Dissemination

“NEGENTROPIA: The Last Man on a Devastated Earth” to be presented at an international festival

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“NEGENTROPIA: The Last Man on a Devastated Earth“, a post-techno operatic experience directed by Hugo Paquete, a CIAC researcher, will debut at the Centre Court Festival of Sound-Based Arts in Cologne, Germany, on July 31 at 8:00 PM.

In a disruptive universe, a last man, in delirium, contemplates his remaining days, seeking a revelation in his terminal breath. This extravagant form of survival unfolds on a radical and arid earth, filled with collapsed fragments, once symbols of technological monumentality, power, and civilizational progress. These elements, erased by the erosion of contemporary time, persist as cosmic dust in the last man’s desire for survival.

The piece was originally developed as a site-specific work for the dome of the Porto Planetarium and will now be adapted to the tower of a Lutheran Church in Germany. The presented version retains its site-specific and performative nature.

On stage, baritone Rui Baeta, embodying “the last man,” will be accompanied by Hugo Paquete’s electronic manipulations.

The full version of the project also features special guest musicians, including Cláudio de Pina, Pedro Carvalho, and Ianina Khmelik on violin. The work includes a team of actors, performers, and noise generators, such as Bruno Sousa, Amanda Duda, Alex Alvão, Delrik Borba, Flora Gouveia, Rita Rocha, Rodrigo Guimarães, and Leticia Arlandis, who assume the role of human echoes, evoking memories of humanity lost between past and future.

Supported by CIAC, the project explores concepts of radical ecology, astronomy, science, mysticism and death, imaginary and mysterious traditions to unravel the limits of the self in the face of the abyss. It seeks to draw from the technological cathartic ritual, the voice on stage, where myth, the transcendent, the primordial, and ritual shape panic and hysteria as operative concepts before the apocalyptic, in an aesthetic approach of disciplinary and disruptive intersections.

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