Workshops
Thanks to The Arts Federation and the Tippecanoe County Historical Society for helping host these workshops.
Mapping and Curating
A mapping implies recognizing geography, and curating implies selecting what articulates a desired narrative. The participants shared photographs from their family albums, and/or experiences that constituted the referents to talk about the past and the present, and that also became part of the project archive. The space became an intergenerational dialogue and a timeline was created with the participants from places, spaces, characters, events, and narratives that are part of the collective memory of Lafayette, Indiana, along with personal memories that allowed us to expand the narrative about the social configuration, cultural, economic and urban of the city.
Reflecting and Remembering
In this workshop, we reflected on our relationship with the past through a field diary in which each participant selected the most significant images from their memory and created their narrative. The invitation was to write about the past and reflect in this diary the transformations of personal life, by selecting the relevant objects, people, and memories for each one, that is, by collecting affections. The result was a set of narratives that were compiled thanks to the diaries in which a set of fundamental dimensions for the participants became evident, such as family, friends, transformative experiences, and significant events for personal development.
Experimentation and Creation
The fundamental purpose of this workshop was to use artistic strategies to speculate on possible futures based on the common and diverse past recognized in previous workshops. For this reason, in this workshop, the participants built Pop-ups or sculptures on paper, as a creative strategy to think about the future from the collected archival material, and a strategy of designing cards that included places, actions, and fantasy. By selecting a card in each category, each participant created a fictional scenario about the future.
Exhibition
In the small exhibition, we shared a sampling of objects and images that have significant value to Tippecanoe County residents, connecting us with the place and its past through a cultural inventory. The brief timeline corresponds to the personal memories and archival research that emerged during community workshops, classroom conversations and campus explorations.
