Between Freedom and Violence

Point of departure: the body as a site of memory, resistance and transformation. We invite into this conversation what impels us to transform, between freedom and violence, and the narratives we shelter within our bodies in order to disclose something for tomorrow. The body activates memory, inscribes and reconfigures it. Lived images become surviving images, transforming themselves at the intersection of memories and non-memories, of different gazes and experiences. In this movement, what is understood as wild, barbaric or violent is not fixed, but depends on who names it and who holds the power to establish these boundaries. Between freedom and violence, the body is at once a material of destruction, expansion and regeneration. A site exposed to risk, yet also one of interiority and construction, where it becomes possible to move through one’s own collapse and imagine other forms of existence.

What if the body were no longer solely human? Today, voices, gestures and memories are extracted to train machines, often without consent, in a new form of violence inflicted upon bodies. Yet this same technology can open other possibilities: hybrid bodies, interspecies relations and forms of existence in symbiosis with the natural and the artificial. Here, too, the boundary between human and non-human, natural and artificial, depends on who names it.

As part of the 12th edition of Museum as Performance, we propose a conversation with ZABRA – Centre for Posthuman Art Research, Carincur and João Pedro Fonseca, conceived as a space for reflection running parallel to the performances in the programme. Taking place in the Museum Library, the conversation engages on the books and references that inhabit this space to open a dialogue around some of the questions that run through this edition: the transformation of bodies and the passage between freedom and violence.

Carincur and João Pedro Fonseca are artist-researchers who have been collaborating since 2020. They co-direct ZABRA, in Lisbon, which has established itself as Portugal’s first posthuman art research centre, bringing together art, technology and science. Their practice explores interspecies relations, ecologies of care and new forms of cultural intelligence, through a dialogue between human, more-than-human and artificial intelligences. They advocate an ethical approach to technology, developing artificial intelligence models trained exclusively on materials of their own creation, for which consent has been obtained. Their recent projects include carne.exe (2025), commissioned by Teatro Nacional D. Maria II; JEZABEL (2024), an autonomous digital entity commissioned by ModaLisboa; and Jeffthielmusk®, a performative essay on technological cults, commissioned by Braga Media Arts for INDEX – Biennial of Art and Technology.