BIOGRAPHIES

Filipe Pais is a researcher-professor and curator. His work explores how contemporary art and design question and represent the complex relationships between technology, play, human and non-human behavior, digital materiality, algorithmic sovereignty, and ecology.

Filipe is an associate professor and co-director of the research laboratory "Centre for Non-Anthropocentric Play" at Noroff University College in Norway. He is also an associate researcher at the Reflective Interaction group at École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and an associate lecturer at the London College of Communication, UAL, in London.

Some of the international group exhibitions that Filipe organized as a curator and co-curator, in connection with his research, include Playmode (Lisbon, Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Brasília, 2019–2023), From bits to Paper (Strasbourg, 2016), and Re-enter Lisbon (Lisbon, 2012).

Natural Contract Lab (Maria Lúcia Correia) is a transdisciplinary artistic practice cultivating an ongoing systemic relationship with bodies of water undergoing profound ecological transformation. NCL’s artistic interventions are hybrid, adaptable, and emerge in liminal zones, responding to each river as a dialogue, a collaboration, and a form of reciprocal sensing.

With the aim of imagining new forms of multispecies justice, NCL has developed an ongoing Protocol of Reciprocal Care, intertwining the group’s transdisciplinary practice with restorative justice, river rights, ecological grief, sensory scenography, participatory ritual practices, and walking methodologies. NCL functions as a body of care, inviting participation in walking-with rituals, ecological grief ceremonies, collective storytelling, Agoras, River Guardian Schools, and other actions that emerge in collaboration with the river and its kin.

Natural Contract Lab was initiated in 2021 by Maria Lúcia Cruz Correia in ongoing co-creation with a transdisciplinary group, including the SZenne river (ally/teacher), vinny jones (sensory scenography/dramaturgy), Brunilda Pali (restorative justice), Lode Vranken (design/philosophy), and Margarida Mendes (research/sonic guidance).
Website: www.naturalcontractlab.com

Margarida Mendes is a researcher, artist, curator, and educator. Her practice explores ecological mediation, focusing on the intersection of visual arts, experimental cinema, sound practices, and environmental humanities. She creates transdisciplinary forums, exhibitions, and experimental works in which alternative modes of education and attentive practices can catalyse political imagination and restorative action.
She has been part of the curatorial teams for the 11th Gwangju Biennale, 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, 11th Liverpool Biennale, and 3rd Porto Design Biennale. She has directed several educational platforms, including escuelita, an informal school at the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M) in Madrid; The Barber Shop, an artistic project space in Lisbon dedicated to transdisciplinary research; and the ecological research platform Matter in Flux.
Margarida holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London, and is a guest lecturer on the Geo-Design Master’s programme at the Design Academy Eindhoven.

Catarina Vasconcelos is a filmmaker and designer. Her film A Metamorfose dos Pássaros (2020) premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival. She has also directed the short films Metáfora ou a Tristeza Virada do Avesso (2013), awarded Best International Short Film at the Parisian festival Cinéma du Réel, and Nocturno para uma Floresta (2023), which premiered at the Locarno Festival.
She holds a degree in Design from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon, a postgraduate diploma in Visual Anthropology from ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon, and a Master’s in Visual Communication from the Royal College of Art. She is co-founder of the design studio ilhas studio. https://ilhastudio.com/

Patrícia Vieira is a Coordinating Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) at the University of Coimbra. Her research areas include Iberian and Latin American Literature and Cinema, Utopia Studies, and Environmental Humanities. Her most recent book is the edited volume The Environment in Brazilian Culture: Literature, Cinema and the Arts (forthcoming). She coordinates the ECO project – Animals and Plants in Cultural Productions about the Amazon Basin, funded by a European Research Council (ERC) grant, and co-coordinates the project Resilient Forest Cities in the Brazilian Amazon, funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation. For more information, see: http://www.patriciavieira.net/

Mariana Pestana works as an Assistant Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, where she is involved in the research projects Bauhaus of the Seas Sails and Tidal Arts, which, through cultural initiatives, reimagine the relationship between cities and various aquatic ecosystems. She curated the exhibition Interespécies, on display at the MAC-CCB Architecture Centre (2025).
She was the general curator of the 5th Istanbul Design Biennale Empathy Revisited: Designs for More Than One (2020–21), overseeing interventions in public space, installations, research projects, and a series of films exploring interpersonal and interspecies solidarity. She has worked as a curator in the Department of Architecture, Design and Digital at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
She is the founder of the interdisciplinary studio The Decorators, which designs objects, events, and buildings through collaborative processes that investigate notions of place, community, and commensality.