Music Box.
Performance-book
MUSIC BOX is a “performance-book” that is constructed in real time from performance-conversations, open to the public both in person and online, between myself, Christina Elias, artist and choreographer, and the researcher and curator Manuel Furtado, about the body of performance, installation, video, and object works that I have created from 2011 to the present. The writing method will unfold progressively (as in the homonymous performance "Music Box"), so that each meeting between the two of us and some guests will shape a chapter of the publication, taking on multiple formats: text, video, podcast, photography… The concept of "post-memory," developed by Marianne Hirsch, is one of the project's central themes, broadening the readings on the relationships between art, memory, record, and subjectivity.
M(a)ind the gap:
conversation-performance n.0
About (or "between"): meditation and dance, emptiness and power, text and movement, training and performance, time and incarnations, music and drawing, Lygia Clark, Hijikata and Deleuze.
What do stillness and the "blurring" of individuality have to do with the creative process of a dance that blossoms into multiple languages: "gesture-words," invisible geometric forms, drawings that are imprinted on material surfaces such as a painting canvas or living skin itself?
October 24, 2025
Here and There [or Somewhere Inbetween]
conversation-performance n.1
About: geometry of body-space, displacements of the spirit, migrations, fourth dimension, self-image and the gaze of the other, Laban, Bartenieff, Schopenhauer and Simondon.
Based on the projection of the video-performance HERE & THERE [OR SOMEWHERE INBETWEEN] (Christina Elias, 2011) to address “migrations” (passages? lags?) that being alive involves – whether these are personal, philosophical, cultural, spatial or temporal.
November 27, 2025
Guest artists: Francisco Baccaro and César Meneghetti
César Meneghetti is a multidisciplinary artist active in video, installation, photography, drawing, curating, and documentary. He has been working internationally for over 30 years, creating works focused on social, political, cultural, environmental, migration, and inclusion issues, exhibited in 47 countries. Meneghetti has received 79 awards and is known for projects such as "I/O", "K_LAB", "BELOVED ONES", "MONTAGE", "SEM TERRA", and "GLAUBER, CLARO". His work is part of collections in renowned institutions, including the MAXXI in Rome and the MAC in São Paulo. He has also participated in important biennials, such as the 51st, 54th, and 55th Venice Biennales.
Francisco Baccaro (1978) lives and works in Lisbon. A visual artist, he holds a degree in Cinema from the Scuola Civica di Cinema; and in Sensory Creativity Direction from the Università dell'Immagine. He holds a PhD in Photography from the Italian Institute of Photography, Milan. In photography, he focuses primarily on architecture, everyday life, portraiture, and abstractions of daily life. His curriculum includes exhibitions in galleries and cultural institutions in Europe, the United States, and Brazil. He works across various media such as photography, cinematography for film, video art, video installation, performance, and sculpture. Simultaneously, he has undertaken artistic residencies in contexts of conflict, such as São Paulo and Jerusalem.
Phonetic fragments of a (Si)
conversation-performance n. 3
About: the (in)communicability of feeling, sound-text-movement, deafness and hearing, the spirit, existence, Clarice Lispector, passions, overflows, forgetfulness, guilt and love
Clarice Lispector wrote about the limits of language and the failure to express the infinite sea of feelings she had within herself. Profoundly deaf people and those with hearing impairments experience the daily challenge of the insufficiency of means of expression. In this context, the language of dance and movement, associated with (or invaded by) word, gesture and sound, becomes a powerful way to give vent to these emotions that cannot be contained only in the pages of a notebook, in the vibrations of sounds, nor only in the body. PHONETIC FRAGMENTS OF ONE (SI) is an interdisciplinary performance that aims to challenge the limits of communication and language through the translation of Clarice Lispector's literary text into Portuguese Sign Language (LGP) and its subsequent retranslation into a powerful lexicon of dance and movement.
