Within Western tradition “to make” means to impose, or a previously conceptualised project, to a certain raw material that is viewed as inert. It is, for example, what British anthropologist Tim Ingold (University of Aberdeen, Scotland), among others, names “Hylomorphic”. Indeed, for Aristotle all things were the result of a fusion between matter (hilé) and form (morphé). And this reasoning is still – for the most part, that is – prevalent nowadays.

But it is possible to approach these issues from a new angle, and attempt to understand how, since we are born, the relationship between man, the materials and the resources present in the encircling ecosystems is processed.

 

To learn with those who know and, in practice, to observe, to listen and to wield, to experience textures and to identify odours, to analyse the intrinsic characteristics and to foresee the results of interactions – all these factors come together to form a long process of enablement, of efining the senses and the gesture, the knowledge of materials, techniques and circumstances.

 

From these interactions – be they infrequent or successive – the processes of learning and of construction of knowledge are born. The use of “know-how” to “know how to do”, intimately connected with our world, and which shapes us as we shape it in a veritable unending cycle, transforms these interactions into a chain reaction of a reproductive nature – one that stems from, is guided by and results in the production and employment of knowledge.

 

However, what is exactly the nature of the relationship between doing, imparting, constructing, creating, memorising/memorialising and, generally, understanding, when those activities are brought together, placed in relation to each other, and all of them with human action in general, immersed in the world?

 

What do we learn about "ways of making" and their repercussions in the spheres of the individual subject or of the social collective when, instead of considering them as static elements, we attempt articulate them with each other?

 

These are the essential questions that will guide the “Ways of Making” International Colloquium.

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