Coimbra Session

Has the conceptual charge of performance brought us closer to or further away from this artistic practice? What is the weight of the centennial concept that moves performers, actors, and artists in moments crystallized in time? How does one differentiate a live performance and the representation in the form of documentation? How does one incorporate the archive and the construction of memory into the impact of this practice? Has the "free" spirit of performance died or changed?

Hendrik Folkerts is Curator of International Contemporary Art at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Folkerts previously was Dittmer Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (2017-2022); Curator at documenta 14, Kassel/Athens (2014-2017); Curator of Performance, Film, and Discursive Programs at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2010-2015); and Coordinator of the Curatorial Program at De Appel arts centre, Amsterdam (2009-2011). Folkerts specializes in commissioning and an artist-centered curatorial approach that highlights notions of care, hospitality, and process-based exhibition-making. He has curated numerous solo and international group exhibitions as well as collection presentations, new commissions, and program series, anchored in the expanded field of performance and building on feminist, queer, and anti-colonial histories of art.

David Cabecinha (1987) is a graduate of the Lisbon Film and Theatre School (Lisbon), where he studied theatre/acting. He has worked regularly in the performing arts field and cinema since 2008, as dramaturgist, co-script writer, actor, producer and director’s assistant. He has worked with Portuguese theatre companies such as mala voadora, choreographers such as Dinis Machado, Rita Natálio and João dos Santos Martins and film directors such as Jorge Jácome and Carlos Conceição. From 2016 to 2017 he assumed the artistic direction of Temps d’Images Festiva, promoting experimentation by emerging artists and consolidated artists such Vera Mantero and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. In 2018, with Carla Nobre Sousa, he assumed the artistic direction of Alkantara, defending the diversification of cultural programmes and promoting public discussions through performing arts works that contribute to more inclusive and accessible futures.