Workshops
Workshops
Who / Where / Subject / Object
Siiri Pohjolainen- Huuto (Helsinki)
Thursday 8th October 17:30-18:30 (Stand P6)
The workshop invites participants to become living, site-specific sculptures through a collaborative process with the artist.
Friday 9th October 18:00-19:00 (Plaza buïgas, General Program)
As a result of MACBA’s Independent Studies Program (PEI), within the Counter-Information research line coordinated by Erick Beltrán and Lumbung Press, this working group presents a publication conceived as a device for collective editing.
Kantin Urusan Keseharian (The Canteen of Daily Affairs)
GOR- Gelanggang Olah Rasa (Bandung)
Saturday 10th October 12:30-14:00 (Plaza buïgas, General Program)
The Canteen of Daily Affairs is a participatory art project that explores how we have been doing lately. This work invites the audience to re-examine what constitutes the daily “dietary intake” of our minds, and to explore how we digest all of this reality.
Operasi Plastik + Unconditional Design
22.06.2026
Activity realised outside of the fair
Operasi Plastik + Unconditional Design are two workshops that explore upcycling as a platform for reflecting on design across various categories of products/objects/items created in a grassroots manner.
Workshops conceived and developed by the artists and spaces participating in Polar and Tropic, translating their research and methodologies into formats for learning, experimentation, and shared creation.As an extension of the curatorial program, the workshops invite diverse audiences to take part in artistic processes, creating spaces for exchange where knowledge is collectively built through practice. Professionals from the sector, collectors, students, and participants with no previous experience share the same learning environment, fostering encounters between different perspectives and approaches to contemporary art.The program begins before the fair with a series of initiatives developed in collaboration with organisations across the city, including a workshop held with Casal dels Infants del Raval, which brings the practices of Polar and Tropic closer to children and young people from migrant backgrounds. This commitment to opening artistic processes to new audiences continues throughout the fair, consolidating the workshops as a tool for mediation, participation, and critical thinking, where art is understood as a space for dialogue, learning, and shared transformation.
Siiri Pohjolainen- Huuto
Thursday 8th October · 17:30–18:30 (stand P6)
The workshop invites participants to become living, site-specific sculptures through a collaborative process with the artist. Participants are invited to decorate and transform themselves using small objects and materials gathered from nature, creating temporary human sculptures that respond to the character of the site. The artist and participant work together, blurring the traditional roles of maker and audience.Each transformation is documented through two Polaroid photographs: one becomes part of a growing photographic installation on the wall, while the other is given to the participant as a personal memory of the experience. Through this exchange, the workshop becomes both a collective artwork and an intimate encounter, where the boundaries between artist, participant, artwork, and audience are brought together.
EL JUGAR- PEI
Friday 9th October 18:00-19:00 (Plaza buïgas, General Program)
As a result of MACBA’s Independent Studies Program (PEI), within the Counter-Information research line coordinated by Erick Beltrán and Lumbung Press, this working group presents a publication conceived as a device for collective editing.
In keeping with the PEI’s research into solidarity-based press and editorial practices as forms of resistance, the publication draws on children’s play to activate a critical reflection on contemporary social and political issues.The workshop invites the public to engage with the publication, understanding play as a tool for collective learning, political imagination, and the shared production of knowledge.into a shared archive from which to imagine possible futures.
Kantin Urusan Keseharian (The Canteen of Daily Affairs)
Kantin Urusan Keseharian (The Canteen of Daily Affairs)
GOR- Gelanggang Olah Rasa (Bandung)
Saturday 10th October 12:30-14:00 (Plaza buïgas, General Program)
The Canteen of Daily Affairs is a participatory art workshop that invites participants to reflect on how they consume, process, and digest the realities of the world around them. Through a playful canteen-like experience, participants barter local newspapers and magazines, transform fragments of news into personal “daily menus,” and share them at a collective table. By turning information into food and news into a communal meal, the workshop creates a space for participants to pause, consider what they are feeding their minds, and encounter the everyday realities of others. The resulting collective banquet becomes a living portrait of how people across different places are experiencing and digesting the world today.
Operasi Plastik + Unconditional Design
22.06.2026
Activity realised outside of the fair
Operasi Plastik + Unconditional Design are two workshops that explore upcycling as a platform for reflecting on design across various categories of products/objects/items created in a grassroots manner. These designs aim to facilitate daily activities or address everyday challenges, emerging directly from what is in front of or around us, through processes of observation, awareness, sensitivity, social behaviour, culture, creativity, situations, and conditions.Inspired by the Arabic-derived Indonesian/Malay term ‘Mubazir’, which refers wasting materials, time, food or money, the goal of the workshop is to transform plastic waste into functional and artistic objects.
Using everyday, accessible tools such as household irons, participants learn simple techniques to reuse plastic and turn it into high-value items, including bags and pouches. Beyond the hands-on experience, the workshops introduce the principles of circular materials, sustainable design, and creative reuse, addressing environmental challenges through artistic practice while proposing alternatives to conventional waste management models.The workshops are led by MG and Acip, part of the Jakarta-based collectives Gudskul and STUFFO GudRnD, that explore the potential of waste as a material, collaborative design, and circular economy practices.
The collectives bring their learning methodology to Barcelona by inviting twenty young people from Casal dels Infants del Raval to take part in Operasi Plastik + Unconditional Design. The workshops use the transformation of recycled plastic as a metaphor for identity formation: a continuous process of metamorphosis in which past, present, and future intertwine to shape new personal and collective narratives.
Aimed at young people navigating a period of transition and living across multiple cultures, languages, and experiences, the project understands art as a tool for activating memory, creating spaces for exchange, and exploring shared forms of belonging. The reuse of materials thus extends beyond its environmental dimension to become a symbolic gesture: just as plastic is given a new life, individual experiences are collectively transformed into a shared archive from which to imagine possible futures.
