Escola de Desenho Inconvencional

Escola de Desenho Incon­ven­cional (School of Uncon­ven­tion­al Drawing) is a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry instal­la­tion and workshop that offers a radically new approach to our rela­tion­ship with the plant world through drawing and listening practices.

Portuguese artist Miguel Ângelo Marques invites us to rethink our perception of plants by approaching them as sensitive and com­mu­nica­tive beings. His instal­la­tion combines living elements – plants equipped with bioelectric sensors – and devices that translate their internal activity into sound and visual signals. This translation of invisible organic processes creates a space for dialogue between species, where visitors can literally ​“listen” to the silent vitality of the plant world.

Alongside this instal­la­tion, the artist conducts workshops that extend this sensory exploration into the Minett landscape. Par­tic­i­pants are guided on a sound walk through the natural environment, where they capture and record the ​“voices” of nature – par­tic­u­lar­ly those of plants – and then transform them into visual expressions on paper or digital representations.

Marques’ approach is based on a fundamental conviction: drawing, as a primordial artistic language, has the ability to reconnect us with forgotten or neglected forms of perception. By challenging the conventions of ​“good drawing,” he invites par­tic­i­pants – both children and adults – to abandon their assumptions and develop new modalities of visual expression directly inspired by attentive listening to the natural world.

This unique methodology, at the inter­sec­tion of art, science, and technology, creates an illustrated field notebook that documents not what we see, but what we hear and feel. Par­tic­i­pants learn to graphically capture the vibrations, rhythms, and modulations of plants, trans­form­ing sounds into visual traces that reveal the invisible processes of growth and vitality.

Through this immersive experience, Escola de Desenho Incon­ven­cional invites us to develop a deeper ecological sensitivity, where the boundaries between scientific observation, sensory experience, and artistic expression blur to create a new form of rela­tion­ship with the living world.

Miguel Ângelo Marques, Escola de Desenho Incon­ven­cional is presented as part of the exhibiton Hybrid Futures: Rhizomes, Meshworks, and Alter-elecologies organised and produced by Elektron. 
Curators: Vincent Crapon & Françoise Poos