December 12, 2025
One-Minute Diaries
conversation-performance n. 4
About: Life boxed into a screen, existence limited to a minute, the everyday and the eternal, the domestic and the ethereal, desire and repression, time and representation
"One-Minute Diaries" is an ongoing project that proposes the construction of an online digital archive containing a series of short video performances created by the artist and choreographer Christina Elias from 2023 until her death, whether in life or in performance. In these brief audiovisual diaries, where spoken text functions as a trigger for a visual narrative of movement, the artist gives form to thoughts, ideas, feelings, sensations, experiences, and images described over years in physical notebooks or that simply never took the form of discourse, remaining suppressed or hidden in the tissues of the body. An attempt to concentrate, in minutes, several pages of a diary, several days of a life. Between 2013 and 2023, 15 videos of this series were created. I intend to continue "writing" it for the eternity of my life.
Guest speaker: Lucas Ferraro Nassif
January 22, 2026
Lucas Ferraço Nassif holds a Ph.D. in Letters from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. He is a researcher for the ERC FILM AND DEATH project and an integrated member of CineLab - Laboratory of Cinema and Philosophy, part of the NOVA Institute of Philosophy, and a member of the Portuguese Center for Psychoanalysis. He is the director and editor of the films *Concreto Armado*, *Ser Chato*, and *Teto Desconhecido/A Fera*; and the author of the book *Missing Links*, published by Barakunan, and awarded by the Association of Moving Image Researchers [AIM] in Portugal as the best monographic book of 2023. In 2025, his book *Inconsciente/Televisão* was published by Becoming Press.
Carrying (in progress)
conversation-perfomance n.5
About: Intimacy, vulnerability, and boundaries in interpersonal and social relationships. Continuous touch as a metaphor for the resistance and negotiation necessary to sustain genuine connections.
CAR(ry)ING is a dance installation that investigates the creation of a "space between bodies," where immigration, diversity, and relationality are explored through a synesthetic perspective, provided by contact with the "other." Starting from the concept of carrying and caring for the other, we ask: How can we experience existence beyond the limits of our own skin? Can we "co-carry" the weight of bodies that meet, without establishing leadership? What does it mean to move together as an interconnected entity? How can we maintain continuous touch without it becoming an invasion of the other's space or the self?
February 27, 2025
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Infinities: the performance and the thread
Conversation-performance n.6
About: Simondon and the shifts of the center itself (again), Schopenhauer and the will, Plato and the deception of the Feminine, Judith Butler and material bodies between the lines, Ana Maria Maiolino, Thich Nhat Hanh and walking meditation, in short - infinitudes.
Starting from Judith Butler's thought that "Woman is what has been excluded from the discourse of metaphysics," I continue my project of tirelessly writing in the spaces between the lines of a narrative system determined by the masculine. The body becomes a platform for the occurrence of bonds. Words are stitched together in an audiovisual process of creating collective discourse. We tie ourselves to successive other knots, forming a visceral braid that gives birth to narratives, silenced, obscured. I converse with loved ones who have already passed away, who in a way are still there. I converse with people who are physically present in my life. I converse with people who inspire me, teach me, guide me. Including those I haven't met in person, but who are within me.
Still a tangled web of threads. The thread is called LOVE.
March 19, 2025
Guest speaker: Ícaro Ferraz Vidal
Ícaro Ferraz Vidal. Curator and Researcher. He graduated in Media Studies from the Federal Fluminense University, holds a master's degree in Communication and Culture from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and a master's degree in "Crossways in European Humanities" from the Nova University of Lisbon, the University of Santiago de Compostela, and the University of Sheffield. He is currently conducting research in the "Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate: Cultural Studies in Literary Interzones" program at the University of Perpignan - Via Domitia (France). He is a researcher, essayist, and independent curator. He co-curated, with Hermano Callou, the "Harun Farocki Retrospective: Facing the Images of the World" (MAM-RJ, 2012), and worked on the programming team of the "Curta Cinema: Rio de Janeiro International Short Film Festival" (2013). She collaborated with curators Bernardo José de Souza and Michelle Sommer on the exhibition “To see what is coming” (Largo das Artes-RJ, 2014) and with the project “Museu Encantador” by the Portuguese artist and performer Rita Natálio (MAM-RJ, 2014). Her research explores the relationships between body, time, contemporary art, and politics, with publications in specialized journals in Europe and Latin America.
