The opening session of Fórum do Futuro will present one of the most respected writers of our time - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – whose works have been translated into over thirty languages and who has been considered by Time magazine to be one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World”. Known for the courage, originality, and assertiveness with which she addresses topics such as blackness and feminism in her works, the author will talk about how racism still functions today from a single, latent, and dangerous discourse. What are the social implications of its inevitable internalisation?

The author asserts she only began to feel black when she emigrated from Nigeria to the United States at the age of 19 and was confronted with the American perception of Africa - a paternalistic and linear view of catastrophe, poverty, and ignorance - that initially led her to refuse to identify herself as black. In this conversation, moderated by Joana Gorjão Henriques – a reputed journalist and author of books focusing on issues related to racism and human rights – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will discuss the long process of rediscovering her identity and culture, and the importance of literary works by American and African black authors to understand the roots of racist stereotypes in America. Defending the essential importance of multiple narratives, Adichie considers that writing should always have a social function – stories can undermine the dignity of a people but also have the power to repair broken dignity.

Simultaneous interpretation

RANT is a multidisciplinary performance that results from a collaboration between the acclaimed choreographer and artist Ralph Lemon and Kevin Beasley – considered to be one of the most exciting artists in the new American contemporary art scene. On the basis of this year’s performance encounter during Beasley’s exhibition in the Whitney Museum, Kevin Beasley: A view of a landscape, the two artists were invited by the Fórum do Futuro’s curators to develop a new project, created specifically for this context and for the brutalist space of the Palácio dos Correios.

In this work, the performance focuses on many of the transversal concepts underlying this edition, such as extraction, alterity and body politics. RANT will be a raw and ephemeral cultural experience of sound, movement and body, that questions the past, present and more specifically explores “the American black (brown) bodyness, its generational evolution (wreckage), historical activation and baggage (debate), and possible future evolution”.

Performers: SAMITA SINHA, DWAYNE BROWN, MARIAMA NOGUERA-DEVERS, STANLEY GAMBUCCI, DARRELL JONES

Defending a project of “indigenisation of life”, the artist Ernesto Neto creates great multisensory environments through his works, transforming the public sense of art, inviting the viewer to take an active part in a harmonious space, open to spirituality and merging with the expression of nature. This is also a political gesture that rejects the Western artistic regime, dominated by money. In his words, “art is always spiritual and political (...), it guides and reflects our movement on earth. The spiritual being is the one who looks after himself, the politician is the one who looks after us. Between them, art sings, dances, plays, prays, acts.”

In this conversation, moderated by Miguel Leal, a visual artist and Professor at Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto, Ernesto Neto will talk about how all these aspects are interconnected. His artistic practice explores the cosmology of indigenous peoples, where he finds the answers to environmental, economic and spiritual problems that threaten the present and future. Ernesto Neto guarantees that there is an urgent need for the “children of the earth, rivers, plants, apples, snakes, clouds”, to look after the health of our planet: “Don’t turn your back on the life of da da dada. I lived có có có. If you want the egg, look after the chicken, pet her, cherish our shared heart. Politics is spiritual. Politics wants light. Gold doesn't heal people. Only the sun brings lights, and sings and dances, and attracts water and drinks light. It transpires, transpires art, and the wind speaks, fuuuuu fuuuuu and the water dreams xiiiiiii gló gló gló”.

Establishing a bridge between the programme of Fórum do Futuro and that of the Galeria Municipal do Porto, in the framework of the exhibition Estar vivo é o contrário de estar morto, commissioned by Guilherme Blanc and Luísa Saraiva, Calixto Neto presents the performance oh!rage, a storm (in French, orage) based on images, references, and states that aim to embody anger.

Neto’s artistic practice focuses on peripheral dances, the invisibility of minorities, and representation of the black body, combining elements of afropunk and afrofuturism with postcolonial studies and emancipation discourses. In oh!rage we discover a diasporic body that claims a dance in a state of celebration, shaking hips, bouncing, striking the ground with an impalpable, ritualistic, ancestral power of communication. Passing through the shadows, through extravagance and laziness, oh!rage dances and navigates between a sense of lament, revolt, protest, and celebration. The black body and its experience in the world (as well as in the art world) is used as a trigger for questions and proposals. Calixto Neto dances to fail and triumph, in response to the question: can the subaltern body dance?

