Between the photographic image, in which a single frame can "contain a world," and the 24 frames per second of cinema, there are intervals, between one image and another in a sequence of images or shots, where a series of formal, conceptual, political, and social questions reside. From the photographic essay to the essay film, passing through expanded photography and cinema, this unit aims to introduce, explore, and captivate the transmedia artistic thought and experimentation between image and movement in contemporary art, relating it to cinema, fiction, non-fiction, visual anthropology, the book format, dance, and sound.

Teacher: Tatiana Macedo

This course aims to explore theoretical, practical, conceptual, and critical tools for knowledge, experimentation, and composition within the context of Sound Art. Using an interdisciplinary approach, it will seek to provide knowledge of different experiences and reflections in the field of experimental music and DIY cultures. The history of early experiments in this field will be addressed – particularly from a feminist perspective and readings – from the 20th century to the present day. From a practical standpoint, experimental processes related to listening, field recording, sound synthesis and modulation, interpretation of electronic schematics, and the construction of DIY synthesizers and other electronic or electroacoustic sound objects will be explored.

Teacher: Mariana Pinho

This theoretical-practical course aims to equip students with tools for research, creation, and philosophical reflection, with a particular focus on the body and its expression. This course unit examines the relationship between body, space, time, the other, and objects, establishing connections with artistic processes and philosophical thought from different authors through experimentation, reading, and consultation of archives and documentation. The method employed consists of practice as research, articulating theory, philosophy, and embodied practices. The bibliography finds its context in the research fields of philosophy, performance studies, and performing arts.

Teacher: Ana Mira

This course aims to equip students with conceptual and critical tools to address the main aesthetic and political issues of contemporary times, as well as to reflect on the different ontological approaches captured by the dominant and counter-dominant discourses of bodies (human and technological) and contemporary artistic objects, or those produced from them. In this way, various topics considered critical will be explored, namely the relationship between humans and the earth in the Capitalocene era, technology, and globalized hyper-industrialization.

Lecturers: Luís Lima and Alexandra João Martins

This course aims to provide students with a comprehensive and integrated understanding of the intersections between computing and creativity, exploring both the historical foundations and practical applications of programming in the context of visual arts. The course covers key environments and programs, such as Processing (JavaScript) and TouchDesigner (Python), analyzing their characteristics, advantages, and limitations. Students also learn techniques for creating and manipulating visual content, images, videos, and particle systems. This knowledge is essential for the expressive and interactive manipulation of these elements.

Teacher: Bárbara Paixão

This course aims to equip students with practical and conceptual tools for the production of artistic objects. It will also explore the main issues associated with the transition between artistic practice in the laboratory/studio (within a broader and more critical framework defining this space) and its public presentation in exhibition or performance settings (whether institutional, independent, or otherwise). Furthermore, it intends to reflect on the potential of experimentation in a culture that tends to be dominated by objectification.

Teachers: João Alves and Marta Ângela (Von Calhau!)

The aim of this course is to provide students with a diverse set of analytical, hermeneutical, and critical tools that will allow them to engage in dialogue between artistic practices and media theories, as well as with the issues and actions that contemporary media instigate and produce. These issues and actions will be discussed based on works and discourses in sessions that will enable students to: construct an argumentative and reflective discourse on the relationships between culture, art, media, and reality; reflect on the technologization of aesthetic and artistic experiences; consider the contexts, possibilities, and limitations of the artwork in its relationship with different media; acquire the ability to investigate and write critically about the themes explored in class; recognize and evoke the history(ies) of the main media, especially as elements of artistic expression in the 20th century and the last two decades; and identify and problematize the influence of these media on the transformation of cultural values, social relations, perception of the world, aesthetic experience, and the artwork.

Teacher: José Marmeleira

This course aims to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the tools and techniques used in creating digital art and in human-computer interaction. The focus is on developing skills in using specialized software, creating 2D and 3D visuals, projection methods, and exploring sensors for interactivity. Students will be introduced to the historical context of computing in the visual arts, exploring its evolution from early developments to contemporary practices.

