Self-Uncensored [Talks on Choice] # 2 — Autocensura do sistema | 29 Março
SELF-UNCENSORED
Self-Uncensored [Talks on Choice]
A series of talks on self-censorship and choice
To what extent do we choose freely when algorithms, institutions, emotions, and norms shape our decisions? To what extent are we aware of the mechanisms that precede choice and produce self-censorship—in ourselves and in the systems we inhabit? Self-Uncensored [Talks on Choice] is a series of conversations that proposes an open and informal space for dialogue between guests responsible for provocative interventions and the public, where listening and divergence can coexist, creating bridges between visions and ways of thinking about choice and self-censorship.
It starts from the assumption that freedom implies recognizing different experiences and accepting error as part of a dialogue that makes us more aware of the mechanisms that precede choice — both individual and collective.
Self-Uncensored [Talks on Choice] is a series of conversations that proposes an open and informal space for dialogue between guests responsible for provocative interventions and the public, where listening and divergence can coexist, creating bridges between visions and ways of thinking about choice and self-censorship.
It is based on the assumption that freedom implies recognizing different experiences and accepting error as part of a dialogue that raises awareness of the mechanisms that precede choice — both individual and collective.
Direction and Curatorship: Tânia M. Guerreiro
Moderation: Maria Giulia Pinheiro
Guests: Adrian Razvan Sandru, Ana Pais, Cristina Planas Leitão, Maria Joana Almeida, João Pedro Fonseca, Josefa Pereira, Mafalda Sebastião, and Ricardo Lafuente.
Production: ORG.I.A
Support: DuplaCena
Institutional support: Lisbon City Council — Culture and Portuguese Republic — Culture, Youth, and Sports / Directorate-General for the Arts
Meeting 2 — Self-censorship of the system
Institutional, familiar, political, and media
Guests: Carolina Franco, Cristina Planas Leitão, Joana Almeida, Josefa Pereira, Ricardo Lafuente
Moderator: Maria Giulia Pinheiro
March 29 · 3pm-6pm
DuplaCena (Regueirão dos Anjos 77 A)
Conversation
In Portuguese
Free admission, no booking required
This meeting shifts the issue of choice and self-censorship to the public, institutional, and media context.
It questions how cultural institutions, algorithms, media, and legitimation devices are pressured and condition what is visible, fundable, and public — and how these frameworks produce forms of indirect structural censorship that influence individuals and society.
Guests:
• Cristina Planas Leitão - Performing Arts Programmer - Pressures and choices in cultural institutions — Between autonomy and survival: economics, power, and freedom in cultural institutions
• Ricardo Lafuente - Digital rights activist, designer, and data journalism professional - Numbers, data, algorithms in redefining truth and behavior.
• Maria Joana Almeida – Clinical Psychologist and Sexologist - Families and self-censorship
• Josefa Pereira – Choreographer and performer - Maps of Exclusion: How do predefined notions of progression and linearity in the experience and practice of artists become measures of exclusion?
• Carolina Franco - Freelance journalist and director of Shifter - Media (in)dependence — at what cost?
Moderator:
Maria Giulia Pinheiro - Writer, director, and cultural agitator
INTERVENTIONS
Moderation
Maria Giulia Pinheiro - Writer, director, and cultural agitator
Maria Giulia Pinheiro (São Paulo, 1990) is an artist of encounters, creator, playwright, director, and cultural agitator. A doctoral student at the University of Coimbra, she received the New Female Playwright Award in 2022. She is the author of six books of poetry and drama, serves as artistic director of FALA, and is one of the columnists for Público Br, a section of Público aimed at the Brazilian public in Portugal. Creator of theatrical performances such as Viemos Roubar os Vossos Maridos (We Came to Steal Your Husbands, 2025) and A Palavra Mais Bonita (The Most Beautiful Word, 2019–), and performative projects such as Todo Mundo SLAM (Everybody SLAM, 2019–) and Slam no CAM (Slam at CAM, 2025–), she also develops training spaces such as Núcleo de Dramaturgia Feminista (2017–) and ZONA lê (2014–). In 2025/26, she was the creator, curator, playwright, and performer of Laboratório de Confluências, held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation as part of the Complexo Brasil exhibition.
