Marta Lança

Marta Lança is in residency at Estúdios Victor Córdon, as part of the Em Trânsito programme. Her performance Superintensiva is part of the Terra Batida project, and will premiere at the Alkantara Festival in November.

This project began taking shape in Asia Minor during the Palaeolithic Age. This project began taking shape in my head while I sought quality of life to raise a child: air and space. On a property used to dryland farming, wild flowers sprout on either side of the low stone wall. Ourique is the self-proclaimed capital of the Iberian black pig, with many cuts of meat and layers of life to explore.

On the road there, I see white pickets, all lined up, like in an American cemetery. Some months later, there are olive trees, atrophied in size and crown, precociously produced with the help of agrochemicals and phytopharmaceuticals. I roll up the windows to the pestilent olive fumes. I imagine the particles contained in the fumes and in the water lines, the exploitative labour, and the negligence towards public health. In the predatory plan of the agricultural industry, there are ambitious agricultural companies and disoriented small farmers. I counter the contaminated air and crumbling time with the resilience of the olive tree, guardian of prophetic languages of the Mediterranean, patron of the stew. The twists of its trunk and ancestral textures.

This lecture-performance is a journey through an olive grove of different colours and intensities, in body, voice, and image.

Marta Lança

By and with Marta Lança Photo essay Maria Mire Sound design Nuno Mourão

Terra Batida is a constellation of people, practices and knowledge taking a stand against ecological violence and politics of abandonment. Local knowledge of socio-environmental conflicts combined with an active network create a context for resistance to extractive abuses and, also, for practices of care — speculation, fabulation, and building visions and reflections of the future for our weary, worn-out worlds.

Marta Lança (Lisbon, 1976) is a doctoral candidate in Artistic Studies at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Her research interests include the postcolonial debate, cultural programming, memorialisation, platforms for discourse, and African Studies. She is the editor of the website BUALA and writes for publications in Portugal, Angola, and Brazil. She has translated works by Maxence Fermine, Jacques-Pierre Amettea, Asger Jorn, and Achille Mbembe. She has taught at Universidade Agostinho Neto, in Luanda. She has curated meetings, public programmes, and cycles at museums, art institutions, and festivals in Portugal and São Tomé e Príncipe. She has experience in cinema (research, production, scriptwriting, acting).

Maria Mire (Maputo, 1979) is a visual artist. She works collaboratively with various artistic collectives. Her artistic work and research centres on the perception of moving images. She directed Parto sem Dor, based on the figure of the obstetrician Cesina Bermudes. She is currently co-director of the Film/Moving Images Department at Ar.Co in Lisbon. She holds a PhD in Art and Design from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Porto.