The Possibilities of the Table

For an elementary or secondary school student, a desk is an object full of meanings. On the one hand, it's a hiding place where bodies fit and can go unnoticed within a universe of secrets between the chair, the lap and the interior of the desk. It's also an office, a personal space that belongs to the students, where they arrange the materials as if they are decorating and organizing a small room. For us, the desk becomes a stage, a performative space that travels between intimacy and exposure. In the school sessions we rearranged the desks - creating islands, rows, unusual shapes, encouraging the plasticity of the space as a way of removing formality from the classroom. The students climbed onto the chairs and tables to perform dances and speeches and, in one session, the young actor Manuel Ruiz alighted on the tables in various acrobatic postures for the students to draw him. In a session with the 9th grade, inspired by the 52 Portraits project, choreographed by Jonathan Burrows, composed by Matteo Fargion and video artist Hugo Glendinning, Inês choreographed and taught the students a dance in which they remained seated at their desks, that barricade against vulnerability, and even the shyest students took part. The particularity of the desk is that it encloses several imaginary realms simultaneously due to its symbolic and practical use: it can be a stage, a safe place, an intimate space, an object with life and personality typical of the classroom, which becomes transfigured. We tried to use it so that it was all of this at the same time.