Braga Media Arts invited Sara Borges to talk about Circuito's new season. Sara is responsible for programming Braga Media Arts' Education Service and is one of the people who know its activities better.

Braga Media Arts: What are the highlights of this new season?

Sara Borges (Circuito programming): I don't know if we can call them the biggest highlights, but I believe they are worthwhile activities. Escola dos Labirintos (School of Labyrinths), for example, was commissioned by Circuito; the three activities linked to #3Movediço - Dance of Inert Materials, Partikulas Ridikulas, and BMA lab: Dance of Inert Materials - which invite the public to discover movement and dance; or Clube de Inverno (Winter Club).

BMA: Circuito celebrates its fifth anniversary in September. What will it be like to start the new season with a weekend of celebrations?

SB: Circuito started at Braga's Noite Branca (White Night) in 2019. At the time, we put together a community show that brought more than 100 people to the stage and brought together different stories, experiences, and communities in the city.

This celebration returns symbolically to the starting point and the essence of Circuito - providing a space for experimentation and creation, for meeting and sharing. The ODE - Electronic Devices Orchestra brings this side of community participation and creation, the Escola dos Labirintos (School of Labyrinths) invites the youngest to experiment, and the Guided Tours create bridges between artists and the public. The 5 years try to condense a little of the various things that Circuito has been developing regularly over the years.

BMA: This season, Circuito brings even more diverse proposals, covering areas such as dance, augmented reality, programming, maths, artificial intelligence, music, etc. How important is it to present such a diverse range of activities?

SB: As a programme linked to Media Arts, it makes perfect sense for Circuito to bring together disciplines such as programming, augmented reality, or artificial intelligence. Some of these proposals are training actions for these disciplines, where we try to cross artistic and scientific universes. Circuito aims to be a space for experimenting, making mistakes, and trying again - creating space for expanded practices that work from this base of transdisciplinarity.

BMA: The new agenda also features some exclusive commissions from Circuito. Can you tell us a bit about these activities?

SB: This season will have two commissions. Escola dos Labirintos (School of Labyrinths) is an activity designed for the youngest, which has been developed by OSSO Coletivo, a collective based in São Gregório (Caldas da Rainha) that has an activity that is very close to the activities we usually present at Circuito. For this reason, it made sense for us to use the anniversary to offer them a new incursion into Escola dos Labirintos. It's an activity that will function as a workshop but also as an installation to visit. At its core, there will be five stations, each corresponding to five artists from different areas, from architecture, video, sound, drawing, etc., in which the youngest will be invited to intervene and create.

The cinema session for kids Mr. George has nothing to do with thisis part of a commission from Confederação, which in 2024 was asked to come up with a series of three screenings - two of them already presented in previous seasons. This will be the last in this series. It's a collection of short films inspired by the work of George Orwell, to think about how we relate to each other and how kindness can combat obscurantism.

Download the Sep-Dec programme at bragamediaarts.com/circuito.