This piece was originally written in Portuguese by Ed Freitas in response to Sónia Baptista’s Dyke on Ice and Paz Rojo’s Hipersueño performances at Citemor Festival, Montemor-o-Velho, 2025. You can read the original HERE.

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Domingo, 12:48, Residência Vivenda Adélia Caiado

1. The rules of GAY-ME

I begin with my hands. Hands that touch, embroider, sew, and then write — write as if tracing paths on fabric. Hands that blend with threads and with the veins of what I have seen, lived, touched, and dreamed. It is with them that I reflect — not in the silence of abstract thought, but in the friction of matter.

Words that were not spoken — those that remained suspended — now weigh on my fingers. And they are thrown like dice: deviant, biased, skewed dice. Performative dice. Dice that are also voice, fabric, text and body.

I roll the dice of the game and the gesture. And soon I no longer know where the game ends and the gesture begins. Criticism, here, is written tenuously between listening and sewing. It is less an analysis than a process of sensitive craftsmanship, where each word is charged with vibration, listening, subjectivity and crossing.

In this game — presented between performingborders and the Citemor 2025 festival — I invent another critique: not one that judges or frames, but one that is embroidered alongside the work, the affections and the bodies that live it.

It is about creating textile, embroidered, sensory data that does not decide chance, but reveals intersections: subjects, verbs, signs, affections — forces that cross me as an artist, as a northeastern Brazilian, as a son of sertão* and of a single mother, as a researcher of another way of saying, of remembering, of acting.

2. What I saw: the context and contagion of the works

Sónia Baptista – Dykes On Ice

A solo that wants to be plural. A body that dismantles itself in theatricality and reconstructs itself in love, desire, politics. The word ‘grelos’** as a sign and symptom: eroticism and politics? Irony and anger? In 2010 or 2025, we continue to cross deserts — and deserts are also places of presence.

Paz Rojo – Hipersueño ***

Delirium as a way of rejecting the world. A scene that imploded time and laid bare the discomfort. The artist’s space is fertile ruin — a place where the body sustains itself in instability. The sound pierced me and something inside me — protein, perhaps? — awoke and groaned.

3. The objects of the game: dice to see, write and dance criticism

Dice 1: Dykes On Ice

Dice 2: Hipersueño

4. Let’s play

Option A: roll one dice at a time

Option B: roll both at the same time

Instructions:

U. Close your eyes.

V. Choose a dice.

W. Roll it.

Y. Read the word that came up on top.

X. With that word, write a question for the world.

Z. Ask without fear.

This game does not end with answers — it extends into questions.
Keep asking. Keep writing.
Each answer will be another fold. Each fold, a fragment of criticism.

P.S.: IF YOU WANT, EXTERNALISE A GESTURE!

Dance. Embroider. Write. Paint. Sing. Shout.
Each participant makes their connection. Each sharing generates text.
The intersections are the text.
The text is a map.

5. Final arabesque: performing thought as gesture

Coimbra, 20 July 2025. Sun in Leo.

I embroider time with Agamben’s eyes, Sónia’s sapphic disobedience, Paz’s intentional ruin.
Every word I write is also part of my dance — an invitation to delirium as a form of thought.

‘If the world is past’: Paz, we write to make it present.

‘If art is ruin’: we embroider ruins with threads of restlessness and affection.

‘If experience is paid for’: we pay with our bodies, with fatigue, with vibration.

‘If the body unfolds’: we write for the folded body, for the shared body.

Writing, for me, is performing what I do not yet know.
It is transforming needle and thread into questions.
It is turning inside out. It is twisting.
It is creating criticism like someone dancing crochet stitches in the abyss of language.

In this critical and sensitive arabesque, there is room for Sónia, Paz, the Sun in Leo (which will soon be Virgo), the unspoken sprouts, the adenine of resistance, the ice on the ground, the unnamed but ever-intertwined love.

I roll the dice.

They decide.

They invite.

To play.

To ask.

To live.

***

Diverted attachment:

GAY-ME Players: 

Nilo Gallego (Orquestina de Pigmeos)

What time will I sleep today?

Ice – Adenina – Ice – Citosina – Ice – Adenina – Guanina – Grelos – Adenina – Grelos

Chus Domínguez (Orquestina de Pigmeos)

Why play?

Solo – Timina – 2010 – Guanina – 2010 – Adenina – Adenina – Solo – Adenina – 2010

References:

* ‘sertão’ refers to a region far from urban centres or the coast, ‘distant or lacking in resources’.

** ‘grelos’ is both the portuguese word for Turnip Greens, and it is Portuguese slang for vagina.

*** title of the work translates to ‘hyperdream’

Originally published on Citemor’s website, 22th July 2025

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Ed Freitas is a visual and transdisciplinary artist born in Northeast Brazil and based in Coimbra, Portugal. His work interweaves performance, installation, sculpture, and textile art, investigating the Installative Presence — a concept he explores through his PhD in Contemporary Art at the University of Coimbra. Through fabrics, mantles, and sensory objects, he builds poetic devices where the body becomes a living archive of ancestry. Recipient of the World Cultural Council Award (2022), Freitas’ work operates between political tension and embodied sensitivity. His international presence spans festivals, exhibitions, and residencies across Brazil, Portugal, France, Romania, Germany, and the US. He also works as a curator, educator, and critical thinker at Ateliar Nuno Fonseca in Coimbra. Instagram: @ed_freitas

The Live Art Writers Network x Citemor 2025 project was conceived and curated by performingborders, Diana Damian Martin and Citemor Festival, with support from Dori Nigro e Paulo Pinto. Funded by Royal Central School of Speech & Drama – University of London, through UKRI Impact Accelerator funding.