Teacher: Bárbara Paixão

This course aims to explore contemporary artistic practices within communities, problematizing the concepts of participatory art, collaborative art, and the spectator, and equipping students with practical skills for inter-community collaboration. To this end, several case studies of national and international artistic projects will be presented and discussed, considering the aesthetic driving force of art as a tool for social cohesion, that is, as "social sculpture," as Joseph Bueys termed it.

Teacher: António Poppe

Through a vision that links performance to new technologies, this curricular unit aims to explore the fields of human body extension connected to the latest technological developments, allowing for a new perspective on the creative process and a more direct approach to contemporary "technofantasies." From digital movements to the inclusion of technological tools in daily life, the potential of each tool will be explored through theoretical and practical exercises. This includes the assimilation of various software programs that mark the current state of creatives in the world of technology, as well as the reverse: technology that modifies the creative behavior of the artistic community and the way contemporary society sees the world. Several software programs will be addressed, focusing on the extension of the anatomical body itself into expanded cyber performative spaces, from manipulation to interaction and gamification. Students will be given the opportunity to create an individual or collective performance piece where they can assimilate all the theoretical and practical knowledge acquired.

Teacher: João Pedro Fonseca

This course unit aims to complement the postgraduate program's offerings by promoting open meetings with various renowned national and international artists from diverse areas covered by the postgraduate program, namely moving image, sound art, performance, installation, and digital art. In this sense, the course unit will also contribute to strengthening the desired connection between the student community and professionals.

This course aims to equip students with practical and conceptual tools for the production of artistic objects. It will also explore the main issues associated with the transition between artistic practice in the laboratory/studio (within a broader and more critical framework defining this space) and its public presentation in exhibition or performance settings (whether institutional, independent, or otherwise). Furthermore, it intends to reflect on the potential of experimentation in a culture that tends to be dominated by objectification.

Teachers: João Alves and Marta Ângela (Von Calhau!)

She has a degree in Communication Sciences, a master's degree in Artistic Studies from the University of Porto, and a PhD student in Artistic Studies at FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa, having received a scholarship from FCT. He wrote for several publications. He collaborated and was a member of the selection committees for the Curtas Vila do Conde and Porto/Post/Doc festivals. In 2017, she was selected for Talent Press Rio and, in 2018, she curated the exhibition Like the Sun/Like the Night, with the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, as part of the retrospective dedicated to António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro in Porto/Post/Doc.

Ana Mira dedicates herself to theoretical and artistic research at the meeting between movement, aesthetics and philosophy. Currently, she teaches at the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa and at Ar.Co – Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual, and is a researcher at the Instituto de Filosofia da Nova. She studied Somatic Practices, Contemporary Dance and Internal Martial Arts in Europe and the United States, and completed her PhD in Philosophy/Aesthetics at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Universidade Nova de Lisboa under the guidance of the philosopher José Gil, as a visiting researcher at the Center for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University and scholarship from FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology (2014). She was a visiting researcher at the Performance Studies department, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University as a fellow at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The dance performance highlights “At Once”, an adaptation of the solo by Deborah Hay/SPCP 2009 (Teatro Maria Matos, 2010) and her collaboration with Rosemary Butcher in “After Kaprow: The silent room + Book of journeys” (The Place Theater , 2012) and “Test Pieces” (Nottdance Festival, 2015), in England. His dance and philosophy essays have been published internationally.

Poet, visual artist, and performer, he lives and works in Lisbon. He completed the advanced visual arts course at Ar.Co, in Lisbon, and studied drawing and sculpture at the Royal College of Arts, London. He completed a master's degree in Performing Arts and Cinema at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Luso-American Foundation for Development.

Author of a hybrid work between visual arts, performance and poetry, which he has presented since 1996 in various cultural institutions and galleries such as the Serralves Museum, MAAT, Culturgest, Gulbenkian, Carmona e Costa Foundation, Soares dos Reis Museum, ZDB Gallery, 111 Gallery, Casa Fernando Pessoa, GIAJG, among others. He has published five books: Torre de Juan Abad (Assírio e Alvim), Livro da Luz (Documenta), Medicin (Douda Correria), Come Coral (Douda Correria), O Agitador e a Corrente (written with Mumtazz and published in Mariposa Azual).

