UNIT OF MEASUREMENT: ONE MINUTE
Observation, composition, writing

Unit of measurement: the meter. One square meter. Another unit of measure: the minute. One square minute. Then, like an archaeologist, we dig. Not in depth, down, in the direction of the centre of the earth. But in depth, anywhere, in the direction of the extremities of what is audible. To dig the square minute with another shovel: the attentive ear extracting remnants. To select, to group and to restore fragments. Lastly, to give back to the minute what has always been there: a joke, a suspense story, a charade, a tale, a soccer commentary, a news report, an instructions manual, a theatre script, a mantra, a philosophical thought, a medication package insert…

With specific and limited matter — one minute —, this workshop aims to install a time lab, where we will test the possibilities of transformation of that concrete matter with observation, reading, composition, writing, editing and elocution. As a temporal fragment, extracted from one day and extended throughout the days of the workshop, this minute will become the domain of the collective. We look at this lab in analogy to the work of an archaeologist, which points to a restricted space in the expectation of finding something revelatory, and starts digging into it, knowing that predictable and also unlikely matters will be found (earth, of different colours and compounds, shells, fossils, more or less recognisable/identifiable urban debris). This way, we will occupy time like the archaeologist occupies space.

Unit of Measurement: One Minute, an online workshop conceived and coordinated by Dois Dias edições, a book publisher based in Lisbon, after an invitation by maat, is the second Writing Working Unit carried out under the initiative Mode Diaries. This initiative is based on diary-keeping as a form of writing, this initiative creates a field of interpretive potential in the context from which it originates: maat Mode 2020 — a programme of exhibitions and activities of a public, experimental and participative nature on the theme of “Prototyping the museum”.

Concept and coordination
Dois Dias edições
Rui Almeida Paiva, writer and publisher
Sofia Gonçalves, designer and publisher

Collaboration
Crista Alfaiate, actor