Materia Abierta is pleased to announce the launch of the open call for its 2022 edition. Under the title The Rise of the Coyote, the program is curated by Sara Garzón, and it will take place in person in Mexico City from August 1 to August 28. The faculty includes Calpulli Tecalco, Black Quantum Futurism, Paula Gaetano Adi, Laboratorio Lacustre, Michael Marder, Chakanetsa Mavhunga, Mujeres de la Tierra, Pedro Neves Marques, and Fernando Palma Rodríguez.
The call will be open from April 20 to May 23, 2022.
Materia Abierta is a summer school on theory, art, and technology based in Mexico City. Conceived as a space to reflect on the urgencies of our presents and futures, the program aims to interrogate the political, economic, and ideological forces that condition contemporary cultural production favoring other forms of action and knowledge.
This year’s program is an invitation to take a trip back to Earth. Through the invocation of Huehuecóyotl, the Aztec deity known as the old coyote, participants will search for forms of relationality, reciprocity, and mutuality within the natural, ancestral, and human worlds we inhabit. In order to get closer to these pluriversal paradigms, the program will explore a socio-technological approach to diverse local practices where technology reveals itself as the capacity to “cultivate life.”
Materia Abierta’s third edition will research the relationships among several thematic axes: Indigenous robotics, plant intelligence, and notions of futurity endemic to the native peoples of the south of what is now the Valley of Mexico. Unlike Western technology, which is based on the principles of exploitation and domination, the approaches to technology that participants of the program will seek to understand are oriented toward frameworks of reciprocity and re-existence.
As a collaborative practice rooted in place, The Rise of the Coyote will depart from the slopes of the Teuhtli volcano, which is the geographical border between the municipalities of Milpa Alta and Xochimilco as these lie at the fringes of Mexico City. Participants will partake in seminars, lectures, film screenings, walk throughs, and a committed listening to local community members and grassroot organizations that fight day to day for social justice, environmental equity, and land sovereignty. Assuming themselves as cyborg coyotes, they will be invited to enter into entangled relationalities with the territory, its soil, and its community to learn from otherworldly visualities and sensibilities. The call is open to artists, scholars, curators, and researchers based anywhere in the world and working within any discipline.
Materia Abierta is developed with the support from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in coordination with Cultura UNAM, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Casa del Lago UNAM, and Cátedra Extraordinaria Max Aub, Transdisciplina en Arte y Tecnología.
Deadline for application: May 23, 2022. For more information visit materiaabierta.com and follow @materiaabierta on Twitter and Instagram.
