MODE DIARIES
A writing programme developed within the context of maat Mode 2020

Based on diary-keeping as a form of writing, the Mode Diaries initiative creates a field of interpretative potentialities within the context that gives rise to it: the maat Mode 2020, which consists of a public, experimental and participatory exhibition and activity programme under the motto “Prototyping the museum”. This is the scope that justifies and enables the twisting of the meaning commonly attributed to the term “diary”, by transforming what’s individualised into collective, private into public, singular into plural, etc.

Mode Diaries is proposed as a collective experience of reflective and creative writing, comprehensive and continuous. Its experimental nature allows to keep open the potential of the activities as the experience develops — a margin of manoeuver that can foster creation. Nonetheless, some purposes are defined from the outset: to interweave writing with the prototyping momentum; to address through writing the areas, themes and topics that the new maat programme evokes; to explore different uses, methods and forms of writing; to mobilise different authors, testing collaborations and optimising future relations; to involve the public in a collaborative production of meaning.

The experience develops along two lines, one episodic and the other continual. The former takes shape in the Writing Work Units — a series of workshops and residencies conducted by entities that choose the written word as the main medium (be it publishers or periodicals, theoreticians or researchers) through which they define their positions in the different disciplinary fields. The continual mode is carried out via the Diary of Thoughts and the Repertory of Meanings — two engagement devices designed to explore the expression of subjectivity and its formulation as public utterance. Here, participants and audience are invited to contribute to a collective repository of ideas that will, potentially, serve different uses (whether as raw material for the workshops, or as content for publication on the museum’s future editorial platform, among others).

WRITING WORKING UNITS

A Flower Amid the Rubble
By Miguel-Manso and special participation of João Manso
Instagram channel @umaflorentreosescombros (in Portuguese)
23/05/2020 – 22/05/2021

Writing for a Substantially Altered World
By the magazine It's Freezing in LA! and the special participation of Aché Atta-Boateng, Billie Manning, Charlotte Ager, Elizabeth Joyce and Lizzie Roeble
On Zoom (in English)
13/06, 20/06 and 27/06/2020

Unit of Measurement: One Minute
By the publisher Dois Dias edições and the special participation of Crista Alfaiate
on Zoom (in Portuguese)
11/07, 18/07 and 05/09/2020

This programme is not finished, both in terms of the possibilities it may embrace, but also regarding the activities it will comprise. It is worthwhile to regularly return to this page to learn about the monthly initiatives.