Mikhail Karikis — We Are Together Because..., 2025

The audiovisual installation presented here grew out of Sounds of a Revolution, a two-year collaboration between Mikhail Karikis and fifty-two teenagers from Artallis – Conservatório d’Artes in Loures, near Lisbon. On the fiftieth anniversary of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution, the peaceful 1974 uprising that ended nearly five decades of dictatorship, they gathered to think about what brings people together in times of crisis and division. In improvised sessions using vocals and body percussion, the group completed the sentence We Are Together Because... in many different ways. Their responses form the basis of the work’s score. The installation documents the project from its earliest workshops through to the performance of the composition in 2025 with the Gulbenkian Orchestra. Accompanying it is a white neon sign mounted on a blackboard featuring the prompt that gave the work its title. In Lyon, the project has expanded through workshops with people from the city. Their contributions culminate in a collective performance and a series of portraits presented at selected sites in the city.

Sound, voice and collective action form the basis of Mikhail Karikis’ practice. His projects often emerge from specific social and political contexts, where listening becomes a means of reconfiguring relationships between individuals and environments. Through choral structures and shared vocal expression, the artist develops works that foreground collective agency and the capacity of sound to articulate alternative social imaginaries.