Umbigo headed to Braga to speak to the INDEX Biennale of Art and Technology curators.

The INDEX Biennale returns to Braga from May 9 to 19 for its second edition under the banner Coexistence, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Carnation Revolution. Striving to forge ties between technology, democracy and freedom – “where the former is at once nourishment and tension for the latter two”. The biennale features around 50 proposals that range from the areas of Performance, Thinking, Exhibition and Mediation, spanning several venues across the city.

The artistic director is Luís Fernandes (also in charge of the performance programme), with co-curators Liliana Coutinho (Thinking), Mariana Pestana (Exhibition) and Sara Borges (Mediation), with whom we spoke about this second edition of the biennale.

Before turning our attention to this new and second edition of INDEX, perhaps we should take a step back to the beginning, to the Biennale’s very roots. As this is the second edition, after the first in 2022, when and how did INDEX come about?

Luís Fernandes: INDEX emerged as an idea when Braga applied to join UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network for Media Arts. In the wake of that bid, we set out to establish an event that would in fact have this magnitude, to look at the relationship between art and technology from a different viewpoint from what was already happening at some events in the city, namely the Semibreve Festival, which did so from the specific perspective of experimental music and the purer digital arts, so to speak. We felt that there was a shortage of programme proposals in which technology was a key topic of discussion and which could bring together several types of artistic practice, namely the visual arts, conversation and thought, as well as the performance component. With this in mind, INDEX launched its first edition in 2022, with a beta edition in 2019.

So, there was this sort of beta version, something highly interesting in this sort of event. Could you tell us about this process (the creation procedure) and how do you test and “feel out” the audience for a Biennale?

Luís Fernandes: The beta edition idea sprang up when we thought we were proposing an unconventional format and field of study, given the peripheral nature of a city like Braga, in which, albeit very prone to audacious proposals, no event had ever been tested on a larger scale and which included very different areas, or, in this case, highly diverse ways of presenting work. We always felt that building the idea of a biennale could involve a test edition – this beta in 2019 – and, the following year, in 2020, a series of discussion and reflection moments to which we gave the name of building an INDEX, with widely differing guests, such as the late Karen Oschenslager, who was the director of Media Lab Prado, João Ribas, the artist Marcel Weber or the filmmaker Salomé Lamas. We held a series of discussions in which we brought to the forefront issues that are usually involved in the relationship between art and technology, namely the prevalence of technology, which sometimes overshadows some of the artistic and aesthetic appeal. In short, a whole series of discussions that were instrumental in shaping the thoughts behind what was then the first edition in 2022. In this case, it was also important to work with my colleagues Liliana Coutinho and Mariana Pestana, who added much to the structure and proposal, and naturally the programme choices themselves.

Let’s discuss that exchange. The biennale is curated jointly by Sara Borges, Liliana Coutinho and Mariana Pestana. Apart from this teamwork, how does INDEX differ from other art Portuguese biennales?

Mariana Pestana: INDEX is unique for being an art biennale that deals with the intersection between art and technology. In that regard, it always has a particular spotlight. Then there are the three equally crucial elements of the biennale: an exhibition component, a performance component and a thinking component. These three axes are always dealt with together, along thematic guidelines defined by the curators at the start. This is interesting too: the dialogue between these different biennale styles. Lastly, this is a biennale that also spreads throughout the city. And this is very interesting as it takes place not in a museum setting, but in different venues, from historic houses, to the Theatro Circo, to the Tibães Monastery, all of which have their own historical backgrounds, ambience and atmospheres, but which also dialogue with the pieces in different ways and allow people to move around the city.

Probably this question is very much a follow-up to the previous one, drawing Liliana Coutinho into our conversation. The synopsis of the biennale’s presentation states that its programmatic areas alternate between Performance, Thinking, Exhibition and Mediation… How do you organise proposals in a programme that you want to be eclectic?

