Framework

This show stems from the yearning of bringing together art and science, interconnecting languages and reasons/emotions typically unmet. Musicians, storytellers, poets, social scientists will stage a challenge of the boundaries between popular culture and high culture, the narratives of the university and the street, the expressions of the periphery and the centre. Rap, slam poetry, funk, kuduro, gypsy music and storytelling will get together in an unpredictable ecology of knowledges.

By articulating and enhancing the invisibilized knowledges born of the struggle against different forms of oppression, ecology of knowledges, through a horizontal and complementary sharing, contributes to a better understanding of the world, towards social transformation.
“Alice in the City: Social Sciences, Rap and More” is an initiative of the project ALICE – Strange Mirrors, Unsuspected Lessons: Leading Europe to a new way of sharing the world experiences. Coordinated by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, the objective of Alice is to renew social-scientific thinking, challenging science to dialogue horizontally with other knowledges. Social sciences are as valuable as they are limited since they exclude reflections and proposals that do not fit in its narrative logic. Boaventura de Sousa Santos has found in rap and poetry forms of expression that enable the possibility of expressing himself without the limits imposed by academic rules. It’s writing without footnotes. The horizontal and complementary sharing between the narratives of social sciences and art constitute an exercise of ecology of knowledges towards a better understanding of the world allowing a more effective struggle against the exploitation, discrimination and oppression that characterizes it.

Featuring Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Banda Linha Abissal (a CES PhD students musical project), Hezbó MC (rapper, composer), Jackson Soul Jah (rapper), Favela 31 (youth project  fusing  languages familiar to them, such as kuduro, funk and gypsy music), José Craveiro (storyteller, master of knowledges and flavours), LBC Soldjah (rapper, linguist, researcher), Mynda Guevara (rapper, one of the many proofs that women hold ground in rap), Mick Mengucci (musician, performer and multimedia engineer), Nuno Piteira (poet, performer, video artist), O Gringo Sou Eu (a project by Frankão, a Brazilian musician e composer, with influences from hip-hop, reggae,  Miami Bass and funk carioca), Raquel Lima (author, poet, Poetry Slam movement activist), Raul Alvares (author, poet, Poetry Slam movement activist).