The Emancipated Referent: Introductory Note

José Capela, architect, holds a PhD with the thesis Operar Conceptualmente na Arte. Operar Conceptualmente na Arquitetura (Operate conceptually in art. Operate conceptually in architecture). He has been a professor at the University of Minho since 2000, where he teaches in the architecture and theatre courses, and is a researcher at Landscape, Heritage and Territory Laboratory (Lab2PT). He is the co-founder and co-director, with Jorge Andrade, of mala voadora, and is responsible for the set design of the company’s performances. He is the author of the installation, Windows — the official Portuguese representation at the Prague Quadrennial 2019 — for which he co-edited the W: JC + JCD catalogue, with José Carlos Duarte. He curated, with João Cabeleira, the international conference "2D/3D. producing illusion" (2021).

Ana Cristina Pereira holds a PhD in cultural studies from the University of Minho, with the thesis Alteridade e Identidade na Ficção Cinematográfica em Portugal e em Moçambique (Alterity and identity in cinematographic fiction in Portugal and Mozambique; 2019). She is a post-doctoral researcher at Centre for Social Studies (University of Coimbra), a member of the (De)othering project and a collaborating researcher at Communication and Society Research Centre (University of Minho), as a member of the CulturesPast&Present project. Her principal research interests are racism, social identity, social representations and cultural memory in film and visual culture, from a post-colonial and intersectional perspective. Between 2017 and 2019 she was a researcher for the project À Margem do Cinema Português: Um Estudo Sobre o Cinema Afrodescendente Produzido em Portugal (On the margins of Portuguese cinema: a study on Afro-descendant cinema produced in Portugal).