Ensamblajes

COLLECTIVE WORKSHOPS

2021, MATADERO MADRID, SPAIN

PROMOTION: MEDIALAB
SUPPORT: DANIEL AND NINA CARASSO FOUNDATION
CURATED AND COORDINATED BY: GRIGRI PROJECTS

This open and free programme of three talks and a workshop, promoted by Medialab with the support of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation and curated and coordinated by Grigri, aims to address, from different theoretical and practical perspectives, the possibilities of an "ecology of knowledge" - as developed by Boaventura de Sousa Santos - in which we can bring into play a plurality of knowledge and situations that allow us to face the current challenges of our common life.

The programme is part of the programme of the XXI Madrid Science and Innovation Week, whose motto is A science for the great challenges of humanity. With an interdisciplinary perspective and a search for other possible geographies of human and non-human interactions, the Ensamblajes programme connects with the objectives of this event through a proposal organized in three spaces for dialogue and a classroom for collective creation where we will question ourselves about what the practices, imaginaries and experiences can be for a truly useful science in a context of ecosocial crisis.

Ensamblajes - Conservatorio 1 - Saberes de urgencia
Assemblages. Discussion 1: Knowledge emergency

In this meeting, we propose to ask ourselves how we can situate ourselves in another place in order to know and learn from practices that, from our central position, are considered "peripheral", as well as to analyze what expert knowledge has been privileged in order to respond to the urgencies in the context of the COVID19 pandemic. And from there, to investigate what knowledge we need, what the perspective of different groups of affected or concerned people can contribute, which are really useful and what the hierarchies between this knowledge may be.

How can we bring in and connect other imaginaries, from other latitudes and experiences, to give rise to more sustainable, respectful and fulfilling ways of living?

Ensamblajes. Conversatorio 2: Saberes en la interdependencia entre campo y ciudad
Assemblages. Discussion 2: Knowledge in the interdependence between the city and the countryside.

There is a radical link of interdependence between the countryside and the city that has been seriously weakened by decades of deterioration in the relations between these two environments, a disaffection that places us today before a scenario in which it is urgent to imagine shared strategies and hybrid forms from which to begin to repair this rupture. A rupture that we are beginning to be able to understand, moreover, as the origin of the unsustainability of the territorial system that is situated in the rupture between the two worlds.

How can we begin to imagine ways of updating the contract of mutual responsibility between the rural and urban realms?

Ensamblajes. Conversatorio 3: Saberes humanos
Assemblages. Discussion 3: Human wisdom

In the current context of severe social and environmental crises, artificial intelligence is being adopted in many important areas of life (medicine, justice, social benefits...), posing a double battle: on the one hand it aspires to raise big business; on the other hand, to do so, it must gain and sustain its legitimacy. But can we consider as accumulation of knowledge what happens within a machine learning model, a model that is inscrutable and cannot be asked to justify its decision?

The "programme" of artificial intelligence is the announcement that a world without subjectivity is a better world. No more tiredness, no more disputes, no more loneliness, no more mistakes, no more imperfections, no more death... no more humanity?

Based on the reflections that emerged from the three talks in the programme, a workshop was proposed for three consecutive days to, on the one hand, collect and document some of the questions raised and, on the other, to try to give them continuity through an exhibition installation that materialises and arranges in space the interweaving of concepts, practices and positions woven throughout these three sessions.

Thus, this workshop was proposed as a meeting place for collective creation that could be incarnated in a living exhibition tool, an experiential map, a common memory under construction, and a portable museum in which to assemble that knowledge that allows us to question the times of urgency and acceleration, the cognitive hierarchies of the universal or the legitimacy of disembodied intelligences.

The workshop has counted on the precious and generous participation of Laia Miret, Clara Maseda, Estefania Santiago, Eduardo Levaggi, Mara Gamboa, Joanna Lalowska, Roxana Covarrubias Sonora, Natalia Pilo Pais and Pablo Carral.

After the three Assemblages talks, on Saturday 13 November at 7 p.m. we presented the synthesis of the three meetings, in the form of a performance with the aim of making visible the questions addressed and the attempted answers developed throughout the programme.

In addition, the "Portable Museum of Assemblages" was presented, created within the framework of the programme's workshop, made up of objects that have been collected and proposed by both the workshop participants and the speakers at the talks, materialising these assemblages understood as relations of complementarity between diverse knowledge, objects that are halfway, in an intermediate territory between two spheres, inclusive, that assemble subjectivities, desires or collective needs.

Both the piece and the installation have been created by: Laia Miret, Clara Maseda, Estefania Santiago, Eduardo Levaggi, Mara Gamboa, Joanna Lalowska, Roxana Covarrubias Sonora, Natalia Pilo Pais and Pablo Carral.

The museum has counted with objects, concepts and sound contributions by: Laia Miret, Clara Maseda, Estefania Santiago, Eduardo Levaggi, Mara Gamboa, Joanna Lalowska, Roxana Covarrubias Sonora, Natalia Pilo Pais, Pablo Carral, Salomé Rodríguez, Rafael SM Paniagua, María Montesino, María Montesino, Marga Padilla, Belén Gopegui, Diana Franco Eguren, David Pérez and Susana Moliner.

Text by Grigri Projects