Variations on Restlessness: The Artistic Residencies
After completing her first artistic research residency at Casa da Missão in June 2025, the artist returns to Capelo in April 2026, this time accompanied by her chosen collaborators: musician Luís J. Martins and filmmaker Daniel Costa Neves.

In this new phase, their joint presence proposes a sensitive interplay between sound, image, and performative experience, exploring creative territories that extend beyond individual disciplines. It offers an opportunity to observe the artistic process in motion, where every gesture and every note becomes part of a collective landscape in constant transformation.

Joana Sá, Luís Martins, and Daniel Costa Neves continue their artistic residency in Capelo, carrying forward the project Variations on Restlessness – Body Territory. At this stage, the work focuses on the sensitive and detailed exploration of territory, with particular attention to identifying and capturing unique natural sites that may serve as organic scenographies for the final piece.

The field research journey spans diverse landscapes, from the heart of Serra da Estrela to the insular territories of the Azores, privileging direct observation and attentive listening to the natural environment. This investigation will serve as the starting point for the creation of a hybrid work, integrating a live performance, a video installation, and the publication of a book, each element in dialogue with the specificity of the places and sensory experiences encountered.

The project thus seeks to reflect on the relationship between restlessness, territory, and presence, exploring how the body, image, and word can coexist and transform in response to the places they traverse. In every intervention, the encounter with nature is not merely a backdrop but an active agent of the dramaturgy and artistic narrative.

Variations on Restlessness: The Live Performance
Rooted in the eruptive geology of the Azores, Variations on Restlessness is a performance-installation that invites us to listen to the planet as a living, unstable body. The work investigates “restlessness” across multiple dimensions—planetary, bodily, and relational—exploring vibrational, tectonic, and imaginative territories.

Developed from field recordings in São Miguel and Faial, artistic residencies, and collaborative processes, the piece also incorporates the memory of the 2025 fire that devastated Serra da Estrela, including the artist’s native village. The piano ceases to be merely a sound instrument and transforms into a capturing device: a sensitive surface responding to subterranean and invisible forces.

This performance represents the first phase of an expanding project and is an invitation to perceive the planet’s restlessness, to feel its vibrations, and to open oneself to other possible outcomes.

Sound Experimentation Workshop
During her artistic residency, Joana Sá led a workshop with musicians from the “Artista Faialense” Philharmonic, proposing new sonic experiences using their instruments in unconventional ways. The experience transformed their usual practice space into a sound laboratory, encouraging improvisation, discovery, and dialogue among the artists. The outcome was surprising, opening up new possibilities for future collaboration and highlighting the potential of projects that connect tradition with experimentation.