About the program:
Sur o No Sur is a proposal for collective learning that looks to share and rethink knowledge through guided practices, dialogues, and explorations. Modeled as a series of workshops held during two separate three-week sessions in the summer of 2024, the program brings in a series of visiting artists to act as guides and facilitators.
SUR o NO SUR attempts to create an experimental “school” that values and prioritizes the inherent knowledge that stems from our communities, lands and histories. By taking time to examine what we know and how, we hope to question and expand what we’ve been taught about education.
These sessions aim to offer a structured yet intuitive platform for artistic exchange and a space outside daily practices and/or traditional institutions to question and engage with the form in which we and/or our work can exist and evolve. We hope to offer an opportunity for experimentation, learning, and making without expectation of achievement.
About Sur o No Sur 2024 :
In our first iteration of this summer program we’re looking to explore the ways in which we receive and share information and knowledge and how that influences our perspectives and practices. At the same time, we’re interested in reimagining limits and boundaries between people, countries, disciplines, beliefs, etc physically and otherwise.
How is knowledge passed down in your family or community?
What forms you as an artist? How can you form others?
What do you believe is the most important thing you have learned? Where did you learn it? Who taught you? What was your relationship with them? Why did they teach it to you?
What do we “know” from an educational / social (outer) perspective & how is that the same or different from what we know from a personal (inner) perspective?
How do we determine the value of knowledge? Who determines its worth?
How do you know that you know? (Who legitimizes knowledge?)
Is there anything you wish you hadn’t been taught?
What are some ways for unlearning?
Can objects pass down knowledge? How can we listen to them?
What does knowledge taste, smell, feel like?
What is knowledge and how is it different from information?
Where do you go to learn?
What limits and or boundaries are necessary? How do we identify them and how do we enforce them?
How does your work fall into certain limitations and how does it spread out of them?
How do borders define your relationships and how do your relationships define your work?
What conversation brings the body to reflect on our own mental borders? How do phys
Is the act of erasing inherently destructive or can things come out from erasure?
About the open call:
We are looking for proposals based on the theme and questions proposed that encourage reflection and investigation to be explored through various mediums, directions, and responses.
We envision proposals that pull from your personal work and experience to inform guided practices; collective investigation & dialogues, studio visits; and group excursions as well as space to share, discuss, and develop work.
We are looking for questions and themes that push us to think, create and communicate from a place outside of academic norms.
Each weeklong session, based on your proposals, will be developed and led in collaboration with the team at Pocoapoco.
Details
Each visiting artist will guide one week of the three-week session along with Pocoapoco.
In-person sessions will be held each morning (more or less 10:30 am-1:30 pm) Monday-Thursday. Fridays will be for excursions to locations around the area.
Lunch is provided Monday- Friday, as well as bread and coffee daily.
Housing is provided at Pocoapoco for all visiting artists,
The programs will be open to local, national, and international participants at sliding-scale fees.
The programs will be open to a bilingual group (English and Spanish). Our team will help with translation as well as thinking together about strategies for communication.
There will be a total of10-15 of participants in each group.
For all visiting artists / session facilitators we offer a compensation / stipend of $10,000 MXN pesos for the week along with daily lunch, and housing for international collaborators. We hope this program feeds your work as much as it does the participants!
Notes:
This is a new project and we imagine it will be greatly informed by you! We are looking forward to the opportunity to reconnect with former residents (through collaborations and/or participation) and to further the conversations, reflections, and relationships that were initiated during your residencies.
To send a visiting artist proposal:
Please send the following information to projects@pocoapocomx.com by October 20th, 2023.
A short write-up of what idea or concept your week as a visiting artist would explore and how.
A general breakdown of how you imagine the 4-5 days of this session looking (eg examples of guided practices / collective investigation & dialogues / studio visits / group excursions)
Materials you might need (if applicable)
Briefly tell us how your approach feeds and / or responds to the proposed questions and what it would offer to this conversation.
We will get back to everyone by November 10th, 2023.
Program dates:
Sur o No Sur Session 1 / June 3-21, 2024
Visiting artist 1: June 3-7
Visiting artist 2: June 10-14
Visiting artist 3: June 17-21
Sur o No Sur Session 2 / July 1-19, 2024
Visiting artist 1: July 1-5
Visiting artist 2: June 8-12
Visiting artist 3: July 15-19