Transpublic Ikigai.
Guided audio meditation. Galeria do Sol, Porto, Portugal, 2025
Transpublic Ikigai is a guided audio meditation developed within the artistic research of Arte Transpública. It proposes a small but significant displacement of the contemporary interpretation of ikigai. The question of what the world needs becomes a question of what worlds need.
The meditation begins with the human body, breathing, water, the ground and the presence of other beings and elements. From this relational field emerges an expanded understanding of the self, inseparable from the worlds that constitute and transform it.
What one loves, what one knows how to do, what different worlds may need and what makes continued existence possible are brought into a relationship of mutual sustenance. No single participant occupies the centre, nor can the needs of other worlds be entirely known or defined from a human perspective.
Rather than offering a formula for personal fulfilment, the work opens a space for attention, uncertainty, care and coexistence. A possibility of finding one's own direction without withdrawing from the wider community of beings, materials and relations to which one already belongs.
Research and funding acknowledgement
The documentation and analysis of this work form part of doctoral research supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT), under doctoral fellowship 2024.02417.BD.
Nuno Vicente
info@nuno-vicente.com
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