HfG lecturer Alex Balgiu (summer semester 2025, communication design) is co-curator and co-organiser of the Ping Poema Festival at Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe. The Kunstverein, a long-standing partner of the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG), cordially invites you to:

Two days of concrete poetry: You are cordially invited to the Ping-Poema Festival on May 2 and 3 as part of the current exhibition with Lenora de Barros To See Aloud. You can expect a varied programme of lecture, film screenings, workshop and online performance by the artist as well as an immersive sound and reading concert.

Friday, 2.5.2025

7 pm From Poem to Poem: Lenora de Barros, a Ping-Pong of the Tongue Lecture and Q&A [EN] by Eduardo Jorge de Oliveira, researcher and writer, Paris & Zurich

In his lecture, Eduardo Jorge de Oliveira examines Lenora de Barros’s artistic practices, emphasizing those aspects and strategies formed and informed by the legacy of Brazilian Concrete Poetry in the 1950s and connected with its history. These historical intersections at play in the works of Lenora de Barros sustain an ongoing dialogue between body, medium, and language.

8 pm Artéria: poesia em revista Film screening, 82 mins. [OV with Engl. sub.] Documentary, Brazil 2025 Direction: Bruna Callegari. Production: Espaço Liquido

Artéria: poesia em revista is a filmic dive into the history of experimental poetry magazines that emerged in Brazil in the 1970s. This is the most daring poetry ever written in Brazil, perhaps in the world. Narrated by the magazine Artéria, the only surviving magazine still in operation, the film presents 50 years of resistance and poetic invention. Lenora de Barros’s works are positioned in close dialogue with the vibrant poetry scene of the 1970s and 80s.

Saturday, 3.5.2025

11 am Brunch 12 noon Radical Women Film screening, 71 mins. [OV with Engl. sub.] Documentary, Brazil 2023 A film by Isabel De Luca und Isabel Nascimento Silva

Radical Women follows eleven Latin American female artists who participated in the exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 in Los Angeles and New York in 2017 and 2018, along with over 100 other female artists. The project devoted to them the attention that had often been lacking until then. In addition to Lenora de Barros, the documentary features Isabel Castro, Graciela Carnevale, Anna Bella Geiger, Teresinha Soares, Sylvia Palacios Whitman, Cecilia Vicuña, Liliana Porter, Claudia Andujar, Victoria Cabezas, and María Evelia Marmolejo.

You are cordially invited to a brunch before and after the screening.

3—6 pm Radiovisual Workshop [EN, DT] with Lenora de Barros, artist, São Paulo; Alex Balgiu, graphic designer & writer, Paris, and Anja Casser, Director of Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe

As part of the workshop, a new edition of Radiovisual will be developed in collaboration with Lenora de Barros (joining online from São Paulo) and the curators Alex Balgiu and Anja Casser. Originally conceived by de Barros for the 7th Mercosur Biennial in 2009, this format invites participants to collectively read concrete poetry and visual texts, freely vocalize their form, and explore their own voices. The recorded sound pieces — voices without bodies — will be broadcast at the radio station in the foyer throughout the duration of the exhibition.

6 pm WHERE TO SEE Poetic Voice Performance by Lenora de Barros (online)

After the workshop, Lenora de Barros presents a poetic voice performance based on visual poems published in her first book ONDE SE VÊ (1983). Within the so-called “labyrinth” of the exhibition, the texts are expanded into large-scale spatial installations — including, for example, Mínimo Som Mínimo. In this piece, the artist explores the text orally playing with syllabic sounds and producing almost primal tones that evoke the poem's meaning. The live performance will be streamed online.

8 pm Concrete Concert by Tomás Cunha Ferreira, musician and artist, Lisbon

The Ping Poema Festival ends with an immersive sound and reading concert:

a concrete concert to read, to write, to listen to music, to take a walk, to play to delight in letting things happen, to dance and to stand still to think twice from time to time to hold a stone, to hold it in your hand hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive to feel the weight and never be late to understand

The entrance is free

On Wednesday, 7.5.2025, at 6 pm you are cordially invited to a last free guide tour through the exhibition.