Expanded river listening - Margarida Mendes
26.10
15:30
Museu Nogueira da Silva
Talk
Lecture
Margarida Mendes
In 2019, Margarida Mendes sailed along the Mississippi River, seeking to narrate the life and acoustic space that glide along undisturbed. It is a powerful river, appearing to have an unblemished robustness, but within its currents and along its banks, it emits sounds like groans of pain that need to be heard. And Margarida Mendes listened, measuring its toxicity and practicing a form of listening that also passed through her own body. Because listening is also about creating a space for encounter, both emotional and physical.
Margarida Mendes is a researcher, curator, artist, and educator, exploring the overlap between systems thinking, experimental film, sound practices and ecopedagogy. She creates transdisciplinary forums, exhibitions and experiential works where alternative modes of education and sensory practices may catalyse political imagination and restorative action. Mendes has long been involved in anti-extraction activism collaborating with marine NGOs, Universities, and institutions of the art world. She holds a PhD in Research Architecture by the Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths University of London and is a member of Natural Contract Lab, a transdisciplinary collective of lawyers and artists working on restorative justice and rights of nature across Europe.
Free entrance
Presented in the context of Re-Imagine Europe | New Perspectives for Action, co-funded by the European Union