Short Abstract:

PROTOLAB is a space to rethink and collectively build more caring and liveable worlds. We aim to investigate the relevance of collage as a social research technique oriented towards the transformation of capitalist urban spaces.

Long Abstract:

PROTOLAB is a group of researchers who use speculative fiction to imagine more liveable and alternative futures. Though this proposed lab, we aim to collectively create a collage to envision more habitable spaces.

This collage results from handling an extensive map of a capitalist European city which, although it does not correspond to any existing metropolis, it contains common elements to all of them. The group will meet in a room to cut, glue or sew materials such as paints, cardboard or fabrics, in order to transform the old map into a new one. During this process we will discuss the construction of our subjectivity in the city based on relationships and practices that we activate in these spaces. Our role as a group will be to support each other during this creative process.

In this regard, the purpose of this lab is to explore the materials of collage as agential and relational mediations that actively dimension our subjectivities through mutual affectation. We seek to discuss the socio-technical changes and mutations that the practice of collage adopts during our conversation-making, as well as understanding the synergies and tensions that are forged on the process. This lab will allow us to think about the relevance of collage as a social research technique with an ethnographic sensibility. To think about collage as a research method is to acknowledge that collages allow us to understand and transform the worlds we inhabit through art. Collages are a practice that fosters creative encounters.

Registration: https://forms.gle/nVRwuc9BpNMeUvT19