Materia Abierta is a summer school on theory, art, and technology. Established in Mexico City as a space to reflect on the political, economic, and epistemic forces that condition knowledge production, the program is reshaped every year provoking new contexts for learning.
Materia Abierta is a summer school on theory, art, and technology. Established in Mexico City as a space to reflect on the political, economic, and epistemic forces that condition knowledge production, the program is reshaped every year provoking new contexts for learning.
Materia Abierta is a summer school on theory, art, and technology. Established in Mexico City as a space to reflect on the political, economic, and epistemic forces that condition knowledge production, the program is reshaped every year provoking new contexts for learning.
Materia Abierta is a summer school on theory, art, and technology. Established in Mexico City as a space to reflect on the political, economic, and epistemic forces that condition knowledge production, the program is reshaped every year provoking new contexts for learning.
Materia Abierta is a summer school on theory, art, and technology. Established in Mexico City as a space to reflect on the political, economic, and epistemic forces that condition knowledge production, the program is reshaped every year provoking new contexts for learning.
Materia Abierta is a summer school on theory, art, and technology. Established in Mexico City as a space to reflect on the political, economic, and epistemic forces that condition knowledge production, the program is reshaped every year provoking new contexts for learning.
Materia Abierta is a summer school on theory, art, and technology. Established in Mexico City as a space to reflect on the political, economic, and epistemic forces that condition knowledge production, the program is reshaped every year provoking new contexts for learning.
Materia Abierta is a summer school on theory, art, and technology. Established in Mexico City as a space to reflect on the political, economic, and epistemic forces that condition knowledge production, the program is reshaped every year provoking new contexts for learning.
Materia Abierta is a summer school on theory, art, and technology. Established in Mexico City as a space to reflect on the political, economic, and epistemic forces that condition knowledge production, the program is reshaped every year provoking new contexts for learning.
Materia Abierta is a summer school on theory, art, and technology. Established in Mexico City as a space to reflect on the political, economic, and epistemic forces that condition knowledge production, the program is reshaped every year provoking new contexts for learning.
Materia Abierta is a summer school on theory, art, and technology. Established in Mexico City as a space to reflect on the political, economic, and epistemic forces that condition knowledge production, the program is reshaped every year provoking new contexts for learning.
El múcaro a lo lejos
Under the title El múcaro a lo lejos, the 2023 edition of Materia Abierta is curated by artist Jorge González Santos, and it will take place in Mexico City from July 31 to August 26. The program is developed with the support of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in coordination with Cultura UNAM, Casa del Lago UNAM, Cátedra Extraordinaria Max Aub, Transdisciplina en Arte y Tecnología, and Museo Tamayo.
This year’s program seeks to interweave ritual practices, memory construction, and material cultures, assembling knowledge from different locations in the Caribbean considered essential to resignifying the political potential of aesthetic instruments and ancestral knowledge. Calling upon the ancient chant of the múcaro, a small bird endemic to Borikén, the program will be a gathering to interiorize and collectivize the act of listening between shared resonance and murmurs.
Counter Pedagogies
Materia Abierta provides a space for autonomous learning that aims to foster the socialization of knowledge from action, the mobilization of political will, and the ritualization of critical thinking based on collective principles. It is a sustained exercise that acknowledges all the summoned forces to make sharing and learning possible.
The program is reshaped each year, generating a gathering around common motivations. For the first time, some of this summer’s activities will take place in our own space, which will be modified by the participants to enable the dynamics of day-to-day cooperation. Our intention is to adapt working models to sustain contexts of solidarity and accountability.
This year's edition has been planned with the objective to build critical intimacy and inquiring affectivity. Participants will work on an artistic or research project in its early stages of development, which will be a point of departure to amplify personal explorations, instigate collaborations, and generate dialogue within the group. Presentations will be coordinated to socialize these processes with the extended community of Materia Abierta, composed of peers, friends, and neighbors.
Program
El múcaro a lo lejos refers to an ancestral chant from Borikén that survives deep in the mountains, in a constant murmur of sunrise and sunset. Its whistle is confused with a sustained vibration in the deep density of the forest. Invoking the mysteries of this chant, we will affirm the force that sound and its vibrations have on the web of life. The 2023 Materia Abierta program will be a space for learning and collective care, determining the will to internalize as a first act of listening. It will be a fabric of relationships formed from the principles of generosity, affectivity, vindication, and self-sufficiency.
