Talks

Recent talks, performances, and lectures by Berlin-based Brazilian artist Luiza Prado de O. Martins. Her practice examines issues of decolonisation, gender and sexuality, indigenous knowledges, botany and herbal medicine, through food, text, sculpture, performance, and video.

Talks and Interviews

2021 \\ SOLOMON GUGGENHEIM FOUNDATION \\ THE WORLD AROUND — FOCUS: LAND

This online public program focuses on artists, researchers, designers, and architects whose work makes visible the often invisible infrastructures and systems that are transforming lives and territories across the Americas today. Featuring commissioned films and live conversation, the event presents long-term projects and in-process research, artworks and activism that address the complex post-colonial issues of land use in the twenty-first century, and shares campaigns and designs for a more equitable future. Participants include environmental activists focused on indigenous food sovereignty and water equity; filmmakers and artists interrogating literal and metaphorical mining for digital currencies; and climate leaders with visionary ideas for a geoengineered future. Session 2 "Technology" is moderated by artist Luiza Prado de O. Martins, and brings together Simon Denny and Holly Jean Buck.


2021 \\ ARS ELECTRONICA \\ BRANCH MAGAZINE SYMPOSIUM: SOLARPUNK AND OTHER WORLDS

What kind of stories should we be telling in the context of a climate-changed world, and what role does technology and the internet play in them?

This panel will feature discussions focusing on Solarpunk as movement that seeks to imagine what an environmentally and socially just world could look like, and how to get there. Solarpunk offers a courageous and pragmatic counterpoint to more pessimistic storytelling, like dystopian cyberpunk. The panelists may also discuss Other Worlds, alternatives to current paradigms that go beyond where the solarpunk imaginary takes us.

The discussion will span topics such as: decolonialism and climate justice, ecological economics, inhuman intelligences, agencies and assemblages, humans as observers, collaborators and stewards, technology and the internet, what it means to embrace the unknown, and more.

Host: Christine Lariviere (CA) Climate Communications; Speakers: Luiza Prado (BR), artist, writer, and researcher, Sarah Friend (CA) artist and software developer, Jay Springett (UK) strategist and writer


2021 \\ NEUE MYSTERIEN: ANNETTE FRICK UND LUIZA PRADO

Zum ersten Mal wird 2021 der Dieter-Ruckhaberle-Förderpreis in Form einer Ausstellung der Preisträgerinnen von 2019 und 2020 der Öffentlichkeit vorgestellt. Der Fachbereich Kunst und Geschichte Reinickendorf präsentiert in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Künstlerhof Frohnau e.V. die Schau „Neue Mysterien: Annette Frick und Luiza Prado. Dieter-Ruckhaberle-Förderpreis“ in der GalerieETAGE des Museum Reinickendorf. In drei Räumen werden Multimediainstallationen und Fotografien der vergangenen Preisträgerinnen mit einer Gegenüberstellung von Werken des verstorbenen Preisnamensgebers Dieter Ruckhaberle gezeigt.


2020 \\ THINKING BEYOND PAPANEK: DECOLONISING DESIGN EDUCATION \\ DESIGN MUSEUM DEN BOSCH

Excerpts of a talk with Michael Andrés Forero and Ama van Dantzig, held as part of the public program of the exhition “Thinking Beyond Papanek” at the Design Museum Den Bosch.


2020 \\ IN WEAVING SHARED SOIL: LUIZA PRADO IN CONVERSATION WITH MILENA BONILLA

The second iteration of In Weaving Shared Soil – a project initiated this summer by artist Luiza Prado – will now move indoors at The Institute for Endotic Research, taking the shape of a living installation featuring plants and flowers associated with the works of the writers and poets Gloria Anzaldúa, Lorna Goodison, and Layli Long Soldier. By promoting this symbolic encounter between the works of women whose lives and works engage with the effects of patriarchal and colonial power structures, the garden aims to discuss issues of decolonization, care and affection, reproductive and domestic work, and community building in times of extreme political instability.


2020 \\ IN WEAVING SHARED SOIL: LUIZA PRADO IN CONVERSATION WITH PATI SAYURI

The second iteration of In Weaving Shared Soil – a project initiated this summer by artist Luiza Prado – will now move indoors at The Institute for Endotic Research, taking the shape of a living installation featuring plants and flowers associated with the works of the writers and poets Gloria Anzaldúa, Lorna Goodison, and Layli Long Soldier. By promoting this symbolic encounter between the works of women whose lives and works engage with the effects of patriarchal and colonial power structures, the garden aims to discuss issues of decolonization, care and affection, reproductive and domestic work, and community building in times of extreme political instability.


