Within the research context of “Catastrophe and Heritage,” the OuUnPo session in Brazil will explore disappearance, a state where end is another word for transformation and where the absence is another form of being. In close collaboration with numerous Brazilian partners, a 7-day event will be created to experiment with the impalpable as a metaphor, research question and methodology.
The unique Brazilian context will allow us to look at how loss reverberates and affects the shaping of our being in the present as well as our dialogue with the past. OuUnPo members and local artists, curators, institutions and researchers will be engaged in both a theoretical and practice-based research with the aim of understanding how we perceive history in the present and how the past is constantly reactivated in the shaping of cultures. The group will approach local collections, archives in an interrogative manner, highlighting the invisible tension between absence and presence.
How do we integrate voids and vestiges to generate sense and formulate memory? How can ruptures and unending amalgamations help us to get a deeper understanding of time and temporality? To approach these questions the group will build on four central concepts. These will serve as platforms between the visiting group and the local creators and institutions and will allow for learning and creation that embraces differences and similarities among all the participants in the project.