Bárbara Paixão (Bombarral, 1994) is a new media digital artist who develops 2D visuals, interactive installations and VJing sets. Motivated by the complementarity between art and technology, her focus is on working on the interaction between the body and the computer. It is in the format of an audiovisual installation that takes greater advantage of interactive experiences. It often works with sensors that capture human presence and software that acts in real time. Using real-time, it also allows you to create visuals that are reactive to sound, in addition to being manipulated live, creating synesthetic experiences.

João Alves is one of the members of the duo Von Calhau!, which was born in 2006 in Porto. It is the designation of the body of work developed in communion by Marta Ângela and João Artur, in the unrecognizable forms of music, text, visual arts, performance, among others. Recent performances include Oximoroboro and Volta Subicida at Culturgest Lisboa in 2015; in 2016 Rotornariz at Galeria Pedro Alfacinha, the year in which they released Ú (Kraak), an album presented in places such as Cafe Oto, De Player or at the LAFMS Uncanny Valley Festival; in 2017 they presented the performance Tau-Tau, at the biennial BoCA, re-presented in São Paulo at the Videobrasil Festival; in 2018 they presented the exhibition/performance Phantom Blot Back to Attack at Kunstraum in London and the performance O Praner de Urizar at the Serralves Museum; between February and May 2019 they were artists at Residency Unlimited, New York (Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar scholarship); in February 2020 they opened the exhibition Unharias Ratóricas at MAAT, Lisbon.

João Pedro Fonseca is a transdisciplinary artist based in Lisbon with work dedicated to cyberspirituality, transcendence, xenomorphism, molecular faith, artificial intelligence and immaterial properties. Together with the artist Carincur, he directs ZABRA – Post-Human Art Research Center, the ZONA artistic residencies and is the founder of ZIGURFEST. To date, it has held several exhibitions and creations through structures such as Futurama, ModaLisboa, Lux Frágil, Fundação Champalimaud, Sónar Lisboa, FCT, FITEI, Teatro S. Luiz, among others. He also develops scenographic and light design work in the performing arts, including several plays, opera and dance, collaborating with names such as Albano Jerónimo, Carlos Pimenta, Miguel Moreira, Olga Roriz or Gaya de Medeiros, passing through the current largest theaters of the country from the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, Lisbon, to the Teatro Nacional do São João, Porto.

With a PhD in Philosophy of Science, specialty of Art and Science, within the scope of the Doctoral Program in Philosophy of Science, Technology, Art and Society, José Marmeleira is a Guest Adjunct Professor at the Escola Superior de Artes e Design – Politécnico de Leiria. He also works as an independent journalist and cultural critic at Ípsilon, a supplement to the newspaper Público, and at Contemporânea magazine.

PhD in Philosophy – specializing in Aesthetics – from FCSH/ Universidade Nova de Lisboa, as a Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation PhD fellow for a co-supervision position at Paris IV – Sorbonne, in the Literature Department. FCT fellow for the Master’s degree in Communication, Contemporary Culture and New Technologies at the same university. Graduated in Communication Sciences with a thesis on the mutual conditioning between criticism and art. He has collaborated as a journalist in several publications (Around the world, Magazine National Geographic, Iberian Art, Capital Art, etc.). Since April 2023, he has been founding director of the School of Arts of the Autonomous University of Lisbon (UAL). He is an Associate Professor at UAL and a guest lecturer at the IPCA Superior School of Design (ESD) and teaches at these institutions, among other UC's, Image Theories, Creative Writing, Communication and Digital Storytelling, Cyberculture. He is a researcher at LabCom (Communication and Arts) and collaborator at CEAA (Art and Critical Studies) and at the Nip.Com Communication Research Center, at UAL. Since 2016, he has been a member of the Scientific Committee of CONFIA – International Conference on Illustration and Animation within the scope of the Masters in Illustration and Animation at ESD at IPCA. Since 2018, he has been a member of the Selection Committee of the Porto/Post/Doc film festival. He works as a freelance translator in the field of contemporary aesthetic and literary thought (Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Rancière, Georges Didi-Huberman, François Truffaut, Bernard Stiegler, Marie-José Mondzain, Paul Éluard, Pierre Klossowski, Ghérasim Luca, etc.).