Liliana Coutinho: There is dialogue and an aligned programme which, at the same time, has its autonomy. Some artists and guests take part in all the programme lines, others do not. There were some parallels triggered between different moments – and others that, as is the case with the entire creative process of a curatorship, emerged almost unexpectedly while weaving the relationships (thematic, aesthetic and the way they are laid out in the venues and time of this Biennale) between the artistic and thought proposals.

Braga is a young city, a UNESCO Creative City, it will be the 2025 Portuguese Capital of Culture, following Aveiro (also in the north of the country)… How did these factors influence the Biennale’s design and, as a result, the programme?

Luís Fernandes: Right down to the city’s profile, I would say that its young nature combines, in a way, this almost preconceived idea that it’s a conservative place – which it is, of course – but also a city with a significant penchant for technology and innovation. When I talk about technology and innovation, I’m not just referring to it from an artistic perspective, but also in areas that specifically concern technology, such as the University of Minho, which is highly involved in information technology, or the Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory, for research purposes. We have always felt that there was a duality between a traditionally and historically conservative city and, at the same time, one that is a little ahead of the curve in some realms. At the same time, it’s a young city that has shown a growing interest in cultural dynamics, a fact reflected in its bid to become the European Capital of Culture, and which will now become the Portuguese Capital of Culture. I wouldn’t say these factors influenced the design of the Biennale, but rather its very nature. Not so much the programme itself, because it stems from topics that we identify and choose for each edition. But, at its foundation, this context was paramount.

And how is this reflected in the audience? What has this work been like (which we all know is quite complex)?

Luís Fernandes: Developing an audience, or that ability to lure audiences to proposals that are not as immediate as others, was a task that began before INDEX. In this context, I bring up a few examples, such as the Semibreve Festival, which has been putting Braga on the international scene since 2011 and, ultimately, proving that riskier proposals, if done properly, can be successful and establish themselves, even in a city that is less prone to art innovation than the major capitals. But also structures like Gnration, which has continuously been working since 2014, on the intersection between art and technology and new things in the music and sound art field. Over these 12 years, we have felt that this audience has been gradually built up and recruited, if you will. Naturally, this is an ongoing effort, it never ends, there are no promises, we never have any guarantees of success. I believe it always involves constant work and reading to consolidate our position as a city that looks ahead and promotes disruptive, quality artistic content, and that addresses issues that deserve to be discussed from the point of view and place of art.

Now that there’s a fair deal of discussion on the role of technology in transforming the labour market – Industry 4.0 or the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or AI – we are also witnessing a simultaneous return/approach to hands-on or traditional production techniques. How does INDEX embrace this dual meaning of technique? Also, how is “technology” reflected in your programme?

Mariana Pestana: This Biennale of Art and Technology is also one for critical thinking and, for this reason, it attempts to raise questions about technology and technological breakthroughs in the contemporary world. As such, this crossover between art and technology always has this critical purpose. In this particular edition, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, we have tried to focus the programme on issues related to that political event and, more specifically, on the question of citizenship.
As part of the exhibition project, we sought to develop a programme that addresses, for instance, the way in which some ideologies have transformed and are changing territories, specifically through the Diamang Archive at Museu Nogueira da Silva, or Jonas Staal’s Ilha da Ascensão project, a territory that has also been terraformed, subject to geoengineering and technological makeover. Or Kyriaki Goni, another artist exhibiting at the Tibães Monastery, where she shows how expansion into space, how these large corporations and national space programmes also conceive the exploitation of territories and materials. On the one hand, this idea of technology being at the service of certain ideologies and the effects it has on territories, people and societies, always from a coexistence perspective, based on the idea that we are not living in isolation, but always in interdependence with other people, other beings and materials.
In other words, how technology is put to work in favour of certain ideologies, on the one hand, and how, using technology, we can expand what is a citizenship project, on the other. And this is a key idea of the Exhibition Project, this notion of an expanding citizenship, that citizenship is not a foregone conclusion, or a hard-coded definition, but something that is in flux. In the Exhibition Programme, we also show how, through technology and art, we can envision and reimagine our relationship with other intelligences, the intelligences of other beings.
To that end, we should take a look at the Superflex and KWY project, also at the Tibães Monastery, but in the Garden, a proposal for interspecies architecture, but also how we can collaborate and think and coexist alongside other intelligences, such as artificial ones, as is the case here. Néstor Pestana’s project, located in the Rectory, makes us think a great deal about this, how we collaborate with artificial intelligences. There’s also a very intriguing piece by Luisa Tormenta, which deals with the digital space as an archive and memory area, and how our bodies can relate to this digital and data arena. This edition’s core idea, and that of the exhibition programme more specifically, is the notion of expanding citizenship, as a project that must continue to develop, to include more people, but also, in the future, other intelligences. And within this rationale of coexistence, of how we can coexist in the future.

