MAIN Program

The YES Masterclass #2 was held in Porto, in partnership with Centro de Arte Alberto Carneiro (CAAC) and Interecycling, a company that specializes in recycling materials from electrical and electronic waste equipment. The masterclass focused on the theme “landscapes of post-consumption,” aiming to encourage reflection and experimentation with different ways of looking at and thinking about the landscape. This was achieved by using ecocenters, landfills, and the objects and fragments left over from human activities, including their production and transformation processes, as starting points.

Procedures

• Participants were divided into four working groups, each supported by different teachers.
• Each group was assigned a dedicated workspace, a package of raw materials (electrical and electronic waste, other materials, and equipment), and a set of tools.
• The work of each group was developed according to the three major axes of the YES project: materials, space, society, and social practices. The use of materials at the end of their useful life cycle (provided by Interecycling) aimed to bring new visibility and awareness to separation and reuse processes. This prompted participants to manipulate and imagine these materials within the context of artistic creation, leading to live experiments and artistic proposals. Given that public space is a place of tensions, intersections, and social, cultural, economic, and political overlaps, the artistic creation processes also explored different results and consequences, investigating various possibilities for socio-political engagement through public activation, emancipation, empowerment, or awareness.

The YES Masterclass #2 program included an opening session with visits to FBAUP and the Centro de Arte Alberto Carneiro (CAAC), fieldwork and drawing sessions, participation in seminars with a movie session, and hands-on workshops. The work from the four main workshops was developed in close collaboration between the ateliers and the Galeria do Museu (FBAUP), where the resulting creations were exhibited at the end of the work week.

Goals

1. To enhance recycled material’s role in artistic production and education, with a special focus on collective working processes and methodologies.

2. To better master a wider spectrum of materials beyond the most frequently used (wood, stone, metal, or clay). That is, thinking and working from the reuse of materials, saving resources, also developing in-depth knowledge about their life cycles and reuse processes.

3. To stimulate the activation of more possibilities and opportunities for artistic research based on the themes addressed and the experiments carried out.

4. To strengthen the international collaboration network for sharing experiences, practices, knowledge and working methodologies, thus contributing to the improvement of work programs within partner institutions and creating better opportunities for collaboration and professional advancement of students.

5. To keep engaging the artistic practices (from students, teachers, and researchers) with the urgency of responding to the challenges proposed by the United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development 2030 and some of its global objectives, focused on education for the environment and sustainable lifestyles, reinforcing the growing value that the Arts can continue to occupy in the current reconfigurations of education for citizenship.