Called Messages, writing with matter
Called Messages, writing with matter
Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Programme
Ever since the earliest traces of human existence, writing has inhabited walls. From the walls of prehistoric caves to the political slogans on the Berlin Wall, from votive inscriptions to anonymous declarations of love, public spaces have always been a place for expression: memory, protest, projection.
The BIP ‘Called Messages, writing with matter’ proposes to reconnect with this original dimension by considering writing not as a graphic gesture, but as an embodied, spatial and sculptural act. It is no longer a matter of writing on a surface, but of writing into matter: engraving, incising, inscribing.
What does it mean today to inscribe a message into matter? How does the choice of medium (block, fragment, architecture) determine what can be said? And what voice emerges when words, stripped of the fluidity of the line, are confronted with the resistance of the material, with duration, with erosion?
Over the course of a week, around twenty students from European partner schools, trained in graphic design and typography, will work in groups to design and engrave a message intended to take its place in space. Using blocks of aerated concrete, they will compose a temporary landscape — a topography of signs — where each intervention will interact with the others, through elevation, fragmentation and tension.
Beyond the text, it is the spatial arrangement that becomes language: construction or collapse, horizontality or verticality, proximity or isolation – all parameters that shape the reading and produce meaning.
The title ‘Called Messages, writing with matter’ evokes both engraved messages and those that emerge from a specific context. Students are invited to situate their voices: from Europe, in 2026, as young designers. It is less a matter of sending a message than of taking a stand, and of accepting the significance of what is inscribed, perhaps, to last.
The week begins with an urban stroll focusing on the inscriptions found throughout the city (engraved, carved or embedded in the architecture), followed by a session for discussion and the formulation of initial ideas. Very quickly, ideas come face to face with the material: students experiment with engraving, test the resistance of the material, and begin to inscribe their messages.
The following days are devoted to patient work of carving and construction, where the gesture is repeated, refined and made more precise. Discussions with the tutors accompany this process, raising questions of spatial positioning and the relationship between the forms produced. Gradually, a collective reflection takes shape around the forthcoming installation, without prematurely fixing its contours.
Specific time is then devoted to spatial arrangement: how do the individual messages resonate with one another? What effect does their arrangement produce? What interpretation arises from the scale, the material, and the layout? The installation thus becomes a collective language, structured by shared choices. Some students may also extend this reflection through proposals for public communication, announcing the opening to the public.
The week concludes with the installation of the exhibition, followed by an informal presentation. This temporary exhibition showcases a plurality of voices, inscribed in the material and brought into relation within the space.
Through this experience, participants explore printmaking as a typographic and material practice, examine writing as a situated act, experiment with the dynamics of construction and instability, and engage in a collective process of design and exhibition. The final installation thus reflects a polyphony: that of a generation which inscribes its stances within the material.
