WTF Just Happened
WTF Just Happened
WTF Just Happened is a socially distanced one to one social practice project designed to tour the UK in a converted camper van with outdoor art space. Audiences are invited to sit as a distance with a gift of a WTF branded face mask and engage in a conversation with the artist that explores the lived experience during the pandemic of 2020 and its aftermaths into 2021. The work created together will be drawing and storytelling, through a safe yet shared co-production.
The project aims to create a collaborative archive of the current times, highlighting everyday people and the historical commons created through living. The outcome of the WTF Just Happened tour will be hundreds of drawings about how life has been affected by the current times, focusing on understanding the fundamental changes through visual language. As an extra to archiving the process there will be writing, storytelling and photography as process archiving.
The final collections of drawings do not seek to represent a singular narrative but rather a historical archive of the times presented through basic and primordial mark making, inspired by our earliest creative visuals such as petroglyphs and cave paintings that help us understand society. WTF Just Happened seeks to develop an understanding of how the everyday person has been affected by the pandemic and the flaring of existing issues such as climate crisis and structural racism. The project aims to give voice specifically to the underrepresented yet shared stories of struggle.
The work is developed from the methodology used for the artists’ current exhibition at Horniman Museum around life stories told through symbols. The process is informed by Narrative Exposure Therapy which creates a larger narrative around life placing recent trauma into the lineage of one’s past and future. From this learning the WTF Just Happened?! project takes this methodology to everyday people across the UK to develop a collective narrative on how the era of the pandemic has changed our lives.
Working one-to-one with people to tell their life stories through symbols allows a reframing of the narratives of life by putting a bird’s eye perspective on the journeys encountered. The work resonates as a powerful way to contextualise challenging situations.
The workshop will be running across the May bank holiday, 28th-30th May, in Jubilee Square and will form part of Brighton Fringe. It is free and first-come-first-served but to guarantee a spot and help with social distancing, please book here.
Artist Biography
Sánchez-Camus's practice incorporates community co-authorship into installation, performance and text with a focus on collaboration, participation, psychogeography, and community wellbeing.
You can find more of his work via social media or his website.