Guests and interventions
Cristina Planas Leitão - Performing Arts Programmer
Pressures and choices in cultural institutions — Between autonomy and survival: economics, power, and freedom in cultural institutions
How do funding, (cultural) policy, public expectations, and visibility logic explicitly or invisibly influence programming decisions? In an ecosystem marked by economic constraints, impact metrics, and political agendas, how much real freedom do cultural institutions have? What choices are possible today?
Cristina Planas Leitão is an artistic director and curator of performing arts, with a background as a performer, choreographer, and playwright. Her integrated curatorial practice focuses on the development of sustainable creative formats and the construction of new narratives in the field of performing arts, with a special interest in experimental and hybrid practices that engage with the contemporary political and social context. She advocates an artist-centered vision, promoting ethical working conditions, critical dialogue, and equity, combining artistic thinking with a structural and long-term vision.
Since April 2025, she has been the artistic director of Materiais Diversos, one of the most relevant independent Portuguese structures in accompanying artistic trajectories over the last two decades, as well as its biennial festival, Materiais Diversos. In 2026, she co-directed the pilot edition of Mula in Porto, an independent hybrid festival that transforms the performative experience into a convivial journey between sunset and sunrise.
Between 2018 and 2024, he joined the Porto Municipal Theater, successively taking on programming roles and, later, the position of Artistic and General Director of the Porto Municipal Theater, the DDD – Dias da Dança Festival, and CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva. She designed the artistic and operational model for the CAMPUS residency center, strengthened European networks, and consolidated co-production and internationalization policies, directing multidisciplinary seasons and an international dance festival.
In 2025, she co-founded the SUPERNOVÆ platform with Natalia Álvarez Simó, dedicated to artistic and strategic consulting and the promotion of good curatorial practices. She is also a playwright for Marco da Silva Ferreira's creations, a nominee for the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation's SEDA - Salaviza European Dance Award, and coordinator of the Artistic Research Module for the Dance degree at ArtEZ (Netherlands).
As a creator and educator, she sees art as a gesture of resistance and affection, combining critical thinking, research, and artistic practice in the construction of more sustainable and transformative cultural ecosystems.
Ricardo Lafuente - Digital rights activist, designer, and data journalism professional
Numbers, data, algorithms in the redefinition of truth and behavior.
How our collective horizons are limited by editorial decisions, in the form of algorithms and other technopolitical devices.
Ricardo Lafuente is a designer, coder, hacker culture enthusiast, and digital rights activist. Together with Ana Isabel Carvalho, he runs the data journalism agency J++ Porto and the design studio Manufactura Independente. He was a professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto and at the Porto School of Arts, teaching courses on design, web, digital interfaces, hardware hacking, and copyright theory. He was involved in the founding and cultivation (and in some cases the decline) of several communities that provided much-needed spaces and trends: the Hacklaviva hackerspace (2009-2012), the Transparência Hackday Portugal/Date With Data meetings (2010-2020), Open Knowledge Portugal (2015-2020), D3 (2017-), Tilde.pt (2020-), and Ciberlândia (2022-). In all of them, he was involved in both facilitation and technical infrastructure, always using free software tools. As co-founder and current president of D3, he has coordinated the association's public intervention in matters such as metadata, COVID apps, communications secrecy, net neutrality, copyright, and, more recently, the controversial Worldcoin.
Self-Uncensored [Talks on Choice]
A series of talks on self-censorship and choice
To what extent do we choose freely when algorithms, institutions, emotions, and norms shape our decisions? To what extent are we aware of the mechanisms that precede choice and produce self-censorship—in ourselves and in the systems we inhabit? Self-Uncensored [Talks on Choice] is a series of conversations that proposes an open and informal space for dialogue between guests responsible for provocative interventions and the public, where listening and divergence can coexist, creating bridges between visions and ways of thinking about choice and self-censorship.
