Pantheras Collaborators Initiative is an informal multidisciplinary network of experts ranging from the fields of science and humanities. It aims to instigate knowledge dissemination and promote discussion and exchange of ideas around the most relevant topics directly or indirectly touched by the project.
Pantheras Collaborators take part in the Talks periodically promoted by Pantheras Cosmology and contribute to the continuous update of its Resources area, where materials and publications related to the Niger Delta social, political, economical and historical context are gathered. Fed by this network of people, it works as a repository and also as a network platform linking to projects, organisations and entities that share with us an interest on the Niger Delta region.
Please get in contact if you wish to join Pantheras Collaborators Initiative.
Cláudia Sobral (PT) Journalist. Since 2010, when she graduated from Universidade do Porto, she has worked in the Portuguese newspapers Público and i. She also published her work as a freelancer in other news outlets such as Expresso. After a few years of reporting on a wide range of subjects, including international politics, she specialized in culture, first as a reporter and film critic, and then assuming the role of editor as part of the founding team of Novo Semanário.
Folarin Kuku (NG) He was the first black guard for the Queen of England and is the CEO of Nigeria based logistics and security company CEFO Logistics, offering secure transport, infrastructure protection, security coordination and risk mitigation services to Nigerian and Multinational clients. He operates across sub-Saharan West Africa, focused on enabling greater access to the marketplace for regional and foreign clients.
Giulia Zabarella (IT) Visual artist, studied Painting and Sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan (2016) and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich (2022). In 2021 she attended the Maumaus Independent Study Program in Lisbon. Since then she is living between Portugal and Germany, working across disciplines such as visual and performance arts, translating, writing and publishing. Her work has been exhibited, among others, at: Maximiliansforum, Munich (DE), Kunstpavillon Luzern (CH), Longega Project (IT), Public Art Munich 2018 (DE), Chunk3 Brescia (IT). She has been running workshops and talks, among others, at: Radio 80000, Munich (DE), Münchner Kammerspiele (DE), Radio Furchtbar, Vienna (AT).
Isabel Ramos (PT) Holding a degree in Social Communication - Journalism from the Higher Institute of Social and Political Sciences of the Technical University of Lisbon in 1992, she worked as a journalist between 1992 and 2010. She is the author among other works of “Coup de Grâce” (2017 – Berlinale), “Fatamorgana” (2019 – Mousse publishing), “Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa” (2019 – for the anthology Interdependence on Climate Change, with the patronage of United Nations), “Hotel Royal” (2021 – Locarno) and “Gold and Ashes” (2024 – TBC), in collaboration with Salomé Lamas.
Joel Kachi Benson (NG) Documentary filmmaker and virtual reality content creator. In 2019, he produced “Daughters of Chibok”, a virtual reality film on the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping. He is the creative director of virtual reality film studios VR360 Stories in Lagos. At the 2019 Venice International Film Festival that same film became the first African film winning the Best VR Story award. In 2019, Benson was named among the New African magazine's Top 100 Most Influential Africans. In 2020, “Daughters of Chibok” was listed on the Forbes Top 50 XR Experiences of 2019.
Raquel Da Silva (PT) Holding a degree in Architecture and Urbanism and, later, an Integrated Master in the same area, in Porto, in 2010, she left the practice of architecture and began to dedicate herself exclusively to film production. She made several productions in Brazil (SESC + Bienal de São Paulo), Peru and Cape Verde, and several European countries. Between 2009 and 2012, she collaborated with CURTAS –Vila do Conde – International Short Film Festival. Since 2012 her focus has been on film and video art projects in the documentary, fictional and experimental fields, assuming the functions of production management, casting management, directing, research and development.
Salomé Lamas (PT) Studied cinema in Lisbon and Prague, visual arts in Amsterdam and is a Ph. D candidate in contemporary art studies in Coimbra. Her work has been screened both in art venues and film festivals such as Berlinale, Locarno, BAFICI, Museo Arte Reina Sofia, FIAC, MNAC – Museu do Chiado, DocLisboa, Cinema du Réel, Visions du Réel, MoMA – Museum of Modern Art, Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, Harvard Film Archive, Museum of Moving Images NY, Jewish Museum NY, Fid Marseille, Arsenal Institut fur film und videokunst, Viennale, Culturgest, CCB – Centro Cultural de Belém, Hong Kong FF, Museu Serralves, Tate Modern, CPH: DOX, Centre d’Art Contemporain de Genève, Bozar, Louvre, Tabakalera, ICA London, TBA 21 Foundation, CAC Vilnius, MALBA, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, FAEMA, SESC São Paulo, MAAT, La Biennale di Venezia Architettura, among others.
Lamas was granted several fellowships such as the Gardner Film Study Center Fellowship – Harvard University, Film Study Center-Harvard Fellowship, The Rockefeller Foundation – Bellagio Center, Brown Foundation – Dora Maar House, Fundación Botín, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Sundance, Bogliasco Foundation, Luso-American Development Foundation – FLAD, MacDowell, Yaddo, CNAP – Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Camargo Foundation, Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD.
She is a professor at ESAD.CR School of Arts and Design and collaborates with Universidade Católica Portuguesa, and Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola. She collaborates with the production company O Som e a Fúria and Primeira Idade and is represented by Kubikgallery and Galeria Miguel Nabinho.
In a fertile occupation of “no man’s land”, Lamas refers to her work as critical media practice parafictions. Rather than conventionally dwelling in the periphery between cinema and the visual arts, fiction and non-fiction, Lamas has been attempting to make these languages its own, treading new paths in form and content, challenging the conventional methods of production, modes of exhibition and the lines between various filmic and artistic forms of aesthetic expression.
These works of either modified ethnography, performative or allegoric features show an interest in the intrinsic relationship between storytelling, memory and history; while using primarily time-based media to explore the traumatically repressed, seemingly unrepresentable, or historically invisible, from the horrors of colonial violence to the landscapes of global capital. Moreover, the works convey a multidisciplinary approach in the stages of development, production, exhibition, and distribution with outcomes ranging from publications, film, video and sound installation.