OMNÍVOROS is an artistic practice lab that brings together students and professionals from various fields of knowledge to collaboratively develop an interdisciplinary creative project in a self-managed, residency-based format.
Through a public call for applications, a group of individuals from various disciplines is selected to form an interdisciplinary working group. This group is temporarily organized as a collective whose mission is to govern itself in order to develop a project collaboratively, drawing on the various disciplines represented by the diverse range of profiles that make up its team.
The term “Omnívoros” refers to the diet of living beings that feed on any organism; they are not specialized in digesting a single food group. This initiative aims to emulate this digestive adaptation in the educational setting, enabling the integration of all forms of knowledge into a single creative process.
The main objective is to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and collaborative work in the university setting. Mixed working groups are formed, bringing together artists and scientists to promote the integration of art and creative processes into non-artistic degree programs.
This methodology succeeds in introducing ways of working that are rarely found in the academic sphere:
On the one hand, higher education is organized by discipline, resulting in an overly specialized education. A direct consequence of this approach is that students participating in these labs/residencies come into contact with students from other disciplines and with artists—likely for the first time in their academic careers.
On the other hand, higher education tends to be largely individualistic. This methodology, by contrast, allows us to incorporate training into collective processes where the outcome is the result of collaboration and collective intelligence.