CHOREOGRAPHY AND PERFORMANCE Calixto Neto
LIGHTING DESIGN Eduardo Abdala
SOUND CREATION Charlotte Boisselier
SOUND TECHNICIAN Fábio Ferreira
EXTERNAL VIEWS: Carolina Campos, Isabela Fernandes Santana, Marcelo Sena

PARTNERS:
EXECUTIVE PRODUCTION: Météores
COPRODUCTION: CND CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA DANSE, LA PLACE DE LA DANSE – CDCN TOULOUSE/OCCITANIE
WITH THE SUPPORT OF DRAC ÎLE DE FRANCE AS PART OF THE PROJECT AID

We are currently experiencing one of the darkest periods in Brazilian history, with the death of the indigenous leader, Emyra Wajãpi, rampant deforestation and devastating fires in the Amazon. Bolsonaro seems to have the fate of the world's largest rainforest in his hands, as indigenous peoples are once again being driven from their lands. Being an indigenous person is today synonymous with resistance. How can people continue to resist?

The Fórum do Futuro invites two leading figures in the fight for indigenous rights and protection of the Amazon rainforest to take part in this conversation: Sônia Guajajara, currently one of the most prominent indigenous leaders and environmental activists – a member of the UN Human Rights Council and the first indigenous woman to run for vice-president on the presidential elections in Brazil – and visual artist Ernesto Neto, whose artistic practice has focused on the importance of a project of indigenisation. In this debate moderated by the artist Rita Natálio, they will discuss how it is essential for the voice of indigenous peoples to be heard and to play an active role in governance models. The Earth is the spirit and body of indigenous people – they have the knowledge to heal the forest and advance the struggle for a healthy planet. One glimmer of hope is the fact that the indigenous women's movement has grown exponentially over the past decade. Joênia Wapichan was the first indigenous woman to be elected a federal MP, and Nara Baré was the first woman to be elected Coordinator of COIAB (Coordination of the Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon).

The European and American sense of entitlement and dominance of history pivots on the idea that theirs are the stories that matter. The artist and essayist Naeem Mohaiemen was born in London, the son of Bengali parents, and grew up in the newly independent Bangladesh. In his artistic practice - which combines essays, installations, fiction films, and documentaries – he is inspired by remaking stories, which often address peripheral narratives, failed socialist utopias and processes of decolonisation.

In this artist talk, moderated by the writer, thinker and cultural critic, Shumon Basar, Naeem Mohaiemen, who was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2018, will talk about how he grew up, just like any other child in Bangladesh, learning Bangla as a form of heritage and duty, while English was contraband and escape. Somewhere along the way, English became a proxy for a tortured idea of modernity. In his work, there is a constant, particularly complex, relationship between anthropology, history, and the moving image. His films are in English, but some criticise this option because they think it means Mohaiemen accepts the conditions that capital imposes on the circulation of culture: above all, efficiency. The English language, which underpins the flows of culture, melds with the triumphalism of capitalism as world culture. On the other side are the willing fields: cities and peoples, hungry to learn this culture. The artist states: “We think of ourselves as part of a “we” because the last century’s project was of monoculture.”

Fiesta Warinwa grew up in Equatoria, a region of South Sudan, whose abundant wildlife was devastated during the Civil War. This made her realise the urgent need for environmental preservation, and she, therefore, began to study wildlife management and conservation. With a truly unique track record, she began her career as an intern at the African Wildlife Foundation and is now its Director of Policy Engagement. At Fórum do Futuro, she will talk about the urgent need for conservation in a changing Africa, where currently the biggest threats to its wildlife, resulting from a rapidly growing population and economic aspirations, are unplanned agriculture, development of infrastructures, and extraction of natural resources. The situation is aggravated by externalities, such as illegal wildlife trade and climate change. How can we ensure successful conservation? Is this contradictory to the continent’s economic development?

