EMPATHETIC TOPOGRAPHIES by Pedro Matias
with Pedro Matias, Juliette Lizotte, ILEGALL and Ksenia Perek
Thursday September 10, 6pm
Empathetic Topographies emerged from a desire to stay with a practice that refuses to settle. It brings together different voices, forms of writing, images, memories and ways of thinking around the work of Pedro Matias — a practice developed through movement: between sculpture and moving image, between the intimate and the planetary, between anxiety and play, between what can be touched and what remains just beyond reach.
Rather than offering a linear account of the work, the publication takes the form of a chart. It is fragmented, porous and deliberately unfinished. Heidi Brunnschweiler and Carolien Hermans enter Matias’ practice from different positions, while André Lourenço edits Matias’ contribution and extends this constellation through his own reading of the work. Matias’ writing moves through places, bodies, waters, materials and encounters. Together, these voices do not attempt to stabilise the work, but remain attentive to its shifting conditions.
Alongside these voices, the publication is also a work by artist Juliette Lizotte, conceived not as a container for the texts and images, but as an autonomous proposition within the constellation. Her design becomes another way of moving through the practice: (re-)arranging, interrupting, (re-)connecting and opening spaces between its fragments.
At the centre of this movement is a question of how the world might be encountered otherwise. How might touch become a form of knowledge? How might displacement become generative rather than merely something to overcome? What happens when the boundaries between body and environment, human and more-than-human, subject and material begin to soften? Water runs through these questions—not simply as metaphor, but as a way of thinking with fluidity, transformation and interdependence. Coral reefs, anxious waters, submerged worlds and leaking bodies become companions in an attempt to unlearn the fantasy of separation.
The publication is therefore less an explanation of Matias’ practice than an invitation into its currents. It asks for slowness. For imagination. For noticing differently. And perhaps, above all, for a willingness to get lost.
The launch of Pedro Matias’ publication Empathetic Topographies will unfold as a simple and intimate gathering around the voices, images and questions held within the book.
The evening will take the form of a polyphonic reading, bringing together different voices from Matias’ writing —a main text, a poem and a journal entry— accompanied by projected visuals and a collaboration with ILEGALL and Ksenia Perek. Text, image, voice and presence will overlap, creating another possible route through the practice.
Juliette Lizotte will speak about her contribution and the process of creating a new work while working within the form of a publication and artist book.
Rather than presenting the publication as a finished statement, the launch invites its different elements to remain in motion: read, heard, seen and encountered together. An evening for listening, noticing differently and getting lost.
Bios
Pedro Matias
Pedro Matias is an artist, researcher, educator and filmmaker based in Amsterdam. Their
transdisciplinary practice moves between sculpture, moving image and installation,
exploring states of transformation, instability and interdependence. Their work is informed
by philosophical and ecological thinking, particularly questions of how bodies, materials
and environments shape one another, and how knowledge might emerge through touch,
sensation, imagination and situated experience. Working through processes of
accumulation, deformation, collapse and reconfiguration, Matias allows matter and its
conditions to actively shape the work. Water frequently returns as both material presence
and a way of thinking: fluid, connective, unstable and impossible to contain. Matias holds
an MFA in Fine Arts from the Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam, and an MA in Philosophy,
specialising in Philosophy of Art, from NOVA University Lisbon.
Ksenia Perek
Ksenia Perek is a Polish-born performance artist based in Amsterdam.
Her practice constructs fictional personas through embodied scripts, body-built
momentums, and mythological overwriting of the self. Working across performance art
and video works, she approaches the body as a space of transformation, where fiction,
memory, fantasy, and presence overlap.
Since 2019, Perek has been represented by ADA in Rome.
In 2025 she launched a contemporary art _ ILEGALL.
Juliette Lizotte
Jujul0v3 aka Juliette Lizotte (b.1991, France) is a video maker, artist, community
organiser and radio maker based in Amsterdam. Inspired by feminist science fiction,
video games, pop culture & fantasy, her work focuses on mythological figures as portals
to address ecological urgencies and make ground for resistance to status quo while
exploring role play methodologies for collective storytelling.
Juliette studied at Duperré and Olivier de Serres (Paris) and holds a Master from
Sandberg Institute (Amsterdam). She regularly gives world building, experimental
publishing and video workshops. She is an active member of Hackers & Designers in
Amsterdam, a player of the Narthex distributed guild, and occasionally a DJ!