Saloncito libre de estéticas desobedientes at Memento
This September our friends at Espacio Carnicería in Madrid kicked off project Memento, which examines emotional heritage through tattoos and the bodies they inhabit. As a jumping off point for the project these groups came together in the cultural programing space Intermediae in the Madrid Matadero to develop a proposal for Memento x Arganzuela, an artistic process of community mediation by means of workshops, tattoo-parties, an exhibit and a publication. Within this framework of possibilities, Memento invited Belén, during its third weekend, to design and conduct a workshop.
As she introduced her alias @pffftattoo and shared how she was taught to tattoo on her friends and what occurred in the Cicatrization Club in Hangar, Belén introduced her proposal for the session: “Anyone can learn or teach, and because of this, they too can generate an informal school, a party, a laboratory, a defiant space; they too can ask to be taught to do, can ask that things are done to them, can watch how others do things, can play music for those that are making and doing, and can spend the evening in that informal environment and talk about what emerges from it…” In this way, since everyone was both a teacher and a learner, they all had something to say about tattooing: how to tattoo, what needed to be tattooed, tattoo stories, drawings, fears, desires… Belén summed up a few ideas on the subject of biohacking: like that of disobeying according to collective agreements of responsibility; the standards of the biomedical institution as a sign of sovereignty over our own bodies, and from what grounds to reject what the institution is capable of recognizing and understanding; and around the practice of altering and allowing oneself to be altered responsibly. She discussed fostering bonds of trust when mindfully participating in ambiguous practices where we find ourselves insecure and vulnerable, we commit ourselves to being attentive and cautious so that the other participant will be alright during the process and accepting that the end result may not be perfect.
By sharing experiences and emotions on the subject to set in motion this cocktail under Intermediae’s ban on tattooing ourselves, the proposal was simple: an open salon/school for free aesthetic expression. The tables were filled with bottles of nail polish, inks, bleach, stickers, makeup, haircutting tools… and everyone began to exchange knowledge and practices of aesthetic alteration with a cheerful punk attitude.
The workshop went on many hours longer than expected, no one wanted to leave the surreal environment which had been created, until someone invited everyone over to have cocido for dinner at their house. The next day Memento organized a tattoo-party in the neighborhood and we once again returned to transform ourselves and allow ourselves to be transformed, this time with tattoos.
