Traces of Presence: Remembering Daniel Pinheiro
This article was first published in the Journal of Network Music and Art, Vol. 7, Issue 1, 2025.
Abstract: A tribute article in memory of artist Daniel Pinheiro (1982–2025).
Remembering Daniel Pinheiro (1982–2025)
Daniel was a dear friend, someone I hold close to my heart. (2) Yet, in many ways, I did not know him all that well. I do not mean to diminish our friendship, which unfolded over more than a decade, but this article will only scratch the surface of who he was as an artist and a human being. Daniel’s work was about identity, presence, and the internet. Now, I find myself looking for him in my memories and searching for the traces he left behind.
I have lived in New York City for over thirty years, and Daniel lived in Portugal. In some ways, that distance is what brought us together. In 2011, I got a cold call from him. We immediately hit it off—we talked for over an hour, and by the end of the conversation, we were friends. That summer, Daniel made his way to New York City and became the first resident artist at CultureHub. (3)
I remember that while he was in New York, Daniel was always open and willing to help or get involved with anything. He also explored his own work and developed his own creative practice. I remember him wrapping himself in toilet paper like a mummy and creating these beautiful video feedback portraits of himself standing in front of the large projection screens in the CultureHub studio.
I remember he collaborated with one of my students from the Seoul Institute of the Arts, whose project required him to take selfies with a life-size cutout of her all around New York City. He eagerly complied. In the end, he made a similar cutout of himself that he sent to Korea, making the project fully reciprocal.
Daniel also performed in some early telepresence experiments we were conducting with Contact Theatre in Manchester and other locations around the world. I remember him preparing for Verbally Challenged, a performance series that required teams in the UK and New York to stage multiple networked performance pieces back-to-back with extremely limited rehearsal time. It was chaotic and messy and delicate and ephemeral, just the type of thing Daniel and I liked to be involved in.
In 2013, we invited Daniel to come to La MaMa Umbria, where he performed in a devised piece that he had created for the La MaMa Spoleto Open Festival. I was proud to see that the work involved telepresence and was building on things he had explored at CultureHub. I have a few detailed memories of us being together that summer, but I remember his presence. I remember his beautiful smile that would warm your heart. While in Italy, Daniel met other artists with whom he would collaborate longterm. I saw some of those artists at his memorial.
In his work, Daniel consistently explored what it means to be present, to be in communion with others, both in person and online—what it means to simply be and to sit in that being with others. He used this invisible force of presence as a primary resource in his work, challenging himself and others to test the potential of what it means to be truly present and how the dynamics of that presence shift as they move online.
On social media, Daniel started a series of self-portraits. One might call them selfies, I suppose, but that does not really do them justice, and to be honest, I cannot be sure if he made them all solo. I love iterative works, works in which meaning evolves through repetition. In this series of photos, which he released over many years, he would always appear in front of the camera, eyes closed in what seemed like blissful meditation. Often, there was some refraction of light in the image, which made them feel otherworldly. While the setting always shifted, he never lost the essence of the original idea. In those photos, he appeared calm, and yet there was a mystique he created that drew you in and made you curious about what was lurking below the surface—what he was thinking about in those deeper layers of himself.
Daniel, with his collaborators, expanded this practice of being in front of the camera into a collective real-time action called Distant Feeling(s) (4). During the pandemic, he helped organize a series of these online encounters where groups of people all over the world would connect and spend time together in quiet co-presence. There was no talking. Eyes were closed, but mics and cameras were left on. On his website, Daniel describes Distant Feelings as “an ever-changing re-enactment of our intra-action with machines” that “creates an online communality while resisting the speed of daily life.” (5) He had a way of slowing things down, using reflection as an art-making medium.
In 2016, my wife went on tour with La MaMa’s Great Jones Repertory Company. My daughter and I met up with the tour for her dates in Portugal. At that point, Daniel was working in Lisbon, and I remember being so excited that we were going to be able to meet up with him on his home turf. The first night we were in town, he met us at our hotel. I remember sitting outside with him, drinking a bottle of local rosé. It was a crisp, clear summer night, and we just enjoyed being there together. I remember feeling happy that my daughter, then just eight years old, was having this experience with us and that she would likely remember this moment in the future. She had met Daniel before, of course, but it had been several years. We parted ways, but Danny offered to meet up with us again another day in town. He wanted to take us for a meal.
