Talk
Along the Vein
João Melo
14 May 2026 ● 18H30 ● Ilídio Pinho Auditorium
Art + Tech x Cosmos =
Concerts, conferences, exhibitions and performances 2026
14 May 2026 ● 20h00 ● AIP Blackbox ● Nuno Loureiro
Along the Vein maps the cosmic body. The talk begins with the sculpture series Adapted Creatures - organic and electronic remnants that emerge and ferment in sea foam. It then centres on Undercurrents, an installation made with Diogo Martins that traces data extraction as a material continuation of mineral extraction. Drawing on the observation and documentation of abandoned tungsten mines in central Portugal, the work imagines the miner as an evolving coded being.
Data mining is dark and tangled, like the hidden workings of a mine - a metabolism that updates ruins and ways of living. Along the Vein follows the body-mine through internal coordinates and shifting scales. Myth shapes reality as a double-edged ancestral force: a ritual of enchantment and control, but also a space of liberation.
Art + Tech x Cosmos =
The programme brings together artists, creative technologists, curators, writers, and thinkers with contributions extending across several thematic constellations: from spiritual and the mythic, socio-technological infrastructures and (de)colonial logics, to speculative futures. Through these contributions, the programme explores the potential to reshape how we think about human and nonhuman creativity, how we experience the convergence of art and technology, and how their imaginative possibilities can inspire new cultural practices and worlds. Curated by Joasia Krysa, Nuno Crespo, Daniel Ribas and José Alberto Gomes
GUESTS
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JOÃO MELO João Melo (1995, Porto) lives and works in Porto. His practice crosses sculpture, installation, painting, drawing, and audiovisual media. Starting from the body as an adaptive infrastructure, his work moves between internal and systemic spaces. It addresses extraction, digital agency, identity and ruin, and seeks to understand how emerging power structures, particularly technological ones, operate in shaping bodies, cultures and landscapes. These operations insert a mutable and speculative dimension into the works, activating fields of vibration that bring forth hybrid creatures and ritualistic configurations. |
