Parallel events 2025
This year, BEAST is hosting a wide selection of parallel events, with film talks, a listening session, exhibitions, performances, a workshop and parties!
OCEAN – VALENTINA GONCHAROVA
curated by Pavla Rouskova
REITORIA DA UNIVERSIDADE DO PORTO
Opening: FRI 06.06 – 17:00
06.06 & 07.06 – FRI-SAT – 14:00-18:00
“IT SLIPS BETWEEN MY FINGERTIPS”
curated by MOFO GALLERY
OKNA
Opening: FRI 06.06 – 19:00
07.06-08.06 – FRI-SUN – 10:00-18:00
PERFORMANCE “BITS OF YOU”
curated by MOFO GALLERY
OKNA
06.06 – FRI – 19:00
PERFORMANCE “VOLCANIC SAND”
curated by MOFO GALLERY
BATALHA CENTRO DE CINEMA CAFÉ-BAR
06.06 – FRI – 23:00
OPENING PARTY
BAR – BATALHA CENTRO DE CINEMA
06.06 – FRI – 23:30 – 01:00
Alexandru + Shinrin
WORKSHOP – LOCAL TIME ONLY
curated by Simona Constantin
OKNA
08.06 – SUN – 11:00-13:00
LET´S TALK! Animation Co-production: Portugal and Eastern Europe
curated by Ema Lavrador
BATALHA CENTRO DE CINEMA CAFÉ-BAR
08.06 – SUN – 16:30
CLOSING SOIRÉE
PASSOS MANUEL
08.08 – SUN – 22:00 – 02:00
djs: boivoid, soft
vj: calgon
OCEAN – VALENTINA GONCHAROVA
REITORIA DA UNIVERSIDADE DO PORTO – 06.06 & 07.06 FRI & SAT 14:00-18:00
The listening session presents Ocean, an epic symphony for electric violin by Valentina Goncharova, played in a continuous loop. One cycle lasts an hour and a half. Listeners are welcome to enter and leave at any time.
Ocean is a large-scale composition that unfolds across eleven parts—each a brooding, mystical reflection shaped by the unique instrumentation and programmatic intent of its section. Performed with a modified electric violin, synthesizers and re-engineered homemade instruments, Valentina Goncharova creates hypnotic, slow-building soundscapes that pulse with both organic warmth and electronic intensity. Originally recorded in 1988 in close collaboration with sound engineer Igor Zubkov, the composition was released in 2022 in its complete, uncut form for the first time as part of Hidden Harmony Recordings Lost Tapes series. Restored and mastered from the original 6.3mm analog tapes, the release reflects a singular moment in experimental music history.
“Ocean is the source – simultaneously beautiful and terrible, self-sacrificing and treacherous. It holds everything. Yet, its essence can only be felt when the echoes of a lost civilization begin to fade, and we are ready to listen anew.”
“IT SLIPS BETWEEN MY FINGERTIPS” – MOFO GALLERY
OKNA – 06.06-08.06 FRI-SUN 10:00-18:00
“It slips between my fingertips” brings together Ukrainian queer artists alongside local and international voices to reflect on loss, memory, and the invisible scars of war and g3n0cide.
Fleeting memories, erased histories — we build monuments from absence, from lives sacrificed and voices silenced. What does it mean to trace the aftermath of violence when the evidence is buried, hidden, denied? The attempt to hold on, to see beyond death, becomes an act of resistance. And still, it slips between our fingertips.”
The exhibition will feature video works, performances, and a tattoo day, inviting the body itself to become a site of remembrance.
“BITS OF YOU” – MOFO GALLERY
OKNA – 06.06 FRI 19:00
As queer partners, artists, and curators of Mofo Gallery, Sasha Pixie Cold and Boji Ro bring their shared lived experience into the heart of their practice. Bits of You is a live performance rooted in intimacy, vulnerability, and the quiet power of togetherness.
Emerging from the Ukrainian queer underground, the piece explores how memory and identity are held, exchanged, and fragmented between bodies in close proximity. Part of the “It slips between my fingertips” exhibition, this performance invites the audience into a space of raw connection — an act of quiet resistance against erasure, and a celebration of queer presence through touch, ritual, and relational embodiment.
“VOLCANIC SAND” – MOFO GALLERY
BATALHA CENTRO DE CINEMA CAFÉ-BAR – 06.06 FRI 23:00
“Volcanic Sand” is a performance by Boji that fuses spoken word, live scream vocals, electric ukulele, and raw, physical sound elements – including electric tools like a drill and woodcutter. At its core is a poem written by Boji, exploring themes of love, violence, and tenderness.
Softness meets the destruction: “pushing through the sand of ground-down bones,” “herpetic flowers,” “your back, like warmed milk.” It navigates through love, the physical traces of intimacy, accompanied by fractured, layered sounds that echo both human warmth and mechanical violence.
OPENING PARTY
BATALHA CENTRO DE CINEMA CAFÉ-BAR – 06.06 FRI 23:30 – 01:00
djs: Alexandru + Shinrin
Shinrin is a Romanian DJ based in Lisbon who loves bringing energy and joy to the dancefloor. Her sound blends acid-psychedelic grooves and uplifting tech-house beats.
Alexandru has been dabbling in DJing for the past 3 years. He’s drifting through and blending different vibe-y genres. He has yet to land on a stage name.
WORKSHOP! LOCAL TIME ONLY
OKNA – 08.06 SUN 11:00-13:00
This workshop will be a co-created experience. Please bring a memory that can be explored together. It can be anything meaningful that happened to you or that you witnessed: a song, a place, a gesture, an idea, an object, a feeling. Through an anthropological lens and using tactics for connection, the group will focus on creating a deeper understanding of your item as well as a temporary infrastructure of memories shared between the participants. In the process, a research paper written by Alyssa Grossman, in relation to her movie “In the Light of Memory” (included in the film programme LOCAL TIME ONLY) will also be used.
It is highly recommend to watch the film programme to participate in the workshop – but not mandatory.
LET´S TALK! Animation Co-production: Portugal and Eastern Europe
BATALHA CENTRO DE CINEMA CAFÉ-BAR – 08.06 SUN 16:30
LET’S TALK! Animation Co-production: Portugal and Eastern Europe – invites the audience to hear directly from the filmmakers featured in the Portuguese Abroad screening, as they share their experiences of working across borders. This conversation will highlight the role
of collaboration in the creative process and the unique challenges and rewards of international co-production.
CLOSING SOIRÉE
PASSOS MANUEL – 08.06 SUN 22:00 – 02:00
boivoid, Bucharest-via-Neukölln rave enthusiast with a passion for blending eclectic musical styles, he crafts sets that are not just about rhythm, but also about emotion. His signature touch of sweet melancholia could be summed up in the sentence “tears on the dancefloor”combined with a dash of dark and divine. Are you ready to enter the boivoid?
soft, Lisbon-based. emerges in a space of desire for the lascivious glistening of night sweat. the name deceives: her soundscapes are based on a path of (lascivious) acceleration, with impacting forces of techno, acid and trance (with a tiny hint of those cool pop guilty pleasures). the rhythms in this recipe aim for ultimate seduction: for bodies to move together, incessantly.
calgon. Calgon project comes from a mixture of the analog and digital worlds, with maximum emphasis on the analog. The reproduced and mixed visuals are created in live performance, in a clubbing context. The mixture of these two worlds is between homemade HI-8 cassette recordings, analog video tables, surveillance cameras, and digital sources. The project also relies on two means of visualization (CRT and projection): these output media are necessary to produce images that create and feed themselves, thus making all performances unique and different from each other.
