The exhibition marks the 30 years of the Foundation and the 20th anniversary of Museu de Serralves, presenting the programme of the Performing Arts Service between 1999 and today. It was born and developed through compromises between seemingly irreconcilable objectives: on the one hand, the need to present concrete data (names, dates, images) that showed where, how and when certain artists performed, and mirrored the pioneering character of the importance given to the performing arts by Serralves; on the other hand, it translates what seems to immediately distinguish these arts: the implication of the spectator, the eminently collaborative spirit, the "here and now" as opposed to "this was". The compromises included by putting on display documentation and letting its visitors know who has performed in Serralves (and when, how and where), while presenting elements that evoked the “here and now.” The documentation was incorporated through a process of collaboration: once the programmers Cristina Grande and Pedro Rocha selected the images and words that best illustrated the last twenty years of their programming (between stage photography and graphic materials that announced and accompanied the activities), it was commissioned to a graphic designer, Luís Teixeira, to create a book that would never be published, whose pages would be exclusively presented on the walls of Biblioteca de Serralves, along with the recordings of shows and props to which these programmers considered to be of special importance. At the same time, it was decided to occupy a considerable area of the library’s mezzanine with an object that would immediately evoke the idea of theatre and could "trigger" the viewer: a small stage waiting to be occupied. The visitor can and should sit down to read (programming texts, key books to understand the performing arts today) and, most importantly, to hear testimonials and memories of spectacles written by people especially attentive to Serralves' performing arts programming - between artists, musicians, writers and current or former directors and programmers of theatres and music and performance festivals - and then read by two actors. These testimonies came to reconcile the irreconcilable: the memories of certain shows, or of concerts and performances - necessarily subjective, incomplete, fragmentary - constitute the necessary counterpoint to data, dates, chronologies, documentation. It is largely thanks to them that this exhibition is not just about "what it was"; it is also now, and it is also here.

“I was born twice: I was first one thing, and then the other.” These are the opening words of MDLSX, a kaleidoscopic solo performance by Silvia Calderoni, staged by Enrico Casagrande and Daniela Nicolò, founders of the Italian company Motus. Intense and defying, it countians literary evocations from Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, Orlando by Virginia Woolf, several texts by Pasolini, and seminal books on queer theory, such as Gender Trouble by Judith Butler, or Counter-sexual Manifesto by Paul B. Preciado. Using the power of her androgynous presence and a format reminiscent of a DJ/VJ set, Silvia Calderoni weaves these literary references with her biography, home videos and the pop music that influenced her, from The Smiths to Placebo, from Talking Heads to Vampire Weekend and The Dresden Dolls. Shattering the concepts of gender and narrative, MDLSX is a paean to the freedom of becoming and being an other, beyond any border or prejudice.

Blanck Mass, Benjamin John Power's solo project, half of Fuck Buttons, is back in Portugal and has a confirmed stop at Rivoli’s Understage on February 14th, for the presentation of “Animated Violence Mild’. Released in 2019 via Sacred Bones, “Animated Violence Mild’ is, in the words of the British musician and producer, his most concise, direct and honest work to date. Loaded with bold experimentation, rhythmic intensity, explosive melodies and daring ferocity, the album is an amalgam of extreme emotions, which oscillate between the expression of existential fear and the beauty close to transcendence. A grief record, which arises from the reflection concerning grief, not only personally but also in a more global sense, of all of us, as a species, it is an unbridled anti-consumerism treaty, a declared criticism to humanity's self-inflicted fall, betrayal of the best instincts of our nature and the future of our own world. And like the sadness it communicates there, the eight tracks that comprise it are not at all linear, surprising the listener at every moment, among stylistic combinations so distinct and well executed that effortlessly go well beyond all the influences that shamelessly we recognize in him, becoming a moment not so much of exasperation but of pure catharsis.