Sustainable artistic ecologies – Art Research Techniques Beyond Sense

Invited by Projecto Utopia Mafalala for an artistic residency in collaboration with Centro Cultural Franco-Moçambicano in Maputo, Mozambique, Huge Sillytoe designed a series of workshops concerning performance as a methodology for the illumination of unexpected ideas within distinct processes of artistic research.

Lightning and electrical storms were taken as a central theme for the workshop exercises and a metaphor for the sudden light that playful performance may shed on a research question, in connection with Huge Sillytoe’s parallel work as artist-in-lab with Wits School of Arts and Johannesburg Lightning Research Laboratory in neighbouring South Africa.

These workshops were made for the combined participation of professional artists from across Maputo and local young people from the surrounding marginalised neighborhood of Mafalala. This unique blend supported the mission of Projecto Utopia Mafalala to provide local youth with possibilities to meaningfully collaborate with a diversity of both local and international artists and for these artists in turn to learn from the perspectives of the youth of Mafalala.