The subject of this new edition is “Coexistence”, a natural and human, social and also political coexistence (as you mentioned, the Carnation Revolution is very much in evidence). How do these themes play out in the programme?

Liliana Coutinho: The programme for this INDEX edition has fluidly endeavoured to express this relationship ecosystem that forces us today to consider, when speaking of coexistence, all the aspects mentioned in the question. Being an art and technology biennale, and so persuasively present in our lives, with effects both on our ways of socialising and on the environment, it was important for us to look at the work of artists and thinkers who focus on these various levels. The connection with the Carnation Revolution commemorations seems forward-looking in this context, looking at the present and near-future challenges facing democracy today. In particular, I’m thinking of the spread of fake news, deep fakes, the choice of information based on potential clickbait numbers, but also how this can be combined with political socialisation processes that are, for instance, more transparent and participatory, among others. We reflect on the production conditions that the use of technology requires. What technological literacy processes are being implemented or not? We were also keen to consider the issue of citizenship from an ecologically wide-ranging standpoint, bringing into the debate the concept forged in the indigenous soil of Latin America of Florestania, or the question of interspecies relations – natural and artificial.

The Biennale will be held from May 9 to 19 in different venues around the city – an invitation to revisit Braga. A tricky question, but what can we point out in the programme? Or to put it another way: what cannot be missed?

Liliana Coutinho: Obviously we would like to say: everything! After all, the programme is not overly intensive, so exhibitions can be easily paired with conferences and performances. Nonetheless, we have a few suggestions. As far as the exhibitions are concerned, three new sculptures by the Danish collective Superflex, in collaboration with the Portuguese architecture studio KWY, continue their research into the notion of interspecies architecture at the Tibães Monastery. Also in the monastery, Kyriaki Goni is presenting a series of tapestries on space mining, one on wolfram and its importance in the Portuguese context. As for talks and conferences, whilst the first weekend brings us debates focusing on the issues of interspecies relations, whistleblowing and the impact of sound and war technologies on our existence, with well-known artists and thinkers, the online programme taking place during the week bridges the gap between this first moment and the second weekend, in which we aim to shed light on our understanding of what technology can be and its potential in the context of coexistence practices. I would highlight Ellen Lima Wassu, who will present an understanding of technology from the perspective of Brazilian indigenous contexts, and the Togolese architect, anthropologist and technological activist Sénamé Koffi Abgbodjinou, finishing the programme with a lecture entitled Coexistência Planetária.

Finally, a curiosity question. INDEX is a physical biennale which, albeit in Portugal, reaches a national and international audience. For future editions, should the virtual (online) arena be given a more performative stage for the Biennale?

Mariana Pestana: INDEX currently operates a physical and digital footprint in the city, and in other editions there have been specifically digital commissions. In any event, even this year, there are workshops, talks and, most importantly, programmes happening within the thinking sphere that are available online, plus all the works will be registered in photography and video, and will then also be available to view as archives.