Clareiras (Clearings)
Saturday, 23rd of May 2026
A PiSCiNA - Rua Santa Catarina 132, 2nd floor, Porto
Registration here until the 18th of May.
Clareiras (Clearings) is a one-day event composed of three sessions which, together, propose a reflection on forests, their ecosystems, and the human and non-human beings that inhabit them.
Clearings are open, luminous spaces within the forest, essential to biodiversity and the regeneration of ecosystems, but they are also places of transition, clarity, and discovery.
Programme
10.00 am Welcome session to Clareiras with the curator Ana Carvalho
10.30 am - 12.30 pm Vagueness or a suburban clearing: the poietics of the wasteland along the Sintra line Rita Barreira and Bruno Caracol
1.30pm - 3.30pm Speculative Images for an Entanglement between Plants and Technology Catarina Braga
4pm - 6pm Technologies as Clearings: Ecofeminism between Materials, Bodies and Systems Patrícia J. Reis
6.00 pm - 6.30 pm De-Entre-Árvores - Round-up of the day
Vagueness or a suburban clearing: the poietics of the wasteland along the Sintra line
We gather in a patch of wasteland, a vacant plot on the Sintra line, in a persistent clearing of the former Tapada das Mercês — an 18th-century hunting reserve, transformed in the final decades of the 20th century into the intensive and entropic urbanisation of Lisbon’s outskirts. This small wood persists, dense and wild, with a life of its own that pierces through human control of the suburban territory. This vagueness has generated a space we conceive as public and autonomous, from an anti-speciesist perspective — the necrophagia and abundance of fireflies, the bushy camouflage and the flights of birds of prey, the trails or lines of desire that open up paths and passages. Through a small sound and text installation, we present a poietics of the suburban clearing and propose a practice of listening, recording and textual composition to imagine interspecies autonomous zones.
Rita Barreira (1979) is a writer and researcher whose work bridges artistic practice and critical thinking. She is currently a PhD candidate working on the project “PIGS: Spaces of Exhaustion as Artistic Practice in Southern Europe”. Her work focuses on forms of artistic production linked to collectivism, self-organisation, autonomy and political activism. She works in both academic contexts and independent spaces, combining writing with essays, lectures, exhibitions, performances and collaborative processes. Her recent publications include texts in art magazines and platforms. She has participated in the organisation of exhibitions and artistic research projects. She has collaborated with various artistic organisations in the fields of archiving, communication and programming.
Bruno Caracol (1980) studied Fine Arts at FBAUL and has developed an artistic practice centred on the exploration of resonant objects, fictional futures, and the relationships between humans and the non-human world. In 2017, he completed a Master’s degree in Communication Sciences at FCSH-NOVA, researching the modern construction of the idea of ‘wild nature’. Since then, he has been working on artefacts that emerge from the coexistence of humans and wolves, presenting his work in various exhibition contexts, such as the Cerveira Biennial, Rural Vivo Gerês, SMUP and the Barroso Ecomuseum. He is a member of the Sphere4 collective, with whom he developed the Waterworld project, focused on the submersion of coastal and riverside territories. At the same time, he has been collaborating as a set designer with Um Coletivo since 2018 and has taken part in national and international residencies and exhibitions.
Speculative Images for an Entanglement between Plants and Technology
Drawing on speculative realism and science fiction, this workshop offers an artistic experiment that combines video projection with inorganic materials and plants, inviting participants to create new relationships between the natural and the technological. Through exercises in constructing alternative worlds, the group will create fictional narratives that explore the perspective of other forms of life, collectively reimagining the possibility of a symbiotic relationship in which plants, technologies and inorganic materials intertwine in a hybrid form.
Catarina Braga (1994) is a visual artist, researcher and speculative writer. She is currently a PhD student at the School of Arts (UCP), where she is a researcher at the Centre for Research in Science and Technology in the Arts (CITAR), and holds a PhD fellowship from the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology. Her work spans video, sculpture, installation and text, investigating how technological mediation shapes our relationship with nature, and exploring the role that images play in the interactions we establish between the digital world and the natural world. She has been exhibiting internationally since 2016. Among her most recent exhibitions are her solo show “Práticas de um Arquivo Vivo” at the Biodiversity Gallery (Porto Photography Biennial, 2025), and the group exhibitions “This is a Shot” at the Serralves Museum (Porto, 2025), “Living Matter” at the Pernambuco Institute in Porto (2024), “LOSS OF AURA” at the Pedro Oliveira Gallery (Porto, 2022) and “RETURN” at the Arbre Art Center (Shenzhen, 2020). https://catarina-braga.com
Technologies as Clearings: Ecofeminism between Materials, Bodies and Systems
Using the metaphor of clearings, this hybrid conversation reflects on the need to unravel the eco-socio-political complexity of contemporary technologies from an ecofeminist perspective. Working with the Ethical Hardware Kit as a tool for reflection and creation, it explores relational interfaces developed with care and in harmony with environments and between bodies as alternatives to the extractivist logic of technology — from mineral extraction to invisible labour, data collection, electronic waste and disembodied AI systems.
Patrícia J. Reis is a media artist, researcher, and lecturer based in Vienna. Her practice engages critical and sensorial approaches to technology, employing hacking and ecofeminism to question systems of control and address the complexity of contemporary technological and social systems. She lectures at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and leads the research project Hacking the Body as the Black Box. www.patriciajreis.com
Project Ana Carvalho
Team Isabel Carvalho, Júlio Moreira and Paula Freitas.
Design Luísa Martelo
Clareiras is hosted by A PiSCiNA.
This event is part of the TRILHAS programme of the Earthsea Association and has the support of DGArtes.
CLAREIRAS
Sábado, dia 23 de Maio 2026
A PiSCiNA
Rua Santa Catarina 132, 2ºandar, Porto
Inscrição aqui até 18 de maio.
Clareiras é um evento de um dia constituído por três sessões que em conjunto propõem uma reflexão sobre as florestas, os seus ecossistemas e os seres humanos e não humanos, que a habitam. Clareiras são espaços abertos e luminosos na floresta, essencial à biodiversidade e à regeneração dos ecossistemas, mas também são lugares de transição, clareza e descoberta.
Programa
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