1992, Lisbon. Mariana Pinho is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher. Her research and practice have been linked to ecology, communication, and sound. She holds a PhD in Communication Sciences, specializing in Contemporary Culture and New Technologies (FCSH-UNL/FCT). She has a postgraduate degree in Sound Art from FBAUL. In recent years, she has performed in various projects, both solo and with other artists. She is the co-creator of CSOM, a sound and electronics project that promotes autonomous and inclusive pedagogies, the sharing of tools, and collective experimentation.

Marta Ângela is one of the members of the duo Von Calhau!, which was born in 2006 in Porto. It is the designation of the body of work developed in communion by Marta Ângela and João Artur, in the unrecognizable forms of music, text, visual arts, performance, among others. Recent performances include Oximoroboro and Volta Subicida at Culturgest Lisboa in 2015; in 2016 Rotornariz at Galeria Pedro Alfacinha, the year in which they released Ú (Kraak), an album presented in places such as Cafe Oto, De Player or at the LAFMS Uncanny Valley Festival; in 2017 they presented the performance Tau-Tau, at the biennial BoCA, re-presented in São Paulo at the Videobrasil Festival; in 2018 they presented the exhibition/performance Phantom Blot Back to Attack at Kunstraum in London and the performance O Praner de Urizar at the Serralves Museum; between February and May 2019 they were artists at Residency Unlimited, New York (Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar scholarship); in February 2020 they opened the exhibition Unharias Ratóricas at MAAT, Lisbon.

She exhibits internationally and works mainly in the hybrid fields of photography, film-essay, sound and installation. She holds a Master’s degree in Visual Anthropology from FCSH – Universidade Nova de Lisboa (2012) and a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Central St Martins College of Art & Design (London, 2004). In 2015 Macedo won the first Sonae Media Art Award with the multichannel video installation 1989. His first film, Seems So Long Ago, Nancy (2012) was shot at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, London, and screened in museums, galleries and film festivals including DocLisboa (2012), MARFICI – Mar del Plata (Argentina, 2013), Transcinema – Lima (Peru, 2013), Tate Britain (2012 and 2013), Tegenboschvanvreden Gallery (Amsterdam 2014) and Stedelijk Museum Bureau Video Programme (Amsterdam 2012). This work also won the SAW Film Prize from the American Anthropological Association – AAA (Washington-DC, 2014). She was a Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation scholarship holder for the International Studio Programme at Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin, 2016), among others. Her solo and group exhibitions have been held at Culturgest (Porto), DIDAC – DARDO Foundation (Santiago de Compostela), Tegenboschvanvreden (Amsterdam), Jeju Biennial (South Korea), MAAT, Appleton Square, Galeria Zé dos Bois, MNAC-MC (Lisbon), Iwalewahaus (Bayreuth), Kunstraum Botschaft (Berlin), Paris Photo, Arco Madrid, Photo Basel, among others. Her work is represented in several public and private collections.

Ana Cardoso (b. 1978, Lisbon) currently lives and works in Lisbon, after having lived and worked in New York between 2004 and 2020, a crucial period in the way her work developed and responded to the context and history of recent painting. Her work focuses on the practice of painting in dialogue with abstraction, installation, and its activation as an object that dialogues with the body and its context.

His most recent exhibition, Leaky Abstraction, curated by João Pinharanda, MAAT — Museu de Arte, Aquitectura e Tecnologia, Lisbon, 2023, gave rise to an artist publication, Leaky Abstraction — Four Color Edition (2024), developed in collaboration with Ana Baliza, which includes texts by the curator and the North American writers Maika Pollack and William J. Simmons.

Ana Cardoso completed her Masters in Painting (MFA) at Hunter College — CUNY, New York (2006), and a Bachelor's degree in Painting at FBAUL, Lisbon (2003).
She was a fellow of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York (2019-2020), a fellow of the Shandaken Projects — Paint School masterclass, New York (2018-2019), and a fellow of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Luso-American Foundation between 2004 and 2006.

