Manuel Pessoa de Lima is a Brazilian performer-composer, creating unique performances with humour. Usually performing with piano, electronics, speech monologues, cassette tapes and site-specific lighting, Manuel unravels a mesh of fictional and biographical narratives, highlighting the conflicts and doubts around the creative process, and mostly, its political questionings, in an intersectional perspective.
His somehow 'candid' persona enables a multiplicity of critical layers: personal, institutional, and epistemological - where self-deprecation evolves to the questioning of mechanisms of legitimation, and its moral underpinnings. Classically trained, with a long academic trajectory including a bachelors in music composition, a masters in musical analysis, and a fully funded scholarship in the performer-composer doctoral program at CalArts, Manuel breaks academic seriousness while embracing a process-based practice, which spans from experimental music to theatre, and lecture-performance.
Released a sound collage work - 36 English to Portuguese Lessons - through Cafe Oto, and the album - Realejo - for Organ, whistles and electronics, by the Black Truffle label. Presented solos at innumerous international festivals, such as Supersense (AU), Oscillation Festival (BE), Send-Receive (CA), Música Estranha (BR), Summerfest Schloss Solitude (DE), Tectonics Festival (UK), BAM Fest (DE), and Novas Frequências (BR). Is currently based in Berlin.