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Deposits of History

Manuel Aires Mateus

Deposits of History
By Manuel Aires Mateus -

Introduction The emphasis of this text is to reflect on the deposit of memories and history, and their representation. Reality and its Mediations History, in its infinite richness, forms an endless deposit of experiences, examples, references, relations and memories. A field of knowledge to be used in complete freedom, not requiring a chronological or geographic understanding, but providing realities that serve as a matter for work. Cultural reality, in all its human or physical manifestation and production, is a deposit that produces reconnaissance and activates the memory, or the relations between memories, as a basis for reflection on a project. The relationship with the existing can occur through an encounter with the real or through its representation, mediation - a second moment, where reality presents itself as the same, meanwhile already being another. Each reality is complex and its use requires a selection of eligible aspects. This selection can be made through a representation in drawing, photography, film, scaled models or literature, and can have a more neutral point of view, or a more critical one. These aspects may be affective, methodical or cultural. A judgment or observation can become, in itself, a new fact in the world. An election. A frame. They establish a clarification bound for a dialogue toward an idea. Of these representations - mediations of reality, image forms a synthesis able to provide information in the process of creating a project. It gathers stimuli that evokes, reveals or suggests relevant aspects for the evolution of work. The Answer as a Clarification of the Question The process of a project is a way of knowledge, the search for a synthesis to respond to a problem. The answer is, in a way itself, the practice of addressing the clarification of the inquiry. The questioning that tests the individual and collective memory, but also questions contexts, limits and objectives. One searches for the comprehension of reality over which one operates, the “place”, in its broad sense, and all the natural and human conditions. Enveloping the project, and integrating a synthesized development of the solution. In the course of this operation, one integrates the chosen memories in each stage. The process transforms the generic question of a program or of a necessity, into a more precise intention, in the singular objective of each project. When faced with a reality, one always needs to use the problem as an initiation point from which to operate over it, and the cultural medium chosen is framed by the proposal of transformation. The project develops itself, integrating these selected characteristics of reality so, with these, a solution is found. The Project as a Re-inscription in Memory Memory and knowledge operate with freedom through the whole project development. They are the basis that forms the foundations of our possibility, recombining in the search for the proposal’s precision. This approach of knowing, of acquiring knowledge, forms the support point toward the evolution of each process. The project in each of its stages rewrites all the memories of knowledge. A process made from each synthesis that repositions each memory according to each stage. In each phase, the project evolves, continuing to elect aspects of different memories. These memories go from subtle hints or vestiges, to evidences or illustrations. A process that transforms personal memory into a collective one. During the process, the collective memory is read by an eye, unique and free of methodological constraints. The synthesis, the project, re-inscribes itself again in the course of reality, and transforms itself into collective memory. The solution frees itself from the process, or better, validates it and rewrites it. The solution transforms a personal look and the individual memory, into a result that is framed by a common field of knowledge. It is a process that rewrites history from a synthesis, from a point of view. The memory converts from subtle hint to illustration, from individual to collective, from foundation to evidence. In the practice of a project, time reverses its course, and the past that informs the present time, transforms itself into a future proposal for reading that same present. Abacus In these pages, we have a small abacus of memories that is important to our work.

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