Pele
conversation-performance n.7
About: Body-Media, Individuation, Fudoh, Alterity as a State of Creation
WHAT IS SKIN? A porous membrane that connects us to the environment? Could we think of the performative state as a kind of osmotic action?
April 9, 2026
Guest speaker: Christine Greiner
Christine Greiner is a tenured professor of Communication and Arts at PUC-SP. She teaches in the Postgraduate Studies Program in Communication and Semiotics, where she coordinates the Center for Oriental Studies; and in the Communication of Body Arts course. Since 1998, she has conducted research internships and postdoctoral studies at universities in Japan, the United States, and France, with support from the Japan Foundation, the Nichibunken Center, and CAPES/Fullbright, among others. She is the author of the books *Corpos Crip, instaurar estranhezas para existir* (2023), *Fabulos do corpo japonês* (2017), *Leituras do Corpo no Japão* (2015), *O Corpo em Crise* (2010), and *O Corpo, pistas para estudos indisciplinares* (2005), among others. She has organized 10 collections of essays and curated the exhibitions *Primeira Pessoa* (2006, Itaú Cultural), in partnership with Agnaldo Farias; Tokyogaqui, an Imagined Japan (2008, Sesc-Paulista), Revolt of the Flesh (2009, Sesc-Consolação) and Hosoe, Bodies of Images (2010, Sesc-Consolação) in partnership with Ricardo Muniz Fernandes. The main themes of her research are dance, performance, contemporary Japanese culture and philosophy of the body. She shares with the professor and dance critic Helena Katz the conception of body-media theory.
Blindfolded Society
conversation-performance n.8
About: social blindness, commodification of the human, precarious life, truth and politics, despair and creation, José Saramago, Elena Almeida
In today's society, the inability to see is not only physical, but also moral and ethical. A society blindfolded and for sale. Routines, privacy, intimacy, the body, beliefs, and even the soul are sold.
May 21, 2026
Guest: Sofia Neuparth
A lover of movement, she made her first attempts at dance with Teresa Rego Chaves and Anna Mascolo. She trained in classical dance with master Tony Hulbert. At 18, she began teaching dance and studying philosophy, anatomy, and physiology. For six years, she completed internships in London at "The Place" and other contemporary dance schools, where she had the opportunity to develop work with artists such as Robert North, Kazuku Hirabayashi, Lloyd Newton, and Karen Burgin. In the late 1980s, she was at the European Dance Development Center in Arnhem, Netherlands, where she taught under Mary Fulkerson (Mary O'Donnell), then co-director of the school. In addition to her experience teaching groups of students from all over the world, she also had the opportunity to study with Eva Karckzag, Simone Forti, Steve Paxton, Martha Moore, Peter Hulton, Jim Fulkerson, Sally Silvers, Mary O'Donnell, Bonnie B. Cohen, Aat Hougeé, and Lisa Krauss. Also at the end of that decade, he laid the foundations upon which what is now c.e.m – centro em movimento (center in movement) – developed, an organization dedicated to artistic training and research, creation and experimentation, as well as practices of generating common ground with people and places, always based on listening to the Body and Movement.
The water theory
coversation-performance n. 9
About: fluidity, overflows, exchanges, birth, assuming different forms, flowing out of the skin
How the sensory experience as well as the imagination of water – its density, sensation, paths, flows, rhythms and concepts – can imagine a “practice of being” of the Human, not as an existence separate from the environment, but as part of a greater whole. The body as an instrument of erosion of social and cultural patterns. June 25, 2026. Guest: Margarida Agostinho
Margarida Agostinho
Her artistic career includes numerous participations and collective creations. In
2003, she joined Zona Z, the artistic creation zone of c.em. The following year, she was part of the dance creation “mmm – a physical poem”, by Sofia Neuparth, and, in
2009, she co-created the intervention “Space and Writing” at the Pedras d’Água Festival, a work that brought writing and atmosphere to various points in the city of Lisbon.