It starts from the assumption that freedom implies recognizing different experiences and accepting error as part of a dialogue that makes us more aware of the mechanisms that precede choice — both individual and collective.
Self-Uncensored [Talks on Choice] is a series of conversations that proposes an open and informal space for dialogue between guests responsible for provocative interventions and the public, where listening and divergence can coexist, creating bridges between visions and ways of thinking about choice and self-censorship.
It is based on the assumption that freedom implies recognizing different experiences and accepting error as part of a dialogue that raises awareness of the mechanisms that precede choice — both individual and collective.
Direction and Curatorship: Tânia M. Guerreiro
Moderation: Maria Giulia Pinheiro
Guests: Adrian Razvan Sandru, Ana Pais, Cristina Planas Leitão, Joana Almeida, João Pedro Fonseca, Josefa Pereira, Mafalda Sebastião, and Ricardo Lafuente.
Production: ORG.I.A
Support: DuplaCena
Institutional support: Lisbon City Council — Culture and Portuguese Republic — Culture, Youth, and Sports / Directorate-General for the Arts
Meeting 2 — Self-censorship of the system
Institutional, political, and media
Guests: Carolina Franco, Cristina Planas Leitão, Joana Almeida, Josefa Pereira, Ricardo Lafuente
Moderator: Maria Giulia Pinheiro
March 29 · 3pm-6pm
DuplaCena (Regueirão dos Anjos 77 A)
Conversation
In Portuguese
Free admission, no booking required
This meeting shifts the issue of choice and self-censorship to the public, institutional, and media context.
It questions how cultural institutions, algorithms, media, and legitimation devices are pressured and condition what is visible, fundable, and public — and how these frameworks produce forms of indirect structural censorship that influence individuals and society.
Guests:
• Cristina Planas Leitão - Performing Arts Programmer - Pressures and choices in cultural institutions — Between autonomy and survival: economics, power, and freedom in cultural institutions
• Ricardo Lafuente - Digital rights activist, designer, and data journalism professional - Numbers, data, algorithms in redefining truth and behavior.
• Maria Joana Almeida – Clinical Psychologist and Sexologist - Families and self-censorship
• Josefa Pereira – Choreographer and performer - Maps of Exclusion: How do predefined notions of progression and linearity in the experience and practice of artists become measures of exclusion?
• Carolina Franco - Freelance journalist and director of Shifter - Media (in)dependence — at what cost?
Moderator:
Maria Giulia Pinheiro - Writer, director, and cultural agitator
INTERVENTIONS
Moderation
Maria Giulia Pinheiro - Writer, director, and cultural agitator
Maria Giulia Pinheiro (São Paulo, 1990) is an artist of encounters, creator, playwright, director, and cultural agitator. A doctoral student at the University of Coimbra, she received the New Female Playwright Award in 2022. She is the author of six books of poetry and drama, serves as artistic director of FALA, and is one of the columnists for Público Br, a section of Público aimed at the Brazilian public in Portugal. Creator of theatrical performances such as Viemos Roubar os Vossos Maridos (We Came to Steal Your Husbands, 2025) and A Palavra Mais Bonita (The Most Beautiful Word, 2019–), and performative projects such as Todo Mundo SLAM (Everybody SLAM, 2019–) and Slam no CAM (Slam at CAM, 2025–), she also develops training spaces such as Núcleo de Dramaturgia Feminista (2017–) and ZONA lê (2014–). In 2025/26, she was the creator, curator, playwright, and performer of Laboratório de Confluências, held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation as part of the Complexo Brasil exhibition.
Guests and interventions
Cristina Planas Leitão - Performing Arts Programmer
Pressures and choices in cultural institutions — Between autonomy and survival: economics, power, and freedom in cultural institutions
How do funding, (cultural) policy, public expectations, and visibility logic explicitly or invisibly influence programming decisions? In an ecosystem marked by economic constraints, impact metrics, and political agendas, how much real freedom do cultural institutions have? What choices are possible today?
