Making Adobe Bricks

Join us for a workshop producing adobe bricks – sun-dried mud bricks made from earth, water, and organic binding materials. These bricks will serve as the fundamental modular building blocks for the exhibition architecture of DESACTA.The exhibition will feature an altar made of these bricks and designed to receive counter-spells aimed at unraveling a 140-year-long enchantment stemming from the Berlin Conference.

Adobe is also the name of a software company that develops tools for digital imaging – a telling metaphor for how foundational materials are repurposed in contemporary creative processes. Etymologically, the word adobe may originate from Egyptian hieroglyphs, later adopted into Arabic, then Spanish, and now widely used in English to describe a basic building module. Adobe construction is one of the oldest known building practices. The earliest adobe bricks date back to around 9,000 BC in Syria. Thick, malleable mud is cast into wooden molds and then left to dry in the sun.

Guinean author, storyteller, architect, and artist Marinho de Pina will lead the workshop and guide participants through the construction technique. The 1.111 adobe bricks produced will be stored at SAVVY Contemporary and used in November for building the modular architecture of the exhibition. The altar will follow a spiral design, inspired by the ground plan of the Sonotera – a partner in this project and a laboratory for sonic experimentation, deep listening, and sound storage in the countryside of Guinea-Bissau.

Marinho de Pina  works across disciplines including writing, drawing, architecture, filmmaking, photography, music, performance, and more. He believes that embracing doubt is preferable to clinging to absolute certainty. He tells stories to children and considers himself a performing artist at heart.