Dois Stereos, by João Pimenta Gomes

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DATE

05 Jan 2026

AUTHOR

Mariana Machado

Dois Stereos, by João Pimenta Gomes

AUTHOR

Mariana Machado

The exhibition Dois Stereos, by João Pimenta Gomes and curated by João Ribas, takes over the Boavista Gallery with a display that is quite literal in its title. Divided into two pieces, each taking up one floor of the space (with the addition of a Polaroid photograph on the stairs), the exhibit shows two stereo mechanisms that focus on and explore this technical potential. In this sense, both pieces start from two existing devices to review and expand mechanisms that constitute peripheral analog technologies. The artist uses the expression “sound bewilderment” to describe this process, in which references to sound technologies reappear transformed with exploratory intentions.

Thus, on the first floor, we find the piece Double Fantasy, which is based on the Western Electric 16A sound column, an acoustic horn introduced in the 1920s as a fundamental part of the first sound films. Used behind movie screens, it allowed sound reproduction for vast audiences. Although designed for monophonic reproduction, the device presented here has been reconfigured to allow single-point stereophony—as the artist mentions in the exhibition notes—that is, a simulated stereo audio through a mono source and a series of effects that convey the impression of stereophony. In this way, and through the combination of this device with a Eurorack modular synthesizer, we perceive how the wonder of the mechanism that interests the artist is both resurrected and transformed. In other words, although the gesture is primarily directed at outdated mechanisms, these emerge through a reappropriation that does not ignore new potentialities. The artist particularly emphasizes the contrast between the materiality of once-dominant technologies and current digital technologies, recalling the hauntological approach proposed by Mark Fisher. The author found a concern with materiality and memory in certain sound and musical approaches that contrasted with digital illusion: “This fixation with materialized memory led to what is perhaps the main sound signature of the anthology: the use of crackling, that superficial noise made by vinyl. Crackling makes us aware that we are listening to a disjointed time; it does not allow us to fall into the illusion of presence.”¹ While we do not see in João Pimenta Gomes' mechanism the melancholy that Fisher observes in hauntological music, we do see, on the contrary, the same concern with revisiting the analog mechanism and its material plasticity as opposed to the digital ether. It is in this sense that the notion of haunting seems to play an important role for both: “Haunting can therefore be understood as failed mourning. It is linked to the refusal to let go of the ghost or—which can sometimes amount to the same thing—the ghost's refusal to let go of us.”²

On the second floor, the approach feels similar. This time, the artist starts with the Cristal Baschet, an instrument developed in the 1950s where sound is originally produced by rubbing wet fingers on glass rods, then transmitted through metal rods to a system of passive resonators. While the instrument is originally exclusively acoustic, the artist reuses only the cones and uses them as passive amplifiers of electronic sounds synthesized, once again, through a Eurorack. Baschet's own system, as the artist describes, already had an astonishing character in its functioning. However, once again, it returns in the present piece as a ghost from another time that is reactivated in contact with the present time. In both this case and the previous one, the existing devices appear less as fixed entities to be remembered and more like technical potentialities to be reactivated. Operating as models of the systems to which they refer, this process is not limited to simple imitation. On the contrary, it is produced in the constructive nature of modeling, where it not only references but pragmatically creates new possibilities. It is in this sense that we can point to Antoine Bousquet's analysis of the simulation process when he argues precisely that “simulation is not the activity of merely representing reality, but, on the contrary, an intense space for its creation”³ In the exhibition, we find not only a work of modeling through reference, but also the reactivation of constructive processes of new mechanisms, a leveraging of the past combined with a projection into the future.

The exhibition Dois Stereos can be visited at Galeria da Boavista, in Lisbon, until 11 January 2026. On 10 January, a Modular Synthesiser Workshop with Tom Whitwell and João Pimenta Gomes will also take place as part of the exhibition.

¹ Fisher, M. (2020). Ghosts Of My Life Writings On Depression, Hauntology And Lost Futures (Portuguese Translation), p. 51

² Fisher, M. (2020). Ghosts Of My Life Writings On Depression, Hauntology And Lost Futures (Portuguese Translation), p. 53

³ Bousquet, A. (2015). A Short History of Wargames, p. 19.

BIOGRAPHY

Mariana Machado (2000) was born in Porto and studied Cinema at Escola das Artes - Universidade Católica Portuguesa. She is currently studying for a Master's Degree in Digital and Sound Arts, also at Escola das Artes. She is an artist and researcher, interested above all in manifestations that articulate the moving image in a context between cinema and contemporary art, as well as the artistic potential of new technologies and their articulations with other materialities.

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