PLASMA (Performances, Lectures, And Screenings in Media Art)​ series and UB Art Galleries present a REMOTE lecture by artist and filmmaker PEDRO NEVES MARQUES

Pedro Neves Marques (she/they) is a film director, visual artist, writer, and editor born in Lisbon, Portugal. Their multidimensional practice includes cinema, poetry, critical writings, and art. Storytelling, a devotion to science fiction and speculation, and the confessional space of intimacy and emotions are defining elements throughout their work, gateways to imagine other possible futures and clashes between competing views of nature, technology, and gender.

Neves Marques was the Official Portuguese Representation - Portugal Pavilion at the 59th La Biennale di Venezia and has been awarded a Pinchuk Future Generation Special Prize and the Present Future Art Prize. They have also received numerous awards for their films, including the Ammodo Tiger Short Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Their films have been included at the Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and their work at large has been exhibited at High Line (New York), e-flux (New York), Pérez Art Museum of Miami (Miami), Castello di Rivoli (Turin), Gasworks (London), CA2M (Madrid, with Zahy Guajajara), Tate Modern Film (London), as well as the Liverpool Biennial, Gwangju Biennale, Guangzhou Image Triennial, and the New Museum Triennial, among many others.

They are co-founders of the film production company Foi Bonita a Festa and of the poetry press Pântano Books, through which they published their first poetry collection, Sex as Care and Other Viral Poems (2020), as well as publishing the work of other authors and translating the work of CAConrad into Portuguese. They write between art, cinema, and theory regularly for e-flux journal and various publications, and edited several projects, most recently YWY, Searching for a Character Between Future Worlds: Gender, Ecology, Science Fiction (Sternberg Press, 2022).

Two of their most recent films were screened last week at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo: The Bite (2019; 26 minutes; Portuguese with English subtitles) and Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (2022; 23 minutes; Portuguese with English subtitles). In the speculative short film The Bite, the fast and deadly propagation of a mosquito-borne epidemic echoes the alarming spread of conservative political intolerance in Brazil, connecting gender, environmental, and political struggles. This is a story of transition and transmission—a reproductive story—buoyed by a scientist who shuttles between the government lab, where he genetically modifies mosquitos to stop the deadly scourge through sterilization, and a polyamorous, non-binary relationship developing in rural seclusion. Hospitality is at the heart of this desiring biopolitical tale. The Bite won best short film awards at Go Short - Nijmegen, Mix Brasil, Sicilia Queer Film Festival, and Short Waves, as well as the Kodak Prize at Moscow International Experimental Film Festival in 2020.

In Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, 2022, Mirene and André, and Carl and Vicente, are both couples in their mid-thirties. While Mirene and André struggle with their fertility, Vicente decides to undergo an experimental procedure, implanting an ovary in his body in the hopes of having a child with Carl. A love drama of speculative undertones, Becoming Male in the Middle Ages is an intimate tale about queer sexuality, bodily autonomy, reproductive desires, and the ghost of normativity. Becoming Male in the Middle Ages won the Ammodo Tiger Short Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

PLASMA is sponsored by the University at Buffalo's Department of Media Study and funding is provided by the Office of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. The series is taught and organized by Dr. Paige Sarlin, Assistant Professor of Media Study, in collaboration with Sylvie Fortin, UB Art Gallery, Ekrem Serdar, and Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center.