2020 \\ ABANDON NORMAL DEVICES \\ TOXICITY’S REACH \\ CURATOR DANI ADMISS IN CONVERSATION WITH LUIZA PRADO

Drawing from her curatorial research, Toxicity’s Reach curator Dani Admiss gave audiences a chemo-ethnographic tour of the show. Interweaving an online curators tour, stories from the exposure repository, and further research on the River Mersey, Admiss thinks about disruption, exposure and erasure at different scales. Dani was joined in conversation by artist Luiza Prado de. O Martins, whose work The Sea Collapsed Into the Pleasures of the Sand you can explore via the Toxicity’s Reach online exhibition.


2020 \\ REVOLUTION FROM THE KITCHEN: TECHNOLOGIES OF RESISTANCE AND RADICAL CARE

A conversation between Edna Bonhomme, Luiza Prado de O. Martins, and Nazila Kivi on technologies of resistance and radical care. In this conversation on technologies of resistance and radical care, we will start by the foundations of decolonial practice by introducing the interconnectedness of coloniality, capitalism and reproduction and introduce a few core concepts of decolonial theory. From here we take off to discuss reproduction, care work and race/racialization, and how art workers Luiza Prado and Edna Bonhomme each process and present technologies of care, ancestral memory, cooking and contemplation in their imaginations about a radically different world. On how music, food, speculative fabulation and care work can contribute to healing from intergenerational trauma and reclaim lost archives. The talk is hosted by Alt_Cph20, Patterns in Resistance and co-produced with Salon Hysteria as part of the summer seminar series Hysterical Utopias


2020 \\ SALON DIGITAL WITH LUIZA PRADO

Dokumentation des 25. Salon Digital -Vortragsreihe an der Hochschule für Künste Bremen am 16.06.2020.

“A Topography of Excesses” is an artistic research project that investigates technologies of birth control vis à vis colonial processes of production of race, gender, and sexuality. This lecture examines how the conception of ‘excess’ — attributed to those marginalized by Eurocentric framings of body, knowledge, sexuality, and subjectivity — is fundamentally linked to colonial violences. In this project, the artist offers a historical reframing meant to subvert and reject colonial narratives, and to nurture conversations on the medicalization of bodies, notions of ‘radical care,’ the poetic dimensions of herbal remedies, and a re-centering of indigenous and folk knowledges.


2020 \\ THE COUNCILS OF THE PLURIVERSAL: AFFECTIVE TEMPORALITIES OF REPRODUCTION AND CLIMATE CHANGE.

As conversations on the climate crisis and its impact gained more prominence in recent years, the notion of overpopulation as a key factor for the increase of global temperatures has once more moved into the spotlight. This concern isn’t new; for centuries, overpopulation has been blamed for a number of things — from poverty and hunger, to the spread of diseases, to conflict. Concurrently, birth control or sterilization have long been presented as solutions to any one of these issues. In this conversation, artists and activists involved in the development of the project “The Councils of the Pluriversal” will discuss these entanglements between the climate crisis, reproduction, ancestral and future histories, land and belonging, and radical forms of care. 

In this lecture, I invited sociologist, activist and filmmaker Dagmar Schultz and anthropologist, activist and artist Amazoner Arawak to speak about these issues during Transmediale 2020. Thank you to the festival for the support.


2019 \\ AKADEMIE DER BILDENDE KÜNSTE MÜNCHEN \\ PANEL: EXCESS, GENDER, AND RACIALIZATION

Panel with Amber Jamila Musser. Talk can be accessed here.


2019 \\ A CONVERSATION WITH METAHAVEN

For the 2019 New Infinity program I had the honor and privilege to write a piece titled “Tender Disasters,” about Dutch artist duo Metahaven’s film “Elektra” for the booklet published by the Berliner Festspiele. In this talk, Metahaven and I discuss our respective works and practices in relation to each other, and the topics touched by the film and the essay — from the climate crisis, to colonial power, to childhood memories, to world-building.


2019 \\ A TOPOGRAPHY OF EXCESSES

“A Topography of Excesses” is an artistic research project that investigates technologies of birth control vis à vis colonial processes of production of race, gender, and sexuality. In this lecture, I discuss how the excesses attributed to marginalized folks by Eurocentric conceptions of body, knowledge, sexuality, and subjectivity are fundamentally tied to colonial violences. Throughout this project, I propose a reframing of history meant to subvert and reject colonial narratives, and to nurture conversations on the medicalization of bodies, notions of ‘radical care,’ the poetic dimensions of herbal remedies, and a re-centering of indigenous and folk knowledges.

This lecture was delivered at PACT Zollverein in Essen, Germany, as part of the conference Blue Skies – Bodies in Trouble.


2019 \\ KAPITALKS \\ A TOPOGRAPHY OF EXCESSES


2017 \\ IF SINGULARITY, SINGULAR, BECAME SINGULARITIES, PLURAL.

Performative lecture concived and delivered with Pedro Oliveira at Transmediale 2017, as part of the Singularities panel, curated and moderated by Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke. Joining us on this panel were also Dorothy R. Santos and Rasheedah Phillips.