Boeing Nº 737-800 in F♯m

Boeing Nº 737-800 in F♯m
Don't know... Time runs. I guess.
MOST OF WHAT HAPPENS HAPPENS WITHOUT YOU.
(Pause) Don't you ever feel this way?
I WOULD, IF I COULD. THE WAY YOU DO.
BUT WAYS ABOUND AS IT IS.
A REFLECTION HERE, A WILDFIRE, OVER THERE.
And when did you learn to speak THIS way?
ONE AT A TIME.
What do you mean?
Boeing Nº 737-800 in F♯m

Concurrently: ode, elegy, satyre, Boeing Nº 737-800 in F♯m awakes and takes off, lands and falls asleep, in between cold sweats and time zones. Triangulating the distance from ground to body, moving though still, to sun, blinding though eyeless, amidst a text searching for sense in an economy of simulations, value suspended 38000 feet above the ground.

The anatomy of the world’s most popular commercial airplane serves as test tube to rehearse, under the common denominator of a possible fall, a motley set of anxieties, crossing borders, with and without passport. Mirror-play, annotated between the internal voice of a passenger, by the window, their dialogue with the Sun and a chorus of various interjections, from cockpit to exhaust pipe.

Text, production and direction Gonçalo Lamas

Original music George Bularca

Performers Carminda Soares, Inês Zinho Pinheiro, João Reis Moreira, MariaMiguel Rodrigues, Odete, Sara Fonseca da Graça

Voices Gonçalo Lamas (16F), Odete (Sun), Céu Costa (16D), Leonor Coelho (Lucas), Mafalda Lamas Pacheco, Paulo Santos (Flight attendants), Alex, Isabel Albuquerque, Caterina Avataneo, Daria Blum, Guendalina Cerruti, Virginia Cimino, Ruth Angel Edwards, Pedro Ferreira, Sofia Ferreira, Adam Ghallagher, Tabitha Haynes, Jess Heritage, Olive Kan, Kybor Karlsen, Lúcia Lamas, Duarte Martins, Pedro Martins, Arménio Pacheco, Sofia Rodrigues, Mary Vetisse, Joshua Waterson, Andrew Wyatt (Other passengers)

Sound editing Gonçalo Lamas e João Polido Gomes

Final mix João Polido Gomes

Fabrication and install Bruno Cancela, Pedro Ferreira, Vitor Soares

Lighting automation Thomas Allison

Graphic design Inês Mena Silva

Type design AALTAR System

Additional type Max Ryan, 'Tech', originally designed for Scripted Space

Cover Gonçalo Lamas and Inês Mena Silva with 'Inverted World Map' by Frans Blok

Support Câmara Municipal do Porto

WHY, ALL THIS TUNNEL VISION?

FROM THE DISTANCE, I MAY SEEM NO BIGGER THAN YOUR PUPIL AND STILL BURN UPON NAKED CONTACT.
Like a summer day without sunglasses!
LIKE A SUMMER SECOND WITHOUT SUNGLASSES.

Boeing Nº 737-800 in F#m
live performance
50min

(Short video edit)

A MILLION, NINEHUNDRED AND EIGHTY EIGHT THOUSAND AND FIVE HUNDRED SEPTILLION KILOGRAMS.
How many zeros is that?
TWENTY SIX. IT'S ROUNDED OFF.
Boeing Nº 737-800 in F♯m Boeing Nº 737-800 in F♯m Boeing Nº 737-800 in F♯m Boeing Nº 737-800 in F♯m

Central gallery (Intallation view)

Boeing Nº 737-800 in F♯m

West gallery (Intallation view)

Boeing Nº 737-800 in F♯m

South gallery (Intallation view)

Boeing Nº 737-800 in F♯m

East gallery (Intallation view)

Boeing Nº 737-800 in F♯m
Well, good night then!
CAN’T SEE! BUT WE AFFORD SEEING.
THE CHARM OF THE WHOLE THING IS UNDENIABLE.
Well, good night then!
NO, YOU KEEP THE NIGHT. AS A PRESENT.

Boeing Nº 737-800 in F♯m
2020


Presented four times between September 16th and 20th, at Culturgest Porto.

The inflight magazine which accompanied the show is available for purchase here.

Gonçalo Lamas is a writer, filmmaker, artist and designer, born in Porto. After briefly studying film in Porto and Bournemouth, he attended the Fine Art course (media department) at Central Saint Martins, graduating in 2017. In between, he spent a semester at the Universität der Künste Berlin, where he joined Hito Steyerl's class and the Research Center for Proxy Politics.

In 2020, with a grant from the Porto City Council, he produced Boeing Nº 737-800 in F#m, staged over four dates at Culturgest Porto. An artist's book containing the play's text was launched at the 6th Artists' Self-Publisher’s Fair in London. His first work for cinema, the experimental documentary Granary Squares, shot in 2015, premiered in the National Competition of the 2021 edition of IndieLisboa. After several anthology appearances with Pilot Press, like Queer Anthology of Rage and Modern Queer Poets, some times zero hours was the title of his first poetry pamphlet, published by SPAM Press, Glasgow, in 2022. He is currently finishing his first poetry collection, titled Emergency Contact. Until 2024, he was part of the study programme at Le Fresnoy, in France, where he filmed a condensed film adaptation of Andromaque, written by Jean Racine in 1667, which he translated himself into English.

Among many parallel activities, he develops websites for artists and cultural organisations, teaches design strategies at the University of the Arts London, and was a podcast editor on the news platform Novara Media, between 2021 and 2023.

In film and theatre, he has built up a string of collaborations as assistant director with artists such as Alle Dicu, João Nunes Monteiro, João Reis Moreira and Majid Al-Remaihi. With the latter, he is currently writing a film about the final days of Afonso de Albuquerque, the commander who in 1515 seized Hormuz, throttling the very strait that still brings the world to a standstill today.

Some of this I do for money, some of this I do for free.

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Write me at if you have something to say. I also write an occasional newsletter, called Contratempo. And, sometimes, I am on Instagram too.