Galeria Digital do Porto

Praça da Trindade

Cora

Diana Policarpo

Soundscape, approx. duration 10'

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Recommendations

For a better experience, we recommend the use of headphones.

Synopsis

'Cora' proposes the creation of an experimental soundscape based on the mapping of the Douro Carboniferous Basin, with a special focus on São Pedro da Cova. This territory, marked by mining extraction, environmental contamination and stories of resistance, reveals itself as an acoustic field populated by underground voices, bearers of invisible narratives. The composition is born from a score devised from this mapping — a visual and geological score that guides the rhythms, textures and layers of the piece. The territory is thus transformed into a vibrant body, whose ecological scars and human echoes are translated into the sonic plane.

The project fuses sounds generated by mycorrhizal fungi and plants — recorded through bio-sonification processes — with fragments of human voices, creating a composition that regards sound as a gesture of listening and caring for the soil. Fungi and plants, as regenerating agents of degraded ecosystems through mycoremediation and phytoremediation, also become invisible composers, translating the subterranean into rhythm and frequency. It's about imagining a shared listening between subterranean organisms and human bodies, where listening to and healing the contaminated territory becomes a joint act. The sounds collected evoke memories of labour and resistance, especially those of women connected to the region's industrial past. These elements intertwine in a continuous sonic structure — a living score — that emerges from the contact between organisms, territory and time. "Cora" thus proposes the construction of an expanded and interspecies listening experience, transforming the sonic space into a shelter — an acoustic shell where stories, pulsations and possibilities for ecological regeneration reverberate.

Biography

Diana Policarpo (1986, Lisbon) lives and works between Lisbon and London. She is a visual artist and composer, currently developing her artistic practice between the visual arts, electroacoustic music and multimedia performance. Her work researches popular culture, health, gender politics and interspecies relations, juxtaposing the rhythmic structuring of sound as a tactile medium within the social construction of esoteric ideology.

Thanks

Bárbara Ferreira, Eliana Canha Bento, Florinda Sousa, Joana Rafael, Maria Black Soares, Maria de Almeida, Maria Fernandes, Maria Rosa dos Santos, Maria Tagarela, Mariana Duarte, Museu Mineiro de São Pedro da Cova, Odete, Patrícia Lima, Paula Vieira, Quitéria Ferreira, Rebeca Pereira, Rita Barbosa, Rita Policarpo, Rosa Martins de Sousa, Rosalina Celeste da Silva, Vanda Oliveira, Xica Aires.

How to get there

In Praça da Trindade, behind Porto's City Hall, facing the CTT store, look for the totem stand.

Coordinates

41.150451, -8.610201