Drift of Collective Futures
This project consists of a series of events held in various urban public spaces (streets, squares, parks, community centers, schools), based on community listening and reflection around issues related to urban life and citizenship, and engaging the community and its environment in a broad sense.
The selection of the sites where activities take place is linked to the cases identified in the catalog and arises from prior agreements with host institutions that will participate in each public presentation reached by the Rolling Listening Station.
The concept of the Rolling Listening Station is grounded in the reuse of a mobile device built by IF: a habitable trailer with multiple uses. This infrastructure, equipped for recording and listening, has been repurposed as a mobile radio, film set, and expanded field to fulfill new functions linked to different types of documentation and communication in the programmed drift of this project.
DRIFT OF COLLECTIVE FUTURES #1
in What if We Forget?
On Saturday, June 28, the inaugural activation of the future Memory Space at the former ESMA Sports Field took place.
The Escuchatorio was present, contributing to conversations, activations, performances, luminous and soundscapes, plantings, installations, and music, in a collective event organized by Ensayos Urbanos, a member of the Collective Futures platform. The initiative was supported by Club Atlético River Plate through its Human Rights Commission, in collaboration with an extensive network of artists, students, and collectives. (See more)
DRIFT OF COLLECTIVE FUTURES #2
at Back to Parque Paradigma
On Saturday, July 19, the Festiv.AE, Festival of Electronic Arts, took place — a self-managed event organized by students of the Bachelor’s Degree in Electronic Arts at UNTREF. Collective Futures was present, joining in with a new Drift of Collective Futures featuring the Mobile Escuchatorio and activating Radio IF with fresh conversations.
Each year, FestivAE aims to inhabit the public university with installations, performances, live shows, screenings, and the vibrant presence of the entire electronic arts community. More than 50 student artworks were exhibited throughout classrooms, hallways, and every corner of the Villa Lynch campus. (See more)
DERIVA DE LOS FUTUROS COLECTIVOS #3
at the 3rd Listening Biennial
On Saturday, September 5th, at IF – Investigaciones del Futuro, we had the privilege of hosting the 3rd edition of the Listening Biennial.
The Listening Biennial (listeningbiennial.net), a decentralized international platform founded by Brandon LaBelle, is a simultaneous global event — an artistic and research initiative focused on listening as a relational capacity, philosophical and political proposition, creative practice, and framework for inquiry. The Biennial functions as an umbrella bringing together practitioners, researchers, institutions, and collectives engaged with listening as method, tool, and poetics.
Collective Futures joined the development of this event, participating through the Escuchatorio in the third drift of the project — gathering testimonies related to the conversations held throughout the day and exploring its possible uses in the courtyard of IF.
The day began with the portable exhibition “Atlas Forense de Ecología Política Sudamericana” by Cristian Espinoza. We first had the opportunity to see and read the geo-graphic representations that make up the atlas. (See more).
DERIVA OF COLLECTIVE FUTURES #4
at the National University of Lanús with HAY FUTURA in Out of Register
On Monday, October 20, we began a collaborative project with the women’s design collective HAY FUTURA, within their initiative “Out of Register. Archive, Memory, and Design from a Feminist Perspective”, which seeks to highlight and give visibility to women who have developed their work within the world of design. As stated in their manifesto: “The central objective is to build a feminist and open archive that recovers the overlooked histories of women in Argentine design, enables new narrative forms, and helps reconstruct invisible productive ecosystems.”
To this end, a series of listening sessions were initiated at various public universities, where design departments implemented, in diverse ways, pedagogical and research-based formats to pursue this goal. In these instances, the Escuchatorio acts as both a space for gathering records of these experiences and a repository of conversations through the radio, thereby adding testimonial depth to the project.
What is the Listening Station? Origins
The Listening Station is a small mobile infrastructure based on the act of listening. Since its inception, it has moved between the fields of art and healthcare. Initially designed for the community of the Francisco J. Muñiz Infectious Disease Hospital, it was conceived as a tribute to the enduring work of Dr. Paco Maglio, who coined the term “escuchatorio” from a perspective of doctor–patient relations rooted in empathy, acceptance, and truth.
Dr. Maglio was a leading figure in the field of infectious diseases and an important presence in his role as Chief of Intensive Care at the Muñiz Hospital, from where he laid the foundations of modern critical infectious disease care.
The Listening Station (Escuchatorio) emerged from a dialogue and collaborative work with members of the Muñiz Museum, particularly Tuti Maglio, who was also responsible for the hospital’s institutional relations. The Muñiz Museum has led many initiatives to integrate art into the realm of public health. Ten years after the creation of the Art Space located within the pharmacy where patients receive their daily medication, the Listening Station was launched to celebrate this anniversary.
It is a habitable module specifically designed and built to welcome the hospital community in a comfortable and sheltered environment, where individuals were invited to anonymously share their oral and written testimonies about their experiences at the hospital. Over several months, it gathered a collection of stories, sensations, desires, and testimonies of value on multiple levels.
This initiative actively sought to deepen the interconnections between art, society, and health, through mediations that foster feedback between these spheres, framed within medical anthropology and its appreciation of cultural actions.
As an artistic endeavor, it functioned as a relational experience, mediating through a micro-institutional interface to engage with a historical institution. From a documentary standpoint, it provided valuable material for healthcare professionals. Socially, it became a collective manifesto celebrating the power of listening through the diversity of voices united in one project.
The proposed action is based on listening as a capacity for recognizing others beyond imposed roles or the conditioning of how others perceive our ways of seeing the world.
To bring visibility to the project, a habitable trailer was built to be transported by vehicle. Externally, it is a weatherproof armored volume. Internally, it offers a space where visitors can feel safe and at ease.
A desk with seating enables handwritten testimony and houses the recording equipment. A minimal console and a single button allow participants to start and stop their voice recordings.
The collection and editing of the oral and written testimonies were featured in an installation at the VII Muñiz Hospital Congress, held at the Metropolitan Design Center from November 13–15, 2019. It became a renewed resource for health professionals, contributing to the broader discussions typical of medical specialty congresses. The listening module and its resulting testimonies have since been featured in multiple presentations and forums as a reference for rethinking the doctor–patient relationship and other related topics.
Project and Construction:
IF / Investigaciones del Futuro: a77 (Gustavo Dieguez and Lucas Gilardi) + CoZa (Roger Colom and Leonello Zambón).
Concept: Tuti Maglio. Buenos Aires, 2019.
Restoration of the Listening Station -Escuchatorio
One of the initiatives undertaken by Collective Futures was to bring the Escuchatorio back into the streets, engaging with collective projects and days of activities centered on listening and community actions, in what we have called the Drifts of Collective Futures.
To this end, we carried out the restoration work and equipped our mobile unit with new instruments.
Here are some images of the final preparations prior to our first drift.