Following principles proposed by Escuela de Oficios, a project for learning developed by artist Jorge González Santos in collaboration with various communities, this edition of Materia Abierta will focus on work based on ancestral and collective techniques. Through different theoretical and practical activities, a diverse group of artists, thinkers, healers, and artisans will exchange knowledge related to material trades understood as the intersection of multiple knowledge systems that go beyond the techniques themselves. From there, we will approach the daily politics of materialities as expressions of complicity, by mutually learning different trades and establishing community regeneration processes.
Curatorial CORRESPONDENCE*
I am trying to imagine the mount where the múcaro lives. I wonder what the forest where it spends the days is like and how deep you have to go in to listen to its murmur.
I also wonder if this forest is similar to the dry tropical forest where we wandered, where the midday sun burned our neck as there were no tall trees to shield us from its rays. That road, if you remember, had a clayey and stony soil, and to the sides we noticed the plant that in Colombia is called fique, and in Borikén is called maguey. I wonder if, to communicate with a múcaro’s ancestor, a quena made of bone was used by the Guane as an instrument on that same road we walked.
Or could it be that the chant of this bird is more easily found in dense forests where moisture seems like rain? Like the swamped road that we roamed for hours, where water had a sweet taste. I remember the fotuto that you brought that day and wonder if a múcaro recognized its sound.
Now I think about what this encounter fostered by Materia Abierta might entail. How will the words we cross, between us and other species, inhabit that forest and other ecosystems?
In each of these places, singular and specific, languages are formed that are shared with everything that exists there, asserting the agency that sound and its vibrations has upon us: It is a full-body experience. The book How Forests Think comes to mind. Written by Eduardo Kohn, it evokes other beings that bring us to new ways of listening and invites us to think beyond our moral constitutions. These ways of listening enable us to imagine just and different worlds.
When the sun sets, the forest awakens. In that moment, in the perpetuation of its day, which we refer to as the night, the múcaro starts to call us. Each murmur holds secrets of the forest that we still do not know how to listen to.
And in such a way we enter the forest. In a path of reciprocity, of pausing. Of listening.
[...]
* During the first months of this year, artist Jorge González Santos and curator Juliana Steiner held a dialogue in preparation for the 2023 Materia Abierta program. These correspondences mark the beginning of this invitation to listen to each other.
CONTINUE READING
Tutors
Credits
Team
Jorge González Santos
Curator 2023
Federico Pérez Villoro
Director
Ana Rivera
General coordinator
Eduardo Makoszay Mayén
Producer
Eva Posas
Editorial coordinator
Zoë Heyn-Jones
Development and fundraising
Juliana Steiner
Co-author of curatorial correspondence
Andrea Volcán
Graphic design
Esteban German
Website development
Isabel Zapata
Editor and proofreader (Spanish)
Advisory Board
Sara Garzón
Mônica Hoff
Natalia Zuluaga
Cinthya García Leyva
Participants
Materia Abierta invites applications from people based anywhere in the world and working within any discipline. An academic degree is not required to participate.
Through the open call, a group of approximately 25 candidates will be selected. The intention is to form a diverse, critical, and politically active group of people who seek to interrogate the systems through which dominant culture and knowledge are produced.
Activities are conducted in Spanish and English, with simultaneous translation only on some occasions. Knowledge of both languages is highly recommended in order to participate, although the act of collective translation and its challenges is favored as part of the group's social dynamics.
Funding
The cost of participation in the program is $1,800 USD. This fee does not include lodging, transportation, or other personal expenses.
Through institutional funding, Materia Abierta will offer a limited number of full and partial scholarships for candidates who cannot cover the full cost. Those who wish to be considered for any of these supports must indicate that in the application form, where relevant financial information will be requested. We also have a support fund that allows members of our community to provide resources and directly support the scholarship program. Materia Abierta can issue letters of support to applicants selected to participate in the program who wish to request external financing to cover the costs of their participation.
Calendar
The 2023 edition will be an intensive four-week study program. It will address the proposed topics with the necessary urgency, but there will also be time for reflection, rest, and group socializing.
Activities will include seminars, public talks, and group discussions as well as workshops given by members of local collectives. These will take place Monday to Thursday mornings at the Museo Tamayo and Casa del Lago. On Thursday afternoons there will be public events, and Saturdays will be set aside for workshops and group meals in the Materia Abierta space. Fridays and Sundays are days off. These times are subject to change based on logistical rearrangements and a more detailed schedule will be shared upon acceptance.
Application
The call will be open from March 29 to May 7, 2023, at 11:59 p.m. (CDT). To apply please refer to the online form, where among other requisites, the following materials are requested:
Work samples should be recent and can include images and texts as well as links to websites, videos, and/or audio-based works.
Any questions regarding the application process may be sent to info@materiaabierta.com, with the subject line "Application 2023."