A piece to be premiered at São Luiz, conjured by Alice dos Reis and Odete, ‘PORTAL’ combines sound, text, song, and installation projecting a common narrative from two parallel exoplanets. On a speculative plane, where genres like sci-fi or opera converge, Alice and Odete break down the barriers between the personal and the political in an autobiographical process as detailed as it is abstract, projecting possible futures from their dreams and desires – with the galactic bond of overcoming their own land.

An encounter full of meaning between two artists of very personal vision and shared dreams. Alice dos Reis’ artistic career has led her to reveal her works in Europe, the United States or Australia, through galleries, institutions, and film festivals, the result of focus, vision, and academic merit by the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. A continued work that “looks at encounters between human agents and more than humans in biopolitical systems”, according to Alice’s own words. Concepts that connect umbilically to the craft of Odete, a transdisciplinary artist that navigates between writing, visual arts, performance, and music. Openly autobiographical, Odete’s work struggles with the connections between the personal and political spheres, invoking its own cosmogony, rewriting history to reinvent/project the future. With work revealed in numerous spaces and contexts, from the club to the gallery and intermediate points of attention, Odete’s ‘Water Bender’ was released this year, by New Scenery. BS

Rapper, musician, and visual artist, Tristany is an attentive rapporteur of the social and daily realities of the outskirts of Lisbon. Exploring the route of the Linha de Sintra to the center, he collects the pieces of a mosaic of multiple experiences and intimate feelings. The labor, the desires and aspirations of an entire community that is still too far from the capital and the decision-making centers. ‘MEIA RIBA KALXA’ is the clamoring for that place, by the voice and lyrics of someone who writes upon his own knowledge. Tristany, simultaneously, an actor and an observer, leaves all this with the courage and audacity of the brave.

A debut album in his own name, after his militancy at Monte Real, ‘MEIA RIBA KALXA’ is a shake in the Portuguese rap as it hasn’t been heard for a long time, discarding the more canonical tendencies that are associated with the genre to project his reality and which is after all a reflection on it. ‘MEIA RIBA KALXA’ is a community record, in form and spirit, that opens up rap to a panorama where the hypnosis of the most vaporous r&b, the nerve of rock, kizomba, and African heritage, are combined with cascades of spectral synthesizer and a prodigious imagination – made up of memories, conjectures, and refutations. A record that projects possible futures from here, from now. In its presentation, Tristany brings to São Luiz his voice, drums, and trumpet, accompanied by Du on the “cymbals” and voice, and Ariyouok on the loop station, percussion, and voice. BS