UTEROPIAS
extra-curricular workshop with SAMUEL SILVA
Workshop PROGRAM
Uteropias used personal memory to construct a collective symbolic installation in space. Participants retrospectively revisited significant autobiographical episodes, from the present to the most remote memories, and created a three-dimensional drawing on the floor with small rudimentary and ephemeral constructions of improvised materials. This experimental situation, although collective, followed an individual operating condition of absolute silence.
FULL GROUP PARTICIPATION
Pedagogical approach — Fact Sheet
Workshop title: Uteropias
Author/coordinator: Samuel Silva
Duration/time span: 3 hours
Uteropias has used the sensitive material of personal memory to construct a collective symbolic installation in the space. Participants were challenged to retrospectively revisit significant autobiographical episodes (from the present to the most remote memories of themselves) in order to produce a three-dimensional drawing on the floor through small, rudimentary and ephemeral constructions with improvised materials. This experimental situation, although collective, obeyed an individual operating condition of absolute silence.
Context and program
Materials and methodologies
The methodology used was laboratory-based, where all the participants took part in a group exercise using various materials they had found and not previously provided. The participants invented their own materials.
In addition to the questions that emerge from an experience of this kind, such as self-knowledge and collaborative processes, there is a poetic-political question that this project has placed at its speculative centre: How do we inhabit the place where we are together?
Key issues
Results and observations
Sharing autobiographical material through precarious constructions. The ability to share intimate issues and the ability to make ourselves vulnerable collectively I believe were the most significant lessons learnt.
Stern, Arno (1974). A expressão. Porto, Livraria Civilização.
Fiadeiro, João (2013). Composição em tempo real: Anatomia de uma decisão. Lisboa, Documenta.
Leite, Elvira (2019). Pedagogy of the streets, Porto 1977. Porto, Pierrot le Fou/FBAUP.
References
Information provided and reviewed by each workshop coordinator. Content may be revised or updated.