How to apply?

Participation in the workshop is free of charge. If you would like to join, please fill in the REGISTRATION FORM

Why imagination?

We live in a world dominated by diagnoses and fear: climate crisis, social tensions, the uncertainty of tomorrow. Instead of succumbing to paralysis, we will treat imagination as a creative form of resistance and survival.

What might future bodies, relationships, and communities look like? What about water, technology, language?

This laboratory aims to collectively imagine a reality after the crisis. A future where life goes on despite everything — perhaps precariously, but creatively and humanly. A habitable dystopia. A beginning, not an end.

Foundations

Before creating any final piece, the course focuses on the process itself. Imagination here is not only a theme but a practice — of listening, sensing, transforming, and opening up to the unknown.
We’re not searching for answers, but for experience:

• How do we imagine something that doesn’t yet exist?
• What blocks our ability to create something new?
• How can limitation become a creative trigger?

Structure of the Laboratory

The course is divided into five thematic modules:

1. Inspirations and Dialogues
   A shared exploration of the word “imagination” — its meanings across different languages, its cultural and artistic references. Practical exercises in attentive listening and sensory perception.
2. Boundaries of Openness: Limitations as a Creative Engine
   Limitations as Creative Impulse. Working with constraints — formal, physical, or sonic — as a source of innovation.
3. “Frame” as Choice and Political Gesture
   A reflection on what is shown and what is left out. The frame as a filter of emotion, information, and dreams. Practical work with image, movement, and montage.
4. Sound as Disturbance
   Experiments with sound design — how audio can shift the meaning of an image, introducing tension or mystery. Practical exercises with sound in film and space.

5. Recycling and Transformation
Creating with available resources: found images, sounds, objects. A practice of reshaping the world through imagination in order to shift perspective.

Final Installation

The course will conclude with a collective audiovisual installation — a shared space where individual and collaborative visions meet through images, sounds, and performative actions.

We will not show the end of the world, but collectively imagine what might come next.

A future — imperfect, fragile, but still holding the potential for life and resistance.

Biographical Note

Duo SAMAMBAIA, formed by Natalia Lis (Poland) and Pavel Tavares (Brazil), has been collaborating since 2021 on projects such as Dry Thoughts (short film), Quimera (audiovisual installation), and Terra Vermelha (community project), all part of their interdisciplinary initiative TRÉMULA. This project has included a solo exhibition, two artist residencies, and three grant awards. The duo also received the Odemira Criativa grant to produce the sci-fi documentary Tides and Windmills.

Natalia Lis is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of choreography, dance, performance, video, and audiovisual installations. She has experience in both stage and film work in international settings. She has performed at Teatro Real National Opera and Teatro Pradillo in Madrid, and collaborated as a dancer and choreographer with Companhia Olga Roriz, Companhia Lavrar o Mar, and Teatro da Targala in Portugal. In the field of film, she has worked with directors such as Jota Aronak, Mikaela Guariniello, and Horacio Alcalá, contributing to projects like EXPULSIVEand Finlandia. Her short films — including Lilith, MUGWORT, and VARUPTA KUNDALA — have been showcased at festivals in Portugal, Brazil, and at various Polish cultural institutions. In 2024, she received the Culture Moves Europe grant and completed an artistic residency under the Spaces of Art – Dance program at Teatr Rozbark.

Pavel Tavares is a Brazilian performer and video artist exploring experimental narratives at the boundary between fiction and documentary, developing his own concept of “science fiction documentary.” He has participated in Talents BAFICI, VGIK Summer School, Looking China, the Young Art Biennale (Argentina), the UnionDocs film seminar and Doclisboa, and was a fellow at the Flaherty Seminar (New York) and Dear Doc (Portugal). His films and installations have been presented at festivals around the world. He studied image and sound design at the University of Buenos Aires.

SAMAMBAIA seeks to transcend boundaries through experimental art. Their work serves as a form of artistic expression in dialogue with nature and society, exploring the interdependence of different forms of life and reality.

Kolofon

The project Courage, Freedom, Imagination - creative laboratory is co-financed by the City of Warsaw.