In this project I propose a processual platform influenced by the performative writing suggested during my studies in the artistic-ethnographic educational platform LATIR and the follow up of my research of notation of human interactions in the cycles of giving and receiving. The central question is how can I invite others into magical and healing modes of giving.

Following the spirit of offer to offer (offering someone else to offer),  the School of Magical Giving was conceived as a space in which this same principle is applied to different situations.

This school of thought and action looks closer into forms of giving that break with the standard socialized situations in which giving is allowed and pertinent, and understood as a future or retroactive investment. In this school, who gives, to whom, what and when, are ingredients for experiments that investigate the creative power of magical giving and unintended reciprocity.

Launched and hosted in GAMPA from November 2022 to April 2023, the school operated in different formats: 

• As a workshop in which artists came to write book boxes using objects, textures, images, and sounds to narrate real-life stories of disobedient giving. 

• As a space for lectures, laboratories and workshops in which participants explored their wish of giving; e.g. someone created a gift for an unknown hamster, someone else a gift for herself to alleviate a breakup, a young man created a gift to honor the memory of a grandma whom he didn’t know much about, a group of senior ladies created a gift for their relatives or themselves reinterpreting old photographs into words and drawings, and a most devoted student of the school gifted a homemade marmalade to be part of the exhibition. 

• As a library that offers a collection of book boxes that can be read or consulted during opening hours. The Strangership Library is a series of four volumes pieced together during the first weeks of the school and it compiles a previous work of the artist. While visiting a foreign land, she engaged in a long-term exchange with four strangers. She invited them to create a gift for whoever they chose and invested more than a year helping this happen. Failure, mourning, superstition, bad drawings, sorority, the support of many friends, among other things, emerged unexpectedly from these Strangerships (stranger + relationship). These experiences made it very clear that giving is not a one-way action, but on the contrary, it is an uncontrollable returning force projected in multiple directions. 

Works:

• Artist’s talk on magical giving [lecture]
• A gift with unknown addressee [laboratory]
• A gift to someone who is long gone [laboratory]
• A memory gift with Friday’s seniors group [workshop]
• Workshop for performative writing [installation and open process]
• Strangership Library [art books]
• Knitting circle [action]

Period: November 2022 - April 2023 
Version: English, Czech 
Performed in: Gampa / City Gallery Pardubice, Czech Republic
Support of: Centre for Open Culture 

Medium: pop up school, performative writing, workshops, lecture, installation, art book

Concept: Cristina Maldonado
Collaborators: Isa Juchniewicz, Eszter Koncz, Kelly Hoben
Guest participants: Michal Salwinsky, Philipp Schenker, Branislava Kuburovic, 
Gangaanai Ganbaatar, Keya Singh, Liz Maldonado
Thanks for the advice: Jolana Lažová, Nikola Březinová and for the curatorial 
support of Šárka Zahálková.
Documentation: Marie Sieberová & Michael Lozano

Keywords: gift, reciprocate, performative writing, process

Program:

oteverenakultura.cz: Cristina Maldonado: School of Magical Giving