The solution will depend on real changes on the ground, within government and in public perception. It is necessary to redefine the understanding of prosperity on the continent to include wildlife and wildlands. In conversation with Filipa Ramos, Editor-in-Chief of art-agenda (e-flux) and curator of this edition of Fórum do Futuro, Warinwa will present innovative approaches involving investors, policymakers, and development agencies to draw up mechanisms that ensure protection of biodiversity and sustainable development, enabling the African continent to capitalise on opportunities in the sector that support conservation, while at the same time contributing to the continent’s development.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past," said the writer William Faulkner. And Danny Glover knows this to be a fact. With a career spanning over thirty years in film and television, Glover has distinguished himself as one of the most consummate actors of his generation, in films such as The Colour Purple or Lethal Weapon. However, it is perhaps off-screen where Glover's most important role has been played – as a humanitarian. Glover recently addressed the US Congress on the “moral, democratic and economic imperative” of instituting compensation for centuries of slavery, arguing that it is essential to fight for justice in this historic arena.

Currently serving as a UNICEF Ambassador, Glover is highly respected for his philanthropic actions and activism with various communities, focusing on questions of reparations, eradication of poverty, disease, and economic development in Africa, Latin America and, the Caribbean. Alongside John Akomfrah – artist, writer, director and one of the curators of Fórum do Futuro – Danny Glover will discuss social justice, diversity, activism, and global citizenship, drawing on his personal experience to nurture these contemporary issues and offer practical wisdom to new generations on building peace, unity, and democracy across racial, ethnic, and gender lines.

Simultaneous interpretation

The Fever Hand is a performance lecture inspired by yellow fever’s "come back" in South America. This old disease is deeply connected to the colonial sugar plantations that created the perfect environment for aedes aegypti, the carrier mosquito imported from the African continent by the European slave ships to the Americas. Is it a coincidence that this return coincides with Bolsonaro's rise to power?

The Brazilian artist Vivian Caccuri, known for intersecting music and visual arts in her artistic practice, uses scientific studies on epidemiology and ecology as the background for envisioning and discussing links between sugar cane, yellow fever, Catholicism, how music reflected colonial interactions, and the consequences for new South American bodies. In the form of a “historical hallucination”, in The Fever Hand, Vivian Caccuri makes use of a music piece composed by herself on a large church-style pipe-organ, drawings, historical images, video, sounds and her voice to tell this semi-fictional story.

After the performance lecture the artist will talk with Rita Castro Neves, visual artist, curator and Professor at Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto.

In all kinds of weather, the ships came and went, in each other’s wake, from Portugal and other European countries to Africa and then to America, on the transatlantic slave route. Five hundred years of voyages of theft, pillage, and bondage. Today ships set sail from Zlitene and Tripoli, overcrowded with migrants, and often sink before reaching the European coast.

The writer and York University Professor, Christina Sharpe, will draw from her book, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, to discuss the artistic, visual and everyday representations of black life. Sharpe has developed a seminal work, using a “black cultural archive” to position the concept of blackness at the centre of contemporary theory. Using multiple meanings of the word, 'wake' – the path behind a ship, keeping watch with the dead, coming to consciousness – Sharpe outlines what survives, despite persistent violence and negation. The conversation will be moderated by the sociologist and researcher Cristina Roldão. In this "weather", that pursues contemporary black life in the diaspora, breathing is cut – literally and metaphorically. In Frantz Fanon’s words, "we revolt simply because we can no longer breathe." It is urgent to look at our history (and the present day situation) with another gaze – an ethics of seeing filled with care and solidarity against the violence of abstraction. Based on this perspective and formulating places of artistic production, resistance, consciousness, and possibility for living in diaspora, Christina Sharpe offers a way forward

Simultaneous Interpretation

Known for her ritual dance music, with influences such as Nina Simone, Grace Jones, Missy Elliott or Kate Bush, Lafawndah has been drawing worldwide attention for her futuristic approach to pop and electronics. This will be her first performance in Porto. The path to her current incarnation as a pop polymath has been as unpredictable as her style of composition, with influences, approaches, and ideologies that intentionally and self-proclaimedly defy categorisations of geography or gender. Her career has already included a number of highlights and collaborations, such as her acclaimed performance with Tirzah and Kelsey Lu at London’s South Bank or work with Japanese ambient music legend, Midori Takara, at the Barbican.

