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“… we must not forget that the imagination is not just a simple instinct,
it is a true method, a practice, a culture, a pedagogy, a cognitive education."
 
Matteo Meschiari

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

Given that we live in a society characterised by the proliferation of increasingly heterogeneous and fragmented information, it is essential to develop interdisciplinary and integrated perspectives that combine experiences from various research fields in order to address the complexities of the scenarios presented by our current paradigm.

 

The seminars and workshop programmes are designed to investigate the nature and semantics of imagination through the mediatory potential of mental images from a symbolic, philosophical, and physiological standpoint, employing visual reflection tools of spatial thinking.

 

Through theoretical lessons, expanded lectures, practical activities and collective discussions, participants engage with a dimension of figurative dialogue to enlighten their own cognitive processes and amplify their inner landscapes using a creative procedure based on research, analysis and intuitive correspondence among textual materials and iconographical archives.

 

Participants are introduced to the philosophical, historical, and aesthetic aspects of mental diagrams, conceptual maps, and gesture cartographies during the workshop activities, emphasising their creative potential in a number of fields of application.

 

Thinking in space with the diagram provides a way to reshape our mental laboratory through a cognitive movement produced by the oscillation of rational processes and abstract associations, systematic approaches, and gestures of intuitive analogy.

 

These spatial reflection performative activities shape one's psychic flow, revealing correspondences and unexpected associations, whose meaning emerges as a natural result of dynamic knowledge that transcends binary thinking.

 

This method aims to provide a device for engaging with the deep structures of our associative thinking, guiding the person through the labyrinth of their imaginations and poetics, and supporting them in extricating themselves from the fragmented nature of the work by distinguishing between chaotic, complex, and complicated scenarios.

 

By urging an interdisciplinary approach to visual culture, the workshops and seminars aim to further stimulate a deeper vision of creative labour by making people comprehend how their work can be understood as a vehicle for discovery, knowledge, and contemplation—a means that, before being communicative and representative, should be focused on nurturing the author during their personal cognitive journey.

FIELDS OF APPLICATION

Images and signs are meaning vehicles and mediators, and they play an essential role in the development, shaping, and refinement of ideas and concepts across all disciplines.

 

Since the work programme focuses on the network of relationships that underlie the cognitive process, the field of application is broad, encompassing art, cinema, theatre, storytelling, design, content development, and a variety of research disciplines.

 

Over the years, I have given seminars, talks educational programmes, and workshops in academies, public and private organisations, foundations, schools, universities, and museums, encouraging the public to interact with museum collections and archives in new ways.

CO-LEARNING
OUTCOMES

The work is structured within an experimental framework with the following aims:

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  • Stimulate critical thinking on visual culture by taking an interdisciplinary and integrated approach to addressing the complexities of contemporary paradigms
     

  • Explore the importance of mental image and symbolic language.
     

  • Investigate, shape, and expand our mindscape using visual-spatial thinking to become acquainted with our cognitive processes and clarify mental flows.
     

  • Acquire visual tools to discern differences between chaotic, complex, and complicated scenarios.
     

  • Improve our ability to clarify, analyse, and interpret concepts and ideas using visuals and signs as meaning mediators.
     

  • Encourage collaborative work and participatory thoughts by sharing a common physical and mental space.
     

  • Explore the intelligence of bodily gestures while thinking/drawing in space.
     

  • Support in the transformation of information into knowledge.
     

  • Nurture an ecological and empathic perspective by encouraging reflection on the interconnection of events and phenomena.

GENERAL
INFORMATIONS

Language
English, Italiano, Español

Teaching forms
Theoretical lessons, lectures, projections, collaborative work, open and individual discussions, practical experiments.

Workshop Type
The workshops are designed on a case-by-case according to the type of participants, the contexts, and the objectives to be achieved. 

Sessions
The workshop's working days range from a minimum of 2 to a maximum of 5 days.

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