Procrastination School

Presentation

Procrastination School (2020-2022) is an exploratory project of artistic research proposed by choreographer and researcher Sílvia Pinto Coelho. The project began by addressing a specific moment that we recognize in improvised live performances, where we have no idea what might come next. We can learn a lot by making this moment last and trusting that
vibrant questions can emerge, regardless of the outcome or the relationship with audiences.

Suddenly, Covid19 came to fuel the project, giving it new potency. We were collectively on hold, and everything had been postponed somehow. In 2020, during the first Covid19 lockdown, in Lisbon, an online Reading Group began to think together about slowing down, procrastination, sabotage, laziness, modes of production and, of course, the lockdown and the pandemic. As this was one of the first online reading groups familiarized with what was happening at work, in life and in the flow of everyday life, there was a rather interesting political detour in the theme proposed – we discussed the present, from our homes, our minds awoken by the fright.

Supports: TBA, DGARTES, MUHNAC, ICNOVA, O Rumo do Fumo, c.e.m.

Team

Silvia Pinto Coelho
ICNOVA

Lília Mestre e Jeroen Peeters
Artistas Colaboradores

Marta Moreira
Produções Independentes.

Resources

Procrastination School Reading Group (SPC2020)

The Reading Group met online on 8 and 22 April, 6 and 20 May and 3 June 2020, from 6
p.m. to 8:30 p.m., using the Zoom of Teatro do Bairro Alto. The reading sessions and
discussions were led by Sílvia Pinto Coelho. “The meetings of the Procrastination School
reading group coincided with the first months of the global COVID-19 pandemic and
therefore were held within the discipline of lockdown, in Zoom rooms. The virus was
managed as a catastrophe; spatial separation and social discipline were instructed by modes
and measures of time that organized the collective urgency (...)” (RB 2023).

Procrastination Marathon – film (Meirinhos/SPC 2022)

The film consists of a montage created with pictures taken during the 10 hours of the
Procrastination Marathon at the Lisbon botanical garden on 6 June 2021. That Sunday, the
tranquillity of the day and the atmosphere in the garden helped many of the people who
attended to allow themselves to laze around in groups, after several months of scares and
lockdowns caused by COVID-19. The hand-held camera of João Meirinhos captured those
moments with special care and the montage charts the course of the day.

Procrastination Marathon (in other terms) – set of 8 online interviews (SPC2020)

These interviews conducted by researcher Sílvia Pinto Coelho focus on the role of procrastination in creative processes. Slowing down creation and research can be a way of recognizing that the act of delaying, of making things last, can lead to invention. Improvisors and artists from the fields of dance and performance discuss their methodologies and ideas in this reformed version of the Procrastination Marathon.

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Procrastination School - e-book (SPC and other authors 2024).

The Procrastination School book brings together contributions from several authors around a
proposal to slow down space-time made before the arrival of the kind of "pandemic state of
emergency" that led to successive lockdowns on a scale that was, until then, unknown to us.
The lockdown during the pandemic brought frequent ideas of postponement/cancellation and
imminent threat of such postponement/cancellation of lives in general and the performing
arts in particular. (...) (SPC2024)

View Here

Procrastination Marathon – durational performative event (SPC 6-6-2021);

Improvisors and artists from the fields of dance and performance were invited to test a set of
premises designed for a 10-hour Procrastination Marathon held outdoors, at the Lisbon
botanical garden. Invited artists Lília Mestre, Mark Tompkins, Vera Mantero, Jeroen Peeters,
Mariana Tengner Barros and João Bento, together with a group of artists that were also
involved in the process, made proposals for a relationship between the people and the time
and space of the garden, to encourage different types of gatherings. The entire event was
open to the public of the botanical garden and the TBA. The project was funded by DGArtes
and co-produced by ICNOVA and Teatro do Bairro Alto, in collaboration with the Museum of
Science/Botanical Garden.

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Platforms

Website

https://procrastinationschool.fcsh.unl.pt/

Engagement with society

Film: https://vimeo.com/668237437/a3a1541b63 (password TBA)
Maratona de Procrastinação
Procrastination Marathon Interviews
Book-Ebook (in progress)
Press and dissemination: https://procrastinationschool.fcsh.unl.pt/imprensa.html