She is part of the band “Adufe & Alguidar” which in 2024 released the album “Quem canta um canto adiciona um tempo” and has participated in shows throughout the country. She also dedicates herself to the transmission of singing and playing the adufe, as a way of activating access to self-expression, based on traditional songs and rhythms. Also in 2024, she released with c.e.m the Audiobook Andar, Poisar,
Pensar – Andar, Poisar, Pensar, Audiobook by Margarida Agostinho 2024, based on selected texts from the blog she started in 2020 – escrever na rua –
escrevernarua.
The body and its remains
conversation-performance n.10
About: performance, objects, recording, rewritings, reperformances, updates and recreations
What the body creates. Invisible objects. Immobile choreographies. Transits between action and materiality. Performance and exhibitions.
Guest: Cristiana Tejo
July 16, 2026
Cristiana Tejo (Recife, 1976) holds a PhD in Sociology (Federal University of Pernambuco), is an integrated researcher at the IHA of the Nova University of Lisbon, and was a researcher on the project Artists and Radical Education in Latin America: 1960s/1970s, coordinated by Giulia Lamoni. Her thesis focused on the genesis of the field of art curatorship in Brazil, and in recent years she has been developing research on artistic and curatorial practices from the perspectives of decoloniality and feminisms, and the cultural exchanges between Brazil and Portugal. She is a co-founder of Espaço NowHere Lisboa and curator of the Hangar artistic residencies. She was co-curator of the exhibition ÉBonita a festa, cara, at the Cerveira International Biennial Cycle in 2024 and of the 37th Panorama of Brazilian Art, MAM-SP. She was a Visual Arts curator, coordinator of Public Programs at the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation (2002-2006/2009-2011), and Director of the Aloísio Magalhães Museum of Modern Art. She was an advisor for the exhibitions *Resistance Performed – Aesthetic strategies under repressive regimes in Latin America*, curated by Heike Munder (Migros Museum, Zurich, 2015), and *Condemned to be modern* by Clara Kim (Los Angeles Municipal Gallery, United States, 2017). She is the editor of the book *Paulo Bruscky: Art and Multimedia* and co-author of the *Visual Artist's Guide*, published by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture and UNESCO in 2018. She lives and works in Lisbon.
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christina elias
Multidisciplinary artist. São Paulo, 1978. Lives and works in Lisbon.
Her work flows between dance and visual arts. The body is a tunnel through which various languages pass: dance, text, video, sound. The idea of "passage" informs her research and practice: the passage of time, the decay of the body, the "passage of and in space" as geographical, cultural, social displacements or migrations of the self to other non-places. MASTER OF ARTS in Movement Studies from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (University of London). DOCTORATE in Design from Anhembi Morumbi University, São Paulo. Post-Doctorate in Communication and Semiotics – Pontifical Catholic University-PUC-SP. She has carried out several solo and relational projects in museums, galleries and festivals in Brazil and Europe and has received relevant awards such as FUNARTE WOMEN IN VISUAL ARTS and Aldir Blanc - PROAC for CAREER HISTORY.
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manuel furtado
Manuel Furtado is an FCT-IHA scholarship holder and is pursuing his PhD in Contemporary Art History at NOVA FCSH. He holds a Master's degree in Fine Arts (Central Saint Martins) and a Bachelor's degree in the same field from Coventry University. He was the artistic director of the MUTE Gallery for 5 years (muteart.org) and leader of the curatorial team for FACTT (Transnational and Transdisciplinary Art and Science Festival). He was a faculty member at the Escola Arte Ilimitada from 2011 to 2017.