Workshop date: Wednesday, May 7, 2025, 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Coordinated by Vasco Forconi

Free, in-person workshop at La Nueva Fábrica. Limited capacity: 15 participants.

Apply via Google Form: https://forms.gle/kEjF9x1LrJmp4kfu6

Application deadline: Sunday, April 27, 2025, 8:00 p.m. Guatemala time

Cuéntame historias is a workshop for artists, curators, researchers, and practitioners. It aims to collectively reflect on and explore both the complexity and the potential that the conscious use of narrative strategies and devices can offer within one’s own research.

In an art world increasingly nourished by storytelling as a tool to reimagine reality, the ability to tell stories through one’s practice is both a great opportunity and a constant challenge. Constructing a compelling narrative for an audience—beyond a purely diaristic dimension—can represent one of the most difficult stages in artistic and curatorial development.

Narrative here refers to the construction and transmission of a story, whether real or fictional, structured with internal coherence. The term encompasses a broad range of meanings and uses: from the straightforward recounting of events to the creation of complex plots that shape our perception of the world. Every narrative involves a process of selection, organization, and interpretation of real-world data, making it a powerful tool for generating meaning and guiding thought.

Throughout the day, moments of reading and group discussion will alternate with play-based exercises, group work, and individual activities. The goal is to shed light on the often-conflicted relationship between the essence of our research and the multiple masks the system frequently demands we adopt and perform—precisely through the act of storytelling.

Participants will be asked to bring a project or idea to the workshop (this may be a completed, produced, and exhibited work or one still in development)—something especially meaningful to them that, at present, they are finding difficult to structure and translate into a coherent narrative. This material will serve as a starting point to activate the workshop’s activities.

Practical Information

Who it’s for: Emerging artists, curators, practitioners in the field of contemporary culture, students, etc. (no age limit)

Duration: 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Lunch will be provided by La Nueva Fábrica.

What to bring:

• Any materials essential to your personal process of writing or idea development (notebook, pen, journal, camera, recorder, etc.)
  
• A project or idea (can be a completed and exhibited work, or one still in process); something especially meaningful to you that is currently difficult to shape into a coherent narrative.

The workshop is part of Vasco Forconi’s research project Agencia de labor espiritual itinerante. The project is supported by the Italian Council (2024), Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea, Italian Ministry of Culture.

Vasco Forconi is a curator and researcher based in Rome, Italy. He currently teaches curatorial studies at NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti. His research focuses on a network of recurring themes and processes, notably the relationship between contemporary labor, the phenomenology of everyday life, and strategies of care; conviviality as a method for research and collective learning; and the commissioning of site-specific works in unconventional art contexts.

His recent projects include: D’un tratto nel fondo del bosco, Tenuta dello Scompiglio, Lucca, 2024–25; cane cane, Lateral, Rome, 2024–25; Radykalne Przyjemności, Goyki 3, Sopot; Italian Cultural Institute, Warsaw; Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Rome, 2024–25; Vacant, Chiesa di San Severo al Pendino, Naples, 2024; Figlio di Gazza, Matèria, Rome, 2023; A Deeper Splash, Port Tonic Art Center, Les Issambres, 2022; Night Shade, Collezione Farnesina, Rome, 2021; Per un Prossimo Reale, Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Rome, 2021; Esposizione di frutta e verdura, Matèria, Rome, 2019; What is the collection telling us?, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, 2019; Shoegaze, Italian Cultural Institute, Stockholm, 2019–2020; Italiani brava gente, Fondazione VOLUME!, Rome, 2018; A Messy Knot (in motion pictures), The Bioscope, Johannesburg, 2018.

From 2022 to 2024, he was part of the curatorial department at MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome. From 2019 to 2022, he coordinated CuratorLab, a curatorial research program at Konstfack University in Stockholm. As the recipient of the 2019 Moscow Prize, he was a curatorial resident at the V-A-C Foundation in Moscow. He co-edited the first Italian translation of The Undercommons by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, the result of a collective editorial project with Archive Books (Berlin) and Tamu Edizioni (Naples).

Image: Fabrizio Terranova, Donna Haraway: Storytelling for Earthly Survival, 2016 (film still)