A day or two later, my daughter and I met up with him again. We had been wandering around and had just finished looking at an archaeological site. Danny met us in front of a large church, and we walked together up one of the many hills of Lisbon. He led us to a little rustic eatery that sat neatly in the crook of a forked road. There were colorful little flags that floated in the wind, dancing above us as we sat outside in a tiny triangular courtyard. He ordered fresh octopus in olive oil, sprinkled with parsley and sea salt, and grilled sardines nested neatly in a two-tone ceramic dish. I can suspend myself back in time to this moment. I can see Danny sitting across from us, smiling. I feel my daughter’s joy at this new experience, and I sense the shadows and sunlight as they fall softly across the buildings.
Daniel was a kindred spirit, one of the first artists to fully embrace the type of work we were doing at CultureHub. As I comb back over my correspondence with him, I realize there were so many other creative acts we collaborated on. He was always there, always present, always ready to say yes. He was one of CultureHub’s first writers in residence, helped organize a version of Local Report with Robert Whitman, and helped us find international artists for our annual festival, Re-Fest.
While I am sure Daniel had his struggles, I never saw them. I never saw him angry or down. He was always bringing positive energy into the room, into his relationships, and onto the internet. The world was better with him in it. I know it sounds cliché, but I suppose he is still here, inhabiting all of the connections he so graciously nurtured.
I miss you, Daniel. So many of us do. You truly are one of a kind. A gracious, gentle, kind, and creative soul. I promise to find you out there in the world. I will look for you in the playful light that dances across the landscapes, in the moments when I feel new connections being formed. I think you were so fascinated by the internet because it allowed you to form and nurture all of these relationships. That interconnected space allowed you to bask in the glorious wonder of being present with others, being present with the moment.
(1) Artistic Director at CultureHub, billy@culturehub.org
(2) Born in Venezuela and based in Porto, Portugal, with a background in theater, Daniel Pinheiro had been exploring, among other things, the concept of telematic art, using video as a tool and the internet as a platform, merging both languages into a single object of expression. In this field, he sought to reflect on the impact of technology on everyday life and the environment of the internet as a reflection of a world where the abstract nature of this transmedia movement changed the notions of space, presence, privacy, and identity. See Daniel Pinheiro, Tumblr, accessed June 4, 2025, https://daniel-pinheiro.tumblr.com/.
(3) CultureHub is a global art and technology community founded in 2009 by the Seoul Institute of the Arts in Korea and the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City. CultureHub’s mission is to advance the work of artists experimenting with emerging technology in search of new artistic forms. See CultureHub, accessed June 4, 2025, https://www.culturehub.org.
(4) See details about this project in Distant Feeling(s), accessed June 4, 2025, https://bram.org/distantF/.
(5) Daniel Pinheiro, “Distant Feeling,” accessed June 4, 2025, https://daniel-pinheiro.tumblr.com/distantfeelings.
Works Cited
CultureHub. Accessed June 4, 2025. https://www.culturehub.org.
Distant Feeling(s). Accessed June 4, 2025. https://bram.org/distantF/.
Pinheiro, Daniel. Tumblr. Accessed June 4, 2025. https://daniel-pinheiro.tumblr.com/.
Recommended Citation Clark, Billy. "Traces of Presence: Remembering Daniel Pinheiro." Journal of Network Music and Arts 7, 1 (2025). https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/jonma/vol7/iss1/4
License Information
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
Billy Clark is the Artistic Director of CultureHub and has overseen the development of CultureHub’s artistic, education, and community programs since 2009. A graduate of the Experimental Theatre Wing at NYU, Billy has been a performer, director, creative producer, and designer in the New York City downtown art scene for over 25 years. His work has been seen at CBGBs, P.S. 122, Theatre for a New City, the Brooklyn Museum, and Asia Society. In 1996 he became a member of La MaMa’s Great Jones Repertory Company and he has performed in Korea, Serbia, Turkey, Italy, Austria, Japan, Croatia, and Macedonia with the company. He has also performed in two of Min Tanaka’s world premieres and three of Tamar Rogoff’s performance projects. He is currently a professor at the Seoul Institute of the Arts where he has taught for 15 years.