Social Art Residency

transformation as a social art form

Role: Core Team | Project: La Vaca Independiente, and the Presencing Institute (MIT). Location: Yucatan, Mexico.

Core Team: Arawana Hayashi, Claudia Madrazo, and Ricardo Dutra

Website: https://socialart.mx

Location: Tecoh, a site specific art project that involved the restoration of an old Hacienda in the Yucatan, Mexico. Artist: Jorge Pardo.

Location: Tecoh, a site specific art project that involved the restoration of an old Hacienda in the Yucatan, Mexico. Artist: Jorge Pardo.

We have been co-designing 10-day immersive interdisciplinary residencies for designers, artists, performers, architects, film makers, photographers, and change makers to co-create social change as an art form. The residencies are hosted at Site-Specific Art places in the Yucatan, Mexico.

Invitation Poster for Social Art Residency, 2019.

Invitation Poster for Social Art Residency, 2019.

How do you make visible social change through art forms? The Social Art Studio integrates embodied awareness, art and social change to deliver aesthetic experiences for social systems transformation. We activate local ecosystems by integrating practice, application, research and story-telling, within the field of creative practices and systems change. Co-created by La Vaca Independiente and the Presencing Institute.

Video: Invitation for Social Art Residency, 2019.

the frames we explore

Traditional art is usually set to museum spaces and galleries. Art is seen as an artefact – and the figure of the “artist” is seen in isolation. Beginning from a different frame – what if art was collectively made? If the “artist” were instead the “collective” (e.g. a social group, or movement)?

  • What if social transformation was itself an art form?

  • How would this art be made visible?

  • What principles would this “art” form be based on?

Process evidence.

Process evidence.

outputs

Over 10 days the residents engage in creative processes to generate content for a “social art piece”, which could be a performance, an experience, a visual art form, a film, etc. This “product” is collectively made, and hence it is no one’s particular authorship. The final “piece” is “showed back” to the community. In that way, sparking dialogue, reflection, and – potentially, fresher ways of viewing social reality.

Following community journeys, residents perform a theater-piece to spark a “social reflection” on Mayan culture, nature, and land.

Following community journeys, residents perform a theater-piece to spark a “social reflection” on Mayan culture, nature, and land.

 
As seekers, artists, and social advocates, we have been questioning and exploring the potential of Art as a vehicle to connect and re-connect humans with themselves, with others and with our own potential to activate personal and social transformation, to evolve and co-evolve, in these challenging times for humans and nature. In February 2020, The Presencing Institute, in collaboration with La Vaca Independiente designed the second edition of the Social Art Residency, in Izamal (in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico) to work with the Mayan youth. With the purpose and intention to investigate meanings, definitions, and forms of social art through our own fields of experiences and practices. Theory U and Social Presencing Theater, along with other methods and frameworks, were infused in the process of Sensing, creating, co-creating, performing, and reflecting on the work , all conceived and designed as part of this social art vision.

Video: Social Art Studio Residency, 2020.

 
Social Performance was held at a Site-Specific Art place, an amphitheater designed by light artist James Turrell. Yucatan, Mexico.

Social Performance was held at a Site-Specific Art place, an amphitheater designed by light artist James Turrell. Yucatan, Mexico.

 
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