The MPECV is an open program that is devised anew every year according to the ideas, experiences and proposals of the participants, be they students, teachers, mentors, coordinator or collaborating institutions. Every course is restructured and re-thought, although maintaining a series of axes organizing the work of all those implicated. These axes are as follows:

 

Methodologies for artistic research

 

We propose a very wide understanding of performance practice, one that integrates working procedures from other areas of creation and that is enriched through contamination and bonding with other practices. Because of this we are interested in each group including participants from a diverse range of creative fields (visual arts, architecture, performing arts) and research fields (humanities, philology, philosophy), so that the approaches to making and the assumptions of each area of knowledge can be challenged, put into question, and enriched through dialogue with other areas. 

 

The program is situated in the terrain of confluence between theory and practice. These are not conceived as opposites, but rather as different dimensions or methodologies of the same continuity of research. It doesn’t seem interesting to us to trace a clear frontier, but rather to develop a wide series of activities that cannot be ascribed to just one of the two concepts but which cross both, to greater or lesser extents. They are not treated as two opposite areas, but rather as two territories that cross and feed each other mutually.

 

Dialogues

 

The program is conceived as a constant dialogue between the participants (students, invited teachers and the teachers and tutors of the master). It is understood not as a program based in the transmission of knowledge, but rather as a context, a place in which a community for reflection is generated multi-directionally. The formats for this are various, and cover both regulated formats (reading groups, sessions for discussion and debate, collective mentoring) and unregulated formats (residencies, informal talks).

 

Collaborations

 

In opposition to the idea of the transmission of knowledge, the MPECV is organized around the collective production of knowledge and experience and problem-solving activities. These moments of shared experience, in which the participants are dedicated to inhabiting and exploring an area of investigation, are produced by way of encounters organized in various ways: in large group discussions, in personal meetings with mentors, in smaller groups and in a series of experimental formats. Whilst respecting the solitary moments necessary for carrying out creative investigation, in the program we try to favor encounters that facilitate exchange between participants, the enrichment and advancement of research processes, as well as reflection on the participants own practices.

 

The projects that are elaborated throughout the course may be developed individually or collectively; but in any case they will be produced in collaboration with the rest of the program’s participants, in a continuous exchange of views, opinions, and experiences.

Self-organization

 

The participants of the MPECV frequently have the opportunity to change roles. Students don’t only receive information, they also propose content, organize parts of the program and make certain decisions: apart from being students, their roles inside the MPECV can include, depending on their interests, collaborator, tutor, coordinator, or occasionally teacher. In collaboration with those who have worked in the MPECV we have developed over the years a series of formats favoring the autonomy of the participants and their changing positions inside this space, such as cooperative classrooms, collective student mentoring, etc., in which the responsibility of what happens is shared by all people participating.

 

This self-organization and collaborative learning extends to the contents of the program. We are interested in preserving the autonomy of the student in the organization of their work with the rest of their companions. Although the offer is the same for everybody, every person decides their own level of involvement and integrates this in their own manner in conformity with their personal trajectory inside the program.

 

Participant activities during the program

 

The MPECV offers a collaborative environment and to a great extent a self- organised environment. The activities that participants develop throughout the program are:

      

- developing a personal process of artistic research, individual or in collaboration

 

- communicating this process and creating methodologies in order to make it sharable and applicable to other areas of knowledge

 

- participating actively in group sessions, enriching them and contributing to them with content and reflection

 

- accompanying the research processes of classmates, contributing to the development of their processes and reflecting about their work

 

- taking responsibility for the generation of an environment for collective research contributing actively to collective questioning of the practical organization of the research environment of the MPECV