Apuro, Mapuro, Bapuro…
Last year Apuro gathered many of you to tell stories and share knowledge – your participation was abundant and this first experience offered us many ideas to shape the path of Apuro.
This year, we distribute our attention across two branches: Mapuro regards our capacity to reflect and analyse our surroundings, and could be described as mind exploration and critical thinking. Bapuro relates to our capacity to communicate with the self through the body, movement and contemplation. Both threads intend to challenge, question and inspire our individual and collective practices.
We will tell you more about Bapuro in the coming weeks. Today we focus on Mapuro as a space for talks, debates, presentations or interactive workshops.
We invite you to use Mapuro as a transdisciplinary platform for sharing your projects and creative investigations. We imagine a forum where dialogue and experiments take place between a variety of perspectives and disciplines, revealing how technology, politics, the environment and arts and culture are intertwined. Here are some of the topics that are vital for us to discuss this year:
Technology
From the wheel to the smartphone, we’ve put our imaginations to work creating the tools that make life easier and expand the limits of what we can do. These same technologies have made it possible for us to innovate at an ever increasing pace, impacting the way we move, talk and work – these instruments are never neutral and we are changing with them. Let’s take a step back to look at the way modern technology has come to shape the way we portray ourselves, talk with each other, and interact with the world.
Environment
The ecosystem is all organisms that are around us, living or non-living. It includes physical, chemical and other natural forces. As living things we exist in our environment, constant interaction and adaptation takes place between us and our surroundings. Whilst awareness is steadily spreading, the global political processes still fail to effectively address the problems already endangering the ecosystem today. How can we enhance the primacy of our environmental challenges? How can we take collective and personal ownership of our actions?
Politics
We see politics as a continuous dialogue that must be kept between each other whilst living together. Politics is not a restricted activity; it includes all structures that shape our interpersonal interactions and the way we organize ourselves. Who decides upon what? How do we come together to deal with our collective adversities? These are some of the questions we intend to address whilst considering issues such as the rise of right-wing extremism, civil disobedience or the current migration tendencies.
Art and Culture
We are interested in the role that artistic creativity may serve as a common language to bring together different groups and communities on topics such as politics, environment and technology. We seek to understand the possible tension between two perceived goals of art – one as a purely aesthetic exercise and the other as enabling social change and innovation. Does art have the potential to suggest new realities?
What do you think?
We believe it is important not to leave such crucial discussions in the closed rooms of universities and conference centres. That’s why we want your help shaping the lakeside conversations we’ll be having this year. If you’re interested in participating in Mapuro with a talk, a presentation of your project, a workshop or an idea for a panel debate you’d like to bring to Waking Life, get in touch with us through apuro@wakinglife.pt.
As the ancient Chinese curse goes, “may you live in interesting times!”