At the Casa da Música she will present her first album, Ancestor Boy (2019), which reveals a pop that is neither imperial nor local, but exudes an emancipatory spirit of movements and ideas and reveals her as an artist without limits of range, scale and intensity. Her passage through musical and artistic circles has been defined by a freedom of tone, a surrealistic sense of space and a secure manipulation of formal and psychological tension.

The work of multi-award-winning artist Wu Tsang frequently combines documentary and fiction to discuss issues of gender and ethnicity, portraying a sometimes elusive world, centred on queer and trans culture. In this performative artist talk, Tsang will discuss the need to explore hidden histories and marginalised narratives, such as her latest film One Emerging from a Point of View, focusing on the migrant crisis, that was developed in collaboration with the protagonists – a young transgender refugee and a photojournalist. The media, especially in Europe, have given enormous coverage to this subject in recent years, but always from a Western perspective, in which the migrant has no voice or individual identity. Can art reverse this crisis of representation?

Wu Tsang uses the collaboration and fusion of artistic practices (performance, installation and visual arts) as a strategy of access to what she calls in-betweenness, an intermediate state where Tsang consciously deposits gestures, words and voices of others, enhancing multiple perspectives. In One Emerging from a Point of View, set on the Greek island of Lesvos, Tsang uses two overlapping projections to reimagine parallel narratives and create a story about the island and the phenomenon of migration where times and spaces blend. In conversation with Chus Martínez, curator, art historian, writer and director of the Art Institute of the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Tsang will explain how she situates herself between the ‘crisis of image’ and the 'image of crisis’, in an ongoing investigation of a “third” space of visual entanglement that is created by the overlap, and how she uses choreography to interrogate the camera.

We are constantly hearing that humans face an epochal moment – that, if we are not at the end, we are inching close. And it’s not just one sort of ending. For many people, human beings and their earth seem to be close to many modes of ending. We are hearing conversations about the end of the EU, the end of migrants’ rights and of liberal democracy, the end of gender, sexual, and racial justice; the end of the human; the end of the planet. So what’s next?

Anthropologist and filmmaker, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, one of the foremost thinkers in contemporary anthropology and gender studies, in a conversation moderated by Guilherme Blanc – director for Contemporary Art and Film of Ágora, E.M. and one of the curators for this year’s edition of Fórum do Futuro – will discuss how all the dreams that the West has invented for itself seem to have reached a catastrophic epilogue. What would politics and affects appear, however, if rather than a western analytics of finitude (a philosophy of the end) we developed a social theory with those who have been living after the end? In this talk Povinelli will situate such a social theory in Australian Indigenous worlds, using the film The Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland by the Karrabing Film Collective, an indigenous film and video collective based in Australia’s Northern Territory, which she co-founded and which uses filmmaking and installation as a form of resistance and self-organisation.

The economy of today looks very different from the economy of 20, 200, or 500 years ago. But the methods of appropriation of other people’s resources and wealth, to become rich, are the same. The patterns are repeated. Today’s global economy is based on the reinvention of the project of colonisation. What are the similarities and differences between the old and new colonisation processes?

The scientist and environmental activist, Vandana Shiva, is one of the world's leading figures in the defence of sustainability and biodiversity. Over recent decades she has challenged multinational corporations, such as Monsanto, and their neoliberal policies on agriculture, which she considers to be the main agents in the ongoing recolonisation process. Identified by Time as an environmental "hero", Shiva analyses the global disruption of cultural, social, economic, and political processes, that began with the “discovery” of America, to discuss the parallels between past and present. What the Papal Bull was to colonisation in the 15th century, Free Trade agreements are to the 21st century; and what property rights to stolen land were in the first colonisation, IPRs to stolen knowledge and stolen seeds are to the current recolonisation. In this conversation, moderated by Shumon Basar, Vandana Shiva will also talk about what is “new” in this colonial project: the creation of a new religion, based on the rise of tools – technology and money – that aim to conquer our biodiversity, food, health, bodies and minds through new property rights, dependencies, empires and dictatorships.

