With an artistic practice that spans performance, video, photography, and the digital, Silvestre Pestana constructs a body of work in which poetry expands beyond the word. The body as language, the moving image, and early computers become territories of investigation where art and technology intersect both as formal fields and as spaces for critical reflection on the social transformations brought about by technical progress.
In Collapse, the artist presents an installation conceived for the space of Galeria Municipal do Porto that choreographs light, architecture, and language. Returning to the LED as an emitting device and cultural sign, he explores its apparent obsolescence as a metaphor for ruin and technological excess. The work evokes the urban landscape through visual and textual symbols, gathering echoes of earlier pieces and rehearsing new poetic possibilities. Between invention and critique, Pestana reaffirms experimental poetry as a tool for interrogating the present and our relationship with the promise and the erosion of technology.
Silvestre Pestana (1949, Funchal) is a transdisciplinary artist. He began his artistic practice in the 1960s as a visual poet, but soon established himself as a performer, a pioneer of video art and recently as a cyberspace artist. A staunch anti-war activist, he dedicated many years to public art education.
