TRAMONTANA IN MONTEMURO
International Artist Residency
August 15th to September 12th, 2026
Parada de Ester (Castro Daire)
Heather Kapplow (US)
Heather Kapplow works on the question of self-esteem and how it relates to mental health and embodiment. Drawing on her own experience and on her work with young people during the pandemic lockdowns, the artist developed a device that modifies a stethoscope into a wireless microphone, making it possible to “play” the sound of the heartbeat like an instrument: the signal is sent through delay, looping and reverb, while the artist experiments with how the heart is altered by nervousness, self-soothing, engaging with others or moving the body. The goal is to share internal experiences non-verbally and in real time, because some things are so hard to put into words.
In the Montemuro mountains, the project was built with young people from the community, in workshops about how hard it is to talk about hard things and about where we find solace and safety, listening to and “playing” what our hearts do when we reflect on and share these things with others. Being wireless, the devices allow individual and collective heart-soundscapes to be made while moving around, indoors and outside.
A co-production of Binaural Nodar and the Municipality of Castro Daire, through the Municipal Library, with the support of the Union of Civil Parishes of Parada de Ester and Ester, within the Tramontana Network project, co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme.
Binaural Nodar is a cultural organization supported by the Portuguese Republic – Culture, Youth and Sports | Directorate-General for the Arts.
Heather/Hey There Kapplow uses installation, sound, objects, text, engagement and many other strategies to convert audiences into collaborators, and complex, hard-to-answer questions into tenderly co-held things, invested with transformative collective care. Kapplow has been awarded numerous grants, residencies and fellowships, and has had work commissioned for galleries and festivals within the USA and internationally. Most notably, Kapplow has performed at Venice Biennale, ARoS Kunstmuseum, Guggenheim Museum, Museo Arte Moderno and the Queens Museum; and within works by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and On Kawara, among others. Kapplow is active in two artist-groups that produce work collectively, Flux Factory (New York) and Mobius (Boston), and an alumni artistic affiliate of MetaLAB (Harvard University/FU Berlin). Kapplow is also a professional language worker and Emmy-nominated researcher, who has written for Hyperallergic and many other publications; is credited on several film/web productions; and co-authored an arts-heavy guidebook to Boston for Emons-Verlag, now in its third printing.