Simultaneous interpretation

The artist and performer Eszter Salamon, winner of this year’s prestigious Evens Art Prize, presents the exhibition-performance Lores & Praxes (rituals of transformation), from her MONUMENT series, which explores the relations between choreography and history. In this work, the choreographer commences with a new premise, focusing on differences rather than singularities, to reduce divisions and weave another future. Salamon asks: “What if practicing multiple modes of relating to the world could allow the emancipation from the inability to dream other worlds than those intended to be inhabited? Can utopia be reshaped not as an imaginary locality but as a space of movement? And what are the hard and soft borders to be bypassed? Languages, walls, fantasies of origins?”

Presented over two consecutive days, Lores & Praxes features ten dancers (from Costa Rica, England, Hungary, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Africa, and Portugal) who take part in a performative transformation of war dances and dances of resistance from four continents. As they explore ancient dance rituals the dancers develop gestures of resistance for a possible new, unknown world, where there is the possibility of reversing the historic flow of migration of knowledge. The choreographer raises various questions, such as: “Are they themselves shaped by stories of domination and migration? If so, what can notions such as locality and foreignness mean in this context?”


Artistic direction: Eszter Salamon
Artistic collaboration: Boglárka Börcsök
Developed with and performed by: Liza Baliasnaja, Amanda Barrio Charmelo, Sidney Barnes, Mario Barrantes Espinoza, Boglárka Borcsok, Stefan Govaert, João Martins, Sara Tan, Vânia Vaz, Tiran Willemse
Production: Elodie Perrin / Studio E.S., Alexandra Wellensiek / Botschaft GbR
Coproduction: Internationales Sommerfestival Kampnagel (Hamburg) in cooperation with Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Tanz im August / HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin) in cooperation with KINDL Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels)
With the support of: DRAC - Regional Agency of Cultural Affairs in Paris, The French Ministry of Culture and Communication and Hauptstadtkulturfonds (Berlin)

Thanks to: Seloua Luste Boulbina, Asad Raza, Boghossian Foundation - Villa Empain. The development of one of the phases of this project has been supported by PACT Zollverein (Essen), P.A.R.T.S. and NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ (NPN), Coproduction Fund for Dance

The exhibition dates in Porto are supported by the NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ International Guest Performance Fund for Dance, which is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

A struggle has emerged over the past two years between state authorities and a young generation of cultural producers, focusing on an important question: to what extent can those who work outside state-run institutions operate freely in the Cuban public sphere?

Coco Fusco, a Cuban-American multidisciplinary artist and writer, has explored topics such as gender politics, identity, ethnicity, and power in her work, through multimedia productions and performances with active viewer involvement, as well as through her multi-award-winning literary works that criticise colonialism, globalism and cultural stereotypes. In this conversation, moderated by contemporary art theorist and critic, professor Eduarda Neves, Fusco will discuss the recent clashes between the Cuban art community and the Cuban government, which recently prevented her from entering the country, days before the start of the Havana Biennale. Ongoing repression of independent activities reached a peak in 2018, with the announcement of new legislation that effectively criminalises cultural expression generated without prior authorisation from the state. Additional legislation has been introduced to control independent film production, internet use, and journalism, in 2019. These governmental measures have met with the most open and widespread protest by Cuban citizens to have occurred in Cuba for decades – how long can the government continue to oppress independent artistic creation using the unbearable weight of utopia?

With a career spanning more than three decades, spent between museums and the cinema, the artist, director, and cinematographer Arthur Jafa is one of the central figures of contemporary American culture, having worked with the likes of Spike Lee, Beyoncé, and Jay-Z. His work has examined the representation of black people, through images, movement, form, and sound, questioning the universal and specific discourses about being black. There is a recurring question in his work: How can visual media faithfully convey the intrinsic "power, beauty, and alienation" of certain forms of black music in US culture?