Her work was included in Painting Now, edited by Suzanne Hudson and published by Thames & Hudson (2015), and has appeared in critical texts in Artforum, Flash Art, Mousse, Modern Painters, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, Contemporânea, Público, Expresso, among others.

Cardoso was a finalist for the New Artists Award, EDP Foundation / MAAT, Lisbon (2017), and the Young Painters Award — Fidelidade Mundial, Culturgest, Lisbon (2007).

A selection of his exhibitions include: Nuno Centeno, Porto (2023); Renata Fabbri, Milan (2023); Cristina Guerra, Lisbon (2021); Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (2019); Klaus Von Nichtssagend, New York (2019); Parapet Real Humans, St Louis (2018); Arpad Szenes — Vieira da Silva Museum, Lisbon (2018); MAAT, Lisbon (2017); Temnikova and Kasela, Tallinn (2017); Granpalazzo, Rome (2017); Jablonka Maruani Mercier, Knokke (2016); Rachel Uffner, New York (2015); Andrew Rafacz, Chicago (2015); MNAC — Chiado Museum, Lisbon (2015); Múrias Centeno, Lisbon (2014); Longhouse Projects, New York (2014); Marianne Boesky, New York (2012); Maisterravalbuena, Madrid (2012); Pedro Cera, Lisbon (2012); Prague Biennale 5, Prague (2011); Simone Subal, New York (2011); Emily Harvey Foundation, New York (2010); On Stellar Rays, New York (2010); The Kitchen, New York (2009); Tracy Williams, New York (2009).

Her work is represented in private and institutional collections such as: Calouste Gulbenkian Museum; EDP/MAAT Foundation; CACE—State Contemporary Art Collection; Lisbon City Council Contemporary Art Center, Municipal Galleries/EGEAC; Norlinda and José de Lima Collection; Akzo Nobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam; among others.

In 2020, Ana Cardoso founded the independent space Figura Avulsa in Santa Catarina, Lisbon, where she organizes occasional exhibitions and events. The program has been establishing a community among local and international artists such as: Rebecca Watson Horn, Max Ruf, Christine Rebet, Gonçalo Pena, Leyla Gediz, Marta Angela (Von Calhau!), Allison Knowles, João Simões, Gwenn Thomas, Charles Mayton, Ellie Ga, Nikolai Nekh, among others.

Diogo Baldaia was born in Porto and grew up in Maia. He studied at the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema (Lisbon) where he graduated in Directing and Image. He obtained a Master's degree in Fine Arts from the KASK Conservatorium (Ghent, Belgium). He worked and lived in Brussels before returning to Portugal, where he currently lives in Lisbon. His films have won awards and been shown at national and international film festivals, such as the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Vienna Shorts, Oberhausen Festival, IndieLisboa.

Salomé Lamas is a Portuguese filmmaker, visual artist, and educator.

Over the past fifteen years, and with a steady output of more than thirty projects, Salomé Lamas's work has been contextualized within visual culture, art studies, and film studies, and has been exhibited and distributed internationally in the fields of cinema and contemporary art.

She has been developing an artistic practice that explores the relationship between representation and the narrative power of social reality, proposing something different. Around, but not beyond, the real; beyond, but not alongside, the fictional. To address the efforts to expand this interstice, she refers to her work as parafictions of critical media practice.

With a mixed background in film and visual arts, and research informed by a critical, transnational, and subjective epistemology, centered on the possibilities opened up by ecological thought, as well as the connection between artistic praxis, economic and aesthetic changes, and contemporary philosophy, she has been challenged to follow a single orientation or to combine them in her work as an artist/filmmaker, but also as an educator, in various contexts, levels, and geographies.

The multidisciplinary ethos underlying their artistic endeavor continually challenges the boundaries of visual narrative, fostering critical dialogues that lead audiences to confront the complexities of human experience and broader social dynamics, centered on migration, post-colonialism, and critiques of capitalism.

This research-based practice perpetuates a legacy of intellectual inquiry and artistic innovation, critically addressing the social and economic roles of media production in its development, production, exhibition, distribution, and archiving phases, with results ranging from films and audiovisual installations to publications.