IETM Porto keynote speeches videos

IETM Porto Plenary Meeting brought together nearly 700 performing arts professionals from all over the world for discussions on how art relates to the processes of transforming centres of creation, dissemination and decision-making. The videos of the keynote speeches of the meeting are now available for on-demand viewing.

“Other Centres” by Fernanda Silva, Creator and Performer, and Álvaro Domingues, Geographer

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, the Brazilian anthropologist known for his attempt to decolonize thought, is the axe in this two fold opening, delivered in the format of a lecture performance by Fernanda Silva, founder of the activist Metaphor Teatro Galpao in Parnaiba, Brazil, and a keynote speech by Alvaro Domingues, Portuguese writer and geographer with a specific interest in the geography of social inequalities.

While Viveiros de Castro in his text “Os Involuntários da Pátria” denounces the condition of the Native Americans in Brazil—uprooted from their indigenous presence in the Americas, colonized by the Europeans, and excluded as full citizens—Domingues leads us to central questions of the Anthropocene: who are the “excluded” of today and what new or old worlds do they inhabit?

“How to be emerging?” by Pedro Penim, Founding Member & Artistic Director of Teatro Praga

Is there an ‘expiry date’ for being an emerging artist? What if an artist’s career veers off the trodden paths and traditional routes, and keeps on emerging in new environments and in new shapes? Pedro Penim is a founding member of award winning Teatro Praga (Plague Theatre) in Lisbon. Teatro Praga define themselves as a group or federation of artists, with a coat of arms and a history. When someone asks who they are, they usually propose a rephrasing of the question, since they are something different with every show or day that passes. Still, they rejoice with the established order and find their own unpredictable variation to be a way of enlarging the concept of predictability.

“A Critical Ten Point Plan to Creating Professional Sectors that Reflect Society” by Tunde Adefioye, City Dramaturg at KVS - Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg

Whether it is the halls of Denmark, the festivals of Belgium or streets of Edinburgh, urgent and collective action needs to be taken. As Paul Gilroy, a leading thinker on race and racism, suggests, we need to take sober actions to remove ourselves from the stupor of postcolonial melancholia. It is also tiring to continue to deny the role of racism as a way of propping up the fantasy of white innocence in many structures. This speech is a call to broaden our canon and continue making transnational alliances in an effort to make institutions better reflect the differences in society, which will ultimately benefit the cultural (and other professional) sectors.