Arthur Jafa won the Golden Lion for best artist at this year’s Venice Biennale. In this conversation, moderated by the director of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Philippe Vergne, Jafa will talk about how he finds a visual correspondence in his work of black music, which he calls "black visual intonation". The frame rates of the photos and videos on-screen are quickly manipulated to highlight the subtleties of appearance, expression, emotion, and movement, enabling the artist to transmit certain feelings and aural sensations. The artist will also talk about the status of black artists in contemporary art and pop culture, and will argue that black cultural production is still constantly in “free fall” from a spiritual and emotional place that is laden with pain, feelings of loss and lack of resources.

Simultaneous interpretation

The artist and performer Eszter Salamon, winner of this year’s prestigious Evens Art Prize, presents the exhibition-performance Lores & Praxes (rituals of transformation), from her MONUMENT series, which explores the relations between choreography and history. In this work, the choreographer commences with a new premise, focusing on differences rather than singularities, to reduce divisions and weave another future. Salamon asks: “What if practicing multiple modes of relating to the world could allow the emancipation from the inability to dream other worlds than those intended to be inhabited? Can utopia be reshaped not as an imaginary locality but as a space of movement? And what are the hard and soft borders to be bypassed? Languages, walls, fantasies of origins?”


Presented over two consecutive days, Lores & Praxes features ten performers (from Costa Rica, England, Hungary, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Africa, and Portugal) who take part in a performative transformation of war dances and dances of resistance from four continents. As they explore ancient dance rituals the dancers develop gestures of resistance for a possible new, unknown world, where there is the possibility of reversing the historic flow of migration of knowledge. The choreographer raises various questions, such as: “Are they themselves shaped by stories of domination and migration? If so, what can notions such as locality and foreignness mean in this context?”

Artistic direction: Eszter Salamon
Artistic collaboration: Boglárka Börcsök
Developed with and performed by: Liza Baliasnaja, Amanda Barrio Charmelo, Sidney Barnes, Mario Barrantes Espinoza, Boglárka Borcsok, Stefan Govaert, João Martins, Sara Tan, Vânia Vaz, Tiran Willemse
Production: Elodie Perrin / Studio E.S., Alexandra Wellensiek / Botschaft GbR
Coproduction: Internationales Sommerfestival Kampnagel (Hamburg) in cooperation with Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Tanz im August / HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin) in cooperation with KINDL Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels)
With the support of: DRAC - Regional Agency of Cultural Affairs in Paris, The French Ministry of Culture and Communication and Hauptstadtkulturfonds (Berlin)

Thanks to: Seloua Luste Boulbina, Asad Raza, Boghossian Foundation - Villa Empain. The development of one of the phases of this project has been supported by PACT Zollverein (Essen), P.A.R.T.S. and NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ (NPN), Coproduction Fund for Dance

The exhibition dates in Porto are supported by the NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ International Guest Performance Fund for Dance, which is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

Dreams are Colder than Death is an experimental documentary/essay film that leverages a reflection on the legacy of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream speech,” to pose more fundamental and pressing questions: “what is the concept of blackness? Where did it come from? What does it mean for people living in America today?”

Woven together with lyrical slow-motion images of ordinary black people, mostly in outdoor spaces, images of water and cosmological images of deep space, the voices of some of the most powerful contemporary thinkers and artists in black studies and black arts engage in a meditation on the ontology of blackness and its relationship to life, death, and the concept of the human in the context of the “afterlife of slavery.” Ultimately, through the words of Fred Moten, the film poses the question of the possibility to love black people as well as what it might mean to commit to blackness against fantasies of flight.

The history of European museums is marked by imperialism and scientific and colonial genealogies inherited from the 19th century. How can we reinvent the museum and its collections to move towards an ecological and emancipatory model of reparation? What should the museum evoke and provide for its citizens?


Curator, publisher, and cultural historian, Clémentine Deliss, is one of the most prominent figures in the fight against the Eurocentric legacy within art history and in the art museums that shape and teach this history. Beginning with her “Manifesto for the rights of access to colonial collections sequestered in western Europe”, Deliss, in a conversation with the Director of the Museums of the city of Porto, Nuno Faria, and the anthropologist and researcher at ISCTE-IUL, Nélia Dias, will present a model for a future institution in which a generative flow of university-level inquiry is constituted within the walls of a museum. Against the backdrop of the decolonial imperative, her model for a Museum-University questions dominant ideologies of conservation by opening up collections, their histories, and their complaints to various operations of remediation. It banks on the unmonetized and often contested research collections of the past to formulate new methodological and trans-cultural alliances. Transforming a museum into a university is the first step towards constructing a museum of the commons and with it, an equitable reassessment of ethno-colonial collections. Such an untethered venue with no vantage points or attempts to direct the mind towards the confines of one overriding discipline would be a field, an expanse, a form of agronomy where every visitor would farm modest meanings from unmastered works, slowly apprehending the metabolics of the museum as a body.

