CLARA ANTUNES and RICARDO MACHADO – Take a stand

We have a problem.
A problem that cuts across all sectors of society, all generations. A problem that will bring definitive and devastating consequences in the near future, a future we are yet to experience.
Some of us do not want to look the problem in the face. Others nonchalantly push it forward. Others still circle it with nonchalance. Its magnitude is difficult to comprehend. The projections of the problem are beyond our understanding. There is discussion about the matter: what are the parts that make it up? The origins of the problem are debated: what is the responsibility of each and every one of us in the mess that has been created? When we look closely at the problem, it swallows us up. It is a shapeless mass, too big and too dark, made up of so many foci that our single-focus vision cannot grasp it. Swallowed up by the problem, we throw our hands up to what we can do: cancel our participation in the problem.
Will it be enough?

In this performative lecture, everyone will be called upon to take their place in the statistics of the problem. Collectively and individually. We will look at the science of the problem, understand the various foci that cause it to spread indefinitely, feel how its future consequences operate in today’s body, but also learn about solutions, vote paradigms, and… take a stand.

A session of collective and participatory reflection on climate change, which focuses on the current science on the subject and also on a future that, if present practices are not changed, is estimated to be potentially unsustainable for human life. The end? To impel to the action.

Clara Antunes (Lisbon, 1988). Degree in Architecture by FA-UTL, with post-graduation in Programming and Cultural Management by Universidade Lusófona, she is currently a Master’s student in Culture Studies by UCP. She works in production, programming support with communities, communication and project management with independent structures and artists since 2010, among them: Vo’Arte, Jonas&Lander, Materiais Diversos, Madalena Victorino e Giacomo Scalisi (Festival TODOS, Lavrar o Mar), Rua das Gaivotas 6 / Teatro Praga; Hotel Europa, Ponte 9 Creative Platform / Open House Macau (INOV Contacto), Formiga Atómica and Artemrede, where she is responsible for the management of the European project “StrongerPeripheries: A Southern Coalition” (2021-2024).
She co-created, together with choreographer Ricardo Machado, the performative lecture on climate change Take a Stand (2019) for the project Miragem!, performed by Carla Galvão.

Ricardo Machado (Vila Nova de Famalicão, 1983). Choreographer and regular performer in multiple contexts of contemporary performing arts, usually integrating transdisciplinary research groups in artistic co-creation. He has worked as a performer and co-creator with several choreographers and directors, such as Aldara Bizarro, Né Barros, Carlos Silva, Moncho Rodriguez, Victor Hugo Pontes, Rui Lopes Graça, Fernanda Fragateiro, Kurt Demey, Marielle Morales, Joana Antunes, Olga Roriz, Paulo Mota, Karine Ponties, among others. In recent years he has worked with Anna Réti, Ido Batash, Madalena Victorino and Circolando.
The great engine of his artistic presence is invariably movement, and his area of creation, dance – in pure formal situations (the theater room), but also in those that are dictated by the very space and context of creation. His most recurrent thematic affection is that of a questioning of the performative mode of being and the place of the audience. His modus operandi is the search for the fiction of the real.
REI-SOL, L’après-midi d’un sportif and Point of You name the first proposals he has signed, the last of them created and premiered in Budapest, with Anna Réti, and presented in the 2016 edition of Springforward / Aerowaves, as one of the 20 priority works of the Twenty16 edition.
His work has been presented in several festivals and countries such as Austria, Germany, Belgium, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Netherlands, Hungary, Czech Republic and Serbia.