the book Paisagens Imprevistas (2020) dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the Festival Materiais Diversos, and published, among others, “The delicate thread of the common”, in André Guedes, Essays for an anthology, Kunsthalle Lissabon and Cura Books, 2016; “L’objet: ni un fétiche ni une preuve, mais un don pour la performance”, in Performance Vie d’Archive, Les presses du réel, 2014; “The Choir, again”, in Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker in Lisbon, INCM, 2013; “On the utility of a universal’s fiction”, in Gimme Shelter: Global Discourses In Aesthetics. Amsterdam University Press, 2013; “Hearing our pathway – A Sensous Walk”, in Mobility and Fantasy in Visual Culture, London: Routledge, 2013. She was Head of Education at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art and, as a researcher and curator, she collaborated with Teatro Municipal Maria Matos, CAM – Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, MAC Serralves, Le Plateau (Paris), Artistas Unidos and Atelier Re.Al She is a visiting professor at the Post-Graduate Course in Contemporary Art Curatorship, at FCSH/UNL.

Mariana Pestana

Exhibition Programme Curator

The earth’s surface is a contested liminal space. Not only in Alto Minho, where lithium prospection generates controversy, but above the whole earth’s surface, natural zones are shredded in various properties, regardless of the liquid, sandy, green or arid state of the matter that covers it. The potential extraction of the resources that lie beneath these zones justifies gestures of drilling, breaking and blasting the surface in order to access its former.
The sea, the land, the rocks, and even the air, which ideally would be goods shared by all humankind, are in fact marked by legal and proprietary conceptions. These concepts are materialized in possession contracts, exploration licenses, and management strategies of governmental or private territories. They expropriate materials from any agency or rights, from relationships of solidarity between parties. And ways of life, working conditions, ecological balances of those who live or work in those territories are altered. The surface is, above all, a geopolitical border between diverse conceptions of development.
Based on the thought of philosopher Michael Marder, who invites us to develop superficial (sensitive, solar) knowledge as an alternative to the deep (rational, nuclear) knowledge that dominates Western thought, this series of projects calls into question the ontological and mineral richness of exploration in depth, and proposes other visions of development through superficial and sensitive investigation. It exposes liminal surfaces, speculative boundaries, and politicized matter-wood, copper, lithium, water, diamonds, platinum, and data. It offers perspectives on how we can relate to matter in the future, no longer as a resource devoid of subjectivity, but as a fundamental ally in a new more-than-human ecological paradigm.

Mariana Pestana

Mariana Pestana works and lives in Lisbon. She is an architect, researcher and curator specialized in the field of contemporary design and architecture. Her work materializes in cultural programmes that take the form of exhibitions, events, conferences, installations and publications. Mariana holds a PhD in Architectural Design from the Bartlett School of Architecture (2019), an MA in Narrative Environments from Central Saint Martins, UAL (with Calouste Gulbenkian Scholarship 2010) and is formed in Architecture from FAUP, University of Porto (2006).
She is co-founder and director of The Decorators, an interdisciplinary studio that makes collaborative projects ranging from furniture to buildings, with the aim to expand notions of place, community and commensality (eating together).
Mariana was the curator of the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial titled Empathy Revisited: designs for more than one (2020-21), which explored interpersonal and interspecies solidarity through public space interventions, research commissions and a film series. Previously, Mariana curated Fiction Practice, a workshop programme and publication (Onomatopee, 2020) for the Porto Design Biennial and co-curated the exhibition series Eco-Visionaries, (MAAT, Lisbon, Matadero, Madrid and Royal Academy, London). Between 2015 and 2018 she worked as a curator at the Department of Architecture, Design and Digital at the Victoria and Albert Museum where she co-curated The Future Starts Here (V&A, 2018) and This Time Tomorrow (Davos, 2016). Having lectured at Central Saint Martins (2011-14) and Chelsea College of Arts (2012-15) among other universities, Mariana is currently an Invited Assistant Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon.

Info

Locations, Tickets, Exhibition schedules, Contacts

Info

Theatro Circo

Av. da Liberdade, 697, 4710-251 Braga
253 203 800
www.theatrocirco.com
Monday to Saturday: 14:30-18:30
Open on Sundays 15 and 22 May: 14:00-17:00

gnration

Praça Conde de Agrolongo, 123, 4700-312 Braga
253 142 200
www.gnration.pt
Monday to Friday: 09:30‐18:30
Saturday: 10:00‐13:00, 14:00‐18:30
Open on Sundays 15 and 22 May: 14:00-17:00

Mosteiro de Tibães

Rua do Mosteiro, 59, 4700-565 Mire de Tibães, Braga
253 622 670
www.mosteirodetibaes.gov.pt
Tuesday to Sunday: 10:00-19:00
15, 21 and 22 May with free access

Museu Nogueira da Silva

Avenida Central, 61, 4710-228 Braga
253 601 275
www.mns.uminho.pt
From Tuesday to Friday: 10:00-12:30, 14:00-18:30
Saturday: 14:00-18:30

Museu dos Biscainhos

Rua dos Biscainhos, 4700-415 Braga
253 204 650
www.museudosbiscainhos.gov.pt
From Tuesday to Sunday: 10:00-12:30, 14:00-17:30

Salão Medieval Reitoria da Universidade do Minho

Largo do Paço, 4704-553 Braga
253 601 100
www.uminho.pt
From Monday to Friday: 10:00-18:00
Open 14, 15, 21 and 22 May: 14:00-17:00

Exhibition

Free Admission

Conference

Free Admission

Performance

12.05.2022
Ryoichi Kurokawa
7 Euros
13.05.2022
France Jobin & Markus Heckmann

Piece Warnecke + Matthew Biederman + Supernova Ensemble
7 Euros
14.05.2022
Florian Hecker
7 Euros
20.05.2022
João Martinho Moura
Dust Devices & berru
7 Euros
21.05.2022
People Like Us
7 Euros
22.05.2022
ODE + Pedro Augusto + Mariana Vilanova
Free Admission

Ticket to all the performances

25 euros

Tickets for Performance programme on sale at

Theatro Circo, gnration and BOL points of sale

Braga Media Arts
General Direction

Cláudia Leite

Braga Media Arts
Executive Coordination

Joana Miranda

General and Artistic Direction

Luís Fernandes

Exhibition Programme

Mariana Pestana
Luís Fernandes

Performance Programme

Luís Fernandes

Conference Programme

Liliana Coutinho

Educational Programme

Circuito – Serviço Educativo Braga Media Arts
Sara Borges

Production Coordinator

Hugo Loureiro

Production

Mauro Rodrigues
Simone Almeida
Rui Manuel Vieira
Marta Lima
Tiago Lopes
Duarte Araújo

Communication

Ilídio Marques

Communication Assistance

Diogo Rodrigues
Ana Maria Dinis

Press

This is Ground Control

Design and Website

united by

Photography

Adriano Ferreira Borges

Video

Neva Films

Wonda Studio

Mediation

Joana Patrão

Financial Management

Teatro Circo de Braga, EM SA