Laboratoriesimg

Barcelona, Spain. Responsible partner: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB)

UAB will employ the model of an existing project: Art in Path project that emerged 2 years ago from a student group. Art in Path applied aesthetics projects are specifically related to the transfer of knowledge generated by the practices and discourses about Art and Design, within Barcelona and its surrounding public sphere. The main objective of OUPL Barcelona is to energise the creative potential of the new communities of immigrants and refugees, as well as to invite Barcelona established creators and students to more innovative approaches interacting with these new communities. OUPL Barcelona will use Art in Path’s strategies to reach out to migrant artists, designers, writers, dancers, performers and street artists raised or currently living in Barcelona and to other creative people living in segregated areas, especially young people.

 

  •  NOMADIC DANCE 

The activity Nomadic Dance, which will take place in May 2021, consists of a masterclass, a three-day workshop, and a one-day festival. Movement and the creative process can be an invitation to discover various territories we inhabit, all coming together presently in this body that allows us to express ourselves. Nomadic dance wants to be an accompanied experience to research about some of those landscapes; empowering and giving multiple visions of the personal field as well as the wide extensions that appear from the relationship to the collective. This experience will bring closer the perception of multiversity contained within the dance practice. 

Across overlapping levels, the workshop will propose to experience: Logbook _ collective diary; Daily challenges: from personal perspective on global issues; I am always HERE: Practices around presence; and processes of Improvisation _Creation _Interpretation… all-coming together in a common place: exploration and creation of VIDEODANCE. 

Along the Festival, VIDEODANCE will be shown, such as live performance trying to replicate and relate using visual generated and others overlapping layers to explore new territories. Both the workshop and Festival are designed to be followed online and in person. 

Coordinator: Laura Vilar 

Dates: April 2021 

Supervisor: Laura Vilar 

 

  • FUSION COOKING 

The activity Fusion Cooking, which will take place in March 2021, consists of a masterclass, a three-day workshop, and a one-day festival. It will explore the aesthetic and communicative dimension of gastronomy from the standpoint of the plating process. Combining an indisciplined socratic methodology with learning by doing, the relationship between “major” senses and “minor” senses will be analyzed from architecture, visual arts and design. Then, theoretical and practical models of plating will be put forward as a tool to subvert the hierarchical aesthetics of the senses. The participants will have the chance to explore different creative processes, from pencil drawing to digital constructions. This “everything goes” experience from a culturally embedded perspective will give rise to a dish that will be presented in the final festival in any desired format – from cooking to photography and creative writing. Participation is encouraged to anyone interested in experimentation and play within gastronomy, to anyone who wants to explore alternative ways to plant creatively in it – including cooks, waiters, restaurant owners, restaurant keepers, photographers and food designers between others. 

Dates: November 2021 

Supervisor : David Casacuberta 

Mentoring team: Marco Bellonzi and Neil Harbisson 

 

  • THEATER OF THE OPPRESSED 

The activity Theatre of the oppressed, which will take place in November 2021, consists of a masterclass, a three-day workshop, and a one-day festival. The activity Theater of the opressed, which will take place in November 2021, consists of a masterclass, a three-day workshop, and a one-day festival. This activity is based on the systematization of the Theater of the Oppressed, as a theatrical trend following the methodologies created by the Brazilian playwright Augusto Boal, fifty years ago. One of its relevant particularities is its expansion of the stage space. It makes spectators and actors in the dramaturgy interact in a de-hierarchization game typical of the performative field. Through bodily work, all creation becomes communal, thus providing spaces of security where all participants can use their vulnerabilities as spaces for communal empowerment. 

The activity’s axes of work are two. First, we will train and provide tools for expressive and corporal work, using Anne Bogart’s “Viewpoints technique”. Secondly, we will generate material through practices developed by Boal, using the body and the word as possible discursive tools for community formation. All this with the aim of showing a final piece where dialogue with the spectator will be generated. 

Dates: February 2022 

Supervisors : Txell Caralt & Clara Laguillo 

 

  • TRANSITION DESIGN 

The activity Transition Design, which will take place in February 2022, consists of a masterclass, a three-day workshop, and a one-day festival. Transition design is an area of current design thinking and practice whose objective is to facilitate the transition of our known world towards life systems based on environmental, social and economic sustainability criteria. In our working group we will operate from an interdisciplinary perspective in collaboration with artistic collectives, related research projects and communities in transition. 

This activity aims to add value to the projects of the participants, offering them to develop aspects of emancipation, self-management, cooperation and co-responsibility within their creative practices. To do so, the characteristic approaches and methodologies of Transition Design will be worked on: co-creation, multi-scale, wicked problems, iterative process, service-system design, collective mapping and graphic visualizations. 

Likewise, contextualization narratives will be developed through Speculative design dynamics in order to produce a creative interpretation of the projects of the participants, approached as sustainable scenarios immersed in complex environments. 

Supervisor : Tània Costa

Mentoring team: Holon Design BCN 

 

  • ARTISTIC RESEARCH 

Artistic research for transcommunities is conceived as a space for conducting research through artistic and collective creation practices to obtain disruptive knowledge that protects the singular. It is an approach based on the materiality of singularity, on processes that mobilise undisciplined and dissident faculties. 

The aim of this activity is to devise a set of theoretical and practical tools through research and material creation. Contrary to what is usually claimed, the problem is not the abundance of images but the shortage of images, all those realities without images, that is, without the ability to be imagined. The migrant reality is a reality without images, except for the stereotypes constructed by the mass media, which is a type of governance exercised over

those ways of life. We propose to examine the interstices of that exclusion to question hegemonic lifestyles, to embrace non-segregated lifestyles based on community creation. 

Supervisor: Andrea Soto 

 

  • TRANSITION DRESS 

The activity Theatre of the oppressed, which will take place in March 2022, consists of a masterclass, a three-day workshop, and a one-day festival. The vulnerability of bodies appears fiercely during migration. In the transitions, people on the move take strictly what is understood as indispensable, setting up a pragmatic set of values for the transit. The guiding principle is keeping the body alive. This must be an ongoing assessment during the transit, as quick decisions must be taken in order to survive. In this specific context, dress acquires unexpected uses and meanings, breaking the stablished role of clothes within the closed framework of fashion. Clothes can act as the ultimate form of shelter and the last material remain of a cultural identity. Or even the last memory/remain of a lost loved one. 

Transition dress is a reflective exercise about migration from the embodied memory that can take interdisciplinary formats. The aim will be to make a sensorial and inner journey to the migration/transition personal experiences through/as of and focused on dress.

Supervisor: Fiona Capdevila