Conference Cycle Great Artists on Campus/Multiplex: Meg Stuart

Meg Stuart, a choreographer and director from New Orleans based between Berlin and Brussels, is one of the most influential figures in contemporary dance worldwide. Her work is driven by an experimental spirit and cross-disciplinary artistic pollination, challenging the limits of the body and expanding the perception of reality. Through her company, Damaged Goods, founded in 1994, Stuart has created more than thirty productions that move fluidly between dance, theatre and the visual arts.

Her practice focuses on exposing the “scripts” written in our bodies and in the spaces we inhabit. Using fictions and shifting narrative layers, Stuart questions how we can rewrite our stories through the potential of the present moment. This approach emerged early in her career with works such as Disfigure Study (1991), where she explored the fragmentation and reconstruction of the body — themes that remain central to her trajectory.

Beyond the stage, Stuart’s work takes the form of multidisciplinary installations, site-specific creations and video works, making her a key reference in media arts. Her ongoing collaboration with composers, visual artists (such as Claudia Hill) and theatre-makers (such as Philippe Quesne and Tim Etchells) underscores a vision in which movement is inseparable from visual and sonic composition. Stuart uses improvisation as a strategy to explore bodily memory and emotional states, sharing this knowledge in pioneering projects such as Crash Landing.

Internationally recognised, her work has been presented at Documenta X (Kassel), Manifesta 7 (Bolzano) and MoMA (New York). Among her many distinctions are the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale (2018), a Bessie Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2023). She is currently artist-in-residence at Kunstencentrum VIERNULVIER, in Ghent.

Programme

13 May, Lusófona University - Lisbon University Centre

• 11:00 am | Lusófona University: Screening Meg Stuart: The Films
• 3:00 pm | Lusófona University: Meg Stuart Lecture and Q&A
• 7:00 pm | Culturgest: Talk with Meg Stuart + Screening Sulphur Edges

15 May, Lusófona University - Porto University Centre

• 2:30 pm | Batalha Centro de Cinema: Screening Meg Stuart: The Films
• 4:00 pm | Batalha Centro de Cinema: Meg Stuart Lecture and Q&A
• 9:00 pm | Batalha Centro de Cinema: Screening Sulphur Edges