Poetic spaces as mediation for narratives of oneself

Abstract

This article is both a report and an analysis of the teaching experience in the process of gestural and imagery creation, as part of the discipline “Self-Narratives and Learning in Art” in the Graduate Program of the School of Fine Arts at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), during the second semester of 2019. As for methodology, we  analyzed the experience reports made by the students and the recall of the experiences they have had. The class consisted of 12 students from the areas of Acting, Dancing, Music, Visual Arts, Fashion and Audiovisual, among postgraduate students, students of isolated subjects, in addition to some students from the PROFARTES – Professional Master’s Degree. The role of Art and multiple expressive languages in the production of self-narratives in contexts of research and training highlights the relevance of aesthetic and artistic devices in biographical mediality. Based on the proposal of the biographical studio, the images, objects and bodily work are presented as mediating instruments that enhance, not only the activation of the memory of what was experienced, but the matter and the shape of an aesthetic narrative. This work reports the need to open spaces and times for the students' own ways of expression, wrapped in multiple languages and aesthetic materialities. This work also sheds light on the teaching experience that gives students the opportunity to examine the process experienced in Arts, throughout their lives. Methodologically, it privileges narratives in images, with pictorial elements and with the body in movement, where the memory of the experiences is amplified in the thinking process to understand the practices of the self in the revealed existence.