Cristina Planas Leitão is an artistic director and curator of performing arts, with a background as a performer, choreographer, and playwright. Her integrated curatorial practice focuses on the development of sustainable creative formats and the construction of new narratives in the field of performing arts, with a special interest in experimental and hybrid practices that engage with the contemporary political and social context. She advocates an artist-centered vision, promoting ethical working conditions, critical dialogue, and equity, combining artistic thinking with a structural and long-term vision.
Since April 2025, she has been the artistic director of Materiais Diversos, one of the most relevant independent Portuguese structures in accompanying artistic trajectories over the last two decades, as well as its biennial festival, Materiais Diversos. In 2026, she co-directed the pilot edition of Mula in Porto, an independent hybrid festival that transforms the performative experience into a convivial journey between sunset and sunrise.
Between 2018 and 2024, he joined the Porto Municipal Theater, successively taking on programming roles and, later, the position of Artistic and General Director of the Porto Municipal Theater, the DDD – Dias da Dança Festival, and CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva. She designed the artistic and operational model for the CAMPUS residency center, strengthened European networks, and consolidated co-production and internationalization policies, directing multidisciplinary seasons and an international dance festival.
In 2025, she co-founded the SUPERNOVÆ platform with Natalia Álvarez Simó, dedicated to artistic and strategic consulting and the promotion of good curatorial practices. She is also a playwright for Marco da Silva Ferreira's creations, a nominee for the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation's SEDA - Salaviza European Dance Award, and coordinator of the Artistic Research Module for the Dance degree at ArtEZ (Netherlands).
As a creator and educator, she sees art as a gesture of resistance and affection, combining critical thinking, research, and artistic practice in the construction of more sustainable and transformative cultural ecosystems.
Ricardo Lafuente - Digital rights activist, designer, and data journalism professional
Numbers, data, algorithms in the redefinition of truth and behavior.
How our collective horizons are limited by editorial decisions, in the form of algorithms and other technopolitical devices. I'll think about this tomorrow and let you know if I have any adjustments. Feel free to nudge me in any specific direction, if you see fit!
Ricardo Lafuente is a designer, coder, hacker culture enthusiast, and digital rights activist. Together with Ana Isabel Carvalho, he runs the data journalism agency J++ Porto and the design studio Manufactura Independente. He was a professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto and at the Porto School of Arts, teaching courses on design, web, digital interfaces, hardware hacking, and copyright theory. He was involved in the founding and cultivation (and in some cases the decline) of several communities that provided much-needed spaces and trends: the Hacklaviva hackerspace (2009-2012), the Transparência Hackday Portugal/Date With Data meetings (2010-2020), Open Knowledge Portugal (2015-2020), D3 (2017-), Tilde.pt (2020-), and Ciberlândia (2022-). In all of them, he was involved in both facilitation and technical infrastructure, always using free software tools. As co-founder and current president of D3, he has coordinated the association's public intervention in matters such as metadata, COVID apps, communications secrecy, net neutrality, copyright, and, more recently, the controversial Worldcoin.
Carolina Franco - Freelance journalist and director of Shifter
Media (in)dependence — at what cost?
Carolina Franco has written about culture, youth, gender, and human rights. She increasingly believes that everything is connected. She is a journalist and director of Shifter. She studied Communication Sciences in Porto, has a postgraduate degree in Art Curation and a master's degree in Anthropology-Visual Cultures from NOVA FSCH, with a thesis on trans* representation in audiovisual media. Between 2022 and 2025, she collaborated with the media literacy project PÚBLICO na Escola. Her work can also be read in Gerador, Revista MIL, FlanZine, and PÚBLICO. In 2024, she co-founded the Perpétuas project.
