Education Program
The Mercosul Biennial's pedagogical project has affirmed, over the years, its role in training art education professionals.
Attracting students and teachers from the most diverse fields of knowledge, the educational program provides spaces for immersion and intense experimentation within the network of cultural institutions in the city of Porto Alegre, radiating knowledge and practices that have impacted the field of museum education, education with art and for art, throughout Brazil.
The educational program of the 14th Mercosul Biennial is divided into activities (such as seminars, discussion groups, training courses for teachers and mediators) and the production of educational material. These actions aim to extend the public's dialogue with the artistic research on display and to encourage reflections on art and education, mediation and pedagogy, based on the concepts proposed by the general curatorship and the educational curatorship.
The entirety of our educational project is made up of the interweaving of three basic concepts:
Snap
As soon as the chief curator Raphael Fonseca mentioned the word "Snap" as the title for this edition of the Biennial in 2024, that sound instantly triggered action in our bodies: we were soon rubbing the tips of our fingers as if trying to decipher the word itself. But not only that. The "Snap" announced internally to the curatorial team, early in the project, also had the effect of a driving force in our work movements. From this first impulse, followed the choices of works and artists that make up the exhibition, the visits to the exhibition spaces in Porto Alegre, and in the case of the pedagogical curatorship, the start of research on artists, the search for bibliographic references, contact with teachers, schools, and potential collaborators. "Snap," a word with such physical implications, which flirts with sound, energy, and body movement, led us to think and wish that the concepts and principles adopted by the educational program would also be provocations for the body and its movement within classrooms and other learning spaces.
Wheel
As educational curators, we also decided to adopt a key term. Not as a title, but as an attempt to name our way of doing things, to establish the modus operandi of the project: "Wheel." The circular arrangement of people within Afro-Brazilian social dynamics, such as samba and capoeira, sparked us to reflect on what these manifestations and their format teach us about spaces of learning and work that are less marked by hierarchies, lines, and columns, where everyone can see each other and feel equally called to participate; what they also teach us about learning processes that call for the full participation of the body, the intelligence of its movement, and the whole set of senses. "Wheel" is a way of doing: a conjunction of many people, playing, dancing, singing, learning. The "wheel" is an invitation to be together.
Spin
This term, so dear to the history of the Biennial of Mercosul (at least since its 6th edition and the pronounced "Spin Educativo" or "Educational Turn"), established a key to understanding what has been done throughout all fourteen editions of the exhibition: the Biennial of Mercosul is an educational Biennial. Educational in a sense that is neither formal nor standardizing: the willingness to exchange knowledge—among educators, institutions, artists, cultural agents, students, the public, workers from collaborating spaces, tourists (and an endless list of possible and improbable encounters that intensify during the 2 or 3 months of a biennial)—requires permeable structures of speaking and listening, as well as sensitivity to the many demands of a flow that, at this point, easily reaches 800,000 people. That’s why we call it "spin" the strategy of bringing up the discussion on museum education and the invisible dimension of an educational body: the energy, the effort, and the rest involved in this project. On this journey, we have spun backward to gain momentum, accessing the memory of past educational projects from previous biennials, recognizing what we have inherited from this genealogy—as well as what escaped us. We have spun forward, hoping to see the emergence of other possibilities for educational turns, this time created also by mediators and teachers. And we’ve spun in many other directions, to listen to and understand the reality of the educational teams working in cultural institutions in the city of Porto Alegre and other regions of the country. In short, the spin aims to be the movement of debate on the very condition of museum education and the impact, on institutions, of events of this scale. A debate in which the role of the Biennial of Mercosul is indispensable.
We prepared this project in a circle, made by many hands, open like an arena for dialogue, games, and dance where there is always room for one more person. May this Biennial encourage conversations about art and reflections on life in schools, in exhibition spaces, on the streets, in squares, and in homes. We wish you great tours!
Andréa Hygino and Michele Zgiet
Educational Curators of the 14th Mercosul Biennial
Roulette: spin of ideas
SEMINAR OF OPEN CONVERSATIONS TO THE PUBLIC
The series of four meetings is based on the principles of our pedagogical project, based on the triad “snap - wheel - turn”. The conversations propose reflections on collective action, the energy and effort that drive the movement, in addition to the fights, dances and other cultural manifestations in a circle.
