EL MÚCARO A LO LEJOS program for MATERIA ABIERTA, MEXICO

Alessandra along with Elliot Perkins of Ultra-red will part in the learning program EL MÚCARO A LO LEJOS curated by Jorge González Santos that includes also Ochy Curiel, Akire Huauhtli, Engel Leonardo, Escuela de Oficios, Suely Rolnik, Awilda Sterling-Duprey, Ber Zabalaga.
Alessandra and Elliot came up with the proposal of four sessions of listening protocols under the title

What Is the Sound of Contested Space? A Sound Investigation in Four Parts

On August 10, Alessandra will give a public talk on the experiences of Free Home University.

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.

Alessandra is on her research visit in Mexico supported by Italian Council (2022), the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity and the Italian