Maria Joana Almeida – Clinical Psychologist and Sexologist
Families and self-censorship
We are born into a house, sometimes a home, welcomed by our mothers, our fathers, our families, our villages, even if we live in big cities. Each person learns what love is, what it means to be welcomed, the frustrations of being alive, in these family contexts, in these nests made to welcome us or that are made by our presence. Who we are—what kind of baby, child, young person, adult we are—what kind of person we become, and what others make us become, is the result of a process of autonomy, resistance, and rebellion against a family system that we adopt, that we censor, like critical, silent, (un)conscious voices, that we sing in chorus or shout out of tune. A family is always more than the sum of its parts, of its members. We are a “we” that offers opportunities for growth to an “I.” Each individual carries within themselves the legacies and traditions of their particular family system, but breaks with it, changes it, revolutionizes it in their own way. Sometimes we censor ourselves so as not to disappoint family expectations and values, other times we create new systems of resistance in which the “I” grows and changes the whole mechanism. Will personal autonomy and individual satisfaction always require a break with the family system in order to start over? How much do we censor the “I” in favor of the “we,” of others? With lessons learned and questions from clinical practice in sexual and gender diversity, neurodiversity, and neurodivergence, we will reflect on the relationship between the person and their systems, self-awareness, and self-censorship in relation to others and society.
Clinical Psychologist and Sexologist. She studied at the University of Coimbra (2003) and the University of Louvain-la-Neuve (2000) in Belgium. She completed a Master's degree in sexology at Lusófona University (2012) and a postgraduate degree in neurodiversity at the University of Lisbon (2021). She is an EMDR therapist in training, with integrative interventions to support trauma. She has worked with non-governmental organizations in human rights and sexual health, such as the Association for Family Planning (2005), GAT- Group of Activists for HIV/AIDS Treatment (2008), and ILGA Portugal (2010). She works in the private sector with Workplace Options, supporting employees in mental health, training, crisis intervention, and psychosocial support, as well as supervising clinicians (2026). She is a psychologist collaborating with UNICEF in Portuguese-speaking countries in West and Central Africa, providing psychological counseling to international humanitarian workers, training in mental health, and preparing for emergency situations (2024).
Her most regular and stable work continues to be in private practice and at the Centro Diferenças of the Portuguese Association of People with Trisomy 21, where she provides therapy to individuals, couples, and families.
Josefa Pereira – Choreographer and performer
Maps of Exclusion: How do preconceptions of progression and linearity in the experience and practice of artists become measures of exclusion?
In view of the theme proposed in this relationship between Institution and Censorship - Self-Censorship of the System, a question about the notion of the artist's productive linearity, linearity as successful career progression, and how this relates to factors such as age, territorial belonging, gender, among other mechanisms.
Questioning and reflecting on how institutions predetermine factors such as the artist's age, progressive productive linearity, obsolescence of creations vs. prevalence of support for debuts, notions such as emerging artist x established artist, gender issues, issues of geographical-territorial belonging, intertwine to create mechanisms of invisibility, inaccessibility, exclusion, etc.
Josefa Pereira (BR/PT) is a choreographer and performer. She lives and works in Portugal, and also moves between creations and collaborations in São Paulo, the city where she grew up and trained artistically. She attended PACAP at Forum Dança, and completed her master's degree at DAS Choreography - AHK (NL) with a scholarship from the Gulbenkian Foundation. She graduated in Dance and Performance at PUC-SP (BR) as a PROUNI program scholarship recipient.
Her attention is focused on listening and the sensitivity that emerges from the relationships and frictions between the different materials involved in the creation of a choreographic gesture. With a strong focus on practice and research, her artistic approach starts from the use of available materials, which can reveal themselves to be fabulous, enchanted, or monstrous. She values intersectional, collaborative, and cooperative processes capable of generating transformations and activating other political and poetic potentials.
In addition to her authorial work and dance teaching activities, which include classes and workshops, Josefa works as a performer and collaborates in the field of dramaturgy, developing methodologies to accompany artists in their various creative processes.
Currently, she has been dedicating herself to the creation and circulation of her works, including the trilogy Bestiário PINK and Chama Chama Chama, and a new creation scheduled to premiere in 2027. She is part of collective and collaborative contexts such as Piscina, Matéria Leve, and Matilha.