One of the most influential architects of our time, Sir David Adjaye will end the debate programme of Fórum do Futuro, in a session alongside the architect Graça Correia in which he will discuss the importance of the history and identity of each place in his architectural practice, which is recurrently linked to the cultures and diaspora of the African continent.

David Adjaye was born in Tanzania, to Ghanaian parents, at a time when several African countries were emerging from colonial rule and building new identities on the continent. He spent his early years living in various African cities, which became a defining experience for his career and made him view architecture as the physical manifestation of social change - an emancipatory form that builds communities. At the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, Adjaye’s largest project to date, six centuries of history are represented in the building’s crown shape and façade, paying tribute to the ironwork of African-American artisans, as well as in its interior structure, which is a formal metaphor of overcoming, emancipation, and celebration. In this conversation, the architect will discuss his processes, motivations, and influences, as well as his current and future projects, which include the first Ghana Pavilion at this year's Venice Art Biennale, a new museum in Africa dedicated to treasures plundered from Benin, and collaborations with various governments of African countries.

Simultaneous interpretation

Aimé Césaire stated in Discourse of Colonialism : «For us, the choice is made. We are among those who refuse to forget. We are among those who refuse amnesia itself as a method.”
In order to unveil the narrative and timeliness of a deliberately forgotten story - that of a style of music which combines Belgian hard-tech with coupé-décalé, a genre of dance music originating from the Ivory Coast and the Ivorian diaspora in Paris - producer, DJ, writer and artist, CRYSTALLMESS, presents the multidisciplinary project In Memory of Logobi. In France, assimilation and colourblindness are institutionalised, and even though France has the highest black population in Europe, its contribution to club culture, or culture in general, is completely disregarded. In this performance, which includes a DJ-Set and an audiovisual composition (with videos, GIFs, archival images and 3D scans), the artist intends to establish a multidimensional mapping of Logobi, exploring the intersection between post-colonial alienation, technology and DIY culture and also the postmodern approach of ethnomusicology. Indeed, what is the causal link between the 1999 Ivorian coup d’état, the 2005 French riots, and the 2007 Techno Parade in Parisc? It is precisely here that the memory of Logobi reveals the intersection of events, the absence of historical coincidences.

O Fórum do Futuro apresenta nesta edição um projeto fílmico desenvolvido em colaboração com o aclamado poeta e académico Fred Moten, figura seminal nos estudos afroamericanos e no debate sobre direitos e movimentos de reparação. Professor na New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, as suas obras e teoria crítica têm influenciado toda uma geração de pensadores, artistas e ativistas, incluindo vários dos convidados desta edição. A partir das temáticas abordadas e questões levantadas por Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sônia Guajajara e Ernesto Neto, Danny Glover, Vandana Shiva, Arthur Jafa e David Adjaye, Fred Moten irá selecionar alguns excertos da sua obra, que serão apresentados neste projeto fílmico dividido em pequenos capítulos a exibir no início de cada uma destas sessões.

This year’s Fórum do Futuro presents a film project developed in collaboration with the acclaimed poet and scholar Fred Moten, a seminal figure in African American studies and the debate about rights and reparation movements. Professor at the Department of Performance Studies of New York University, the Tisch School of the Arts, his works and critical theory have influenced an entire generation of thinkers, artists and activists, including several of the guests in this edition. Based on the themes addressed and questions raised by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sônia Guajajara and Ernesto Neto, Danny Glover, Vandana Shiva, Arthur Jafa, and David Adjaye, Fred Moten will choose some excerpts from his work that will be presented in this film project, divided into small chapters to be displayed at the beginning of each session.