Projeto Pergunta

Projeto Pergunta is a collective exhibition of “Cruzeiro do Sul”, by Cildo Meireles, and “Tempos Difíceis”, by Ivan Grilo.

PROYECTO PREGUNTA is a device to promote citizens’ participation that involves collectively generating, visualizing, and spreading debates in public space. Its main goal is to galvanize territories and communities through the collective production of knowledge. In each edition, the project deploys a group of tools designed to catalyze the collective questioning of social issues. Proyecto Pregunta is a critical device that stimulates interventionist methodologies for citizens’ participation. By using these methodologies, the project seeks to raise questions and new types of discussion and civic awareness.

THE CRISIS OF PARTICIPATION

Presented as a solution for the absence of representation and citizen involvement, participation policies have in some cases resulted in citizens’ demands being side-stepped, disarticulating their causes and neutralizing their transformative power. In such cases, the originality of inclusion associated with the emergence of this kind of policy has been limited by methodologies that prioritize participation as a strategy of instant policy validation, ignoring the bonding or even constituent nature of participative processes. As such, the ill-considered reproduction of citizens’ participation methodologies has resulted in participation becoming a tool that actually mutes citizens’ demands, covering up dissent with formulaic responses. In this context, Proyecto Pregunta seeks to explore and expand on the complexity of citizens’ participation by creating spontaneous, informal opportunities for participation in public spaces. This crisis of participation represents an opportunity for the artistic exploration of the complexity of citizens’ participation, in the interests of forging new methodologies and new bonds of trust.