Photo by João Manso.

A Flower Amid the Rubble is the first Writing Working Unit carried out under the initiative Mode Diaries. It is a self-imposed written and visual exercise by Miguel-Manso, poet, and João Manso, filmmaker, in which they intend to produce, separately and during the course of a year, a joint collection of morning and everyday compositions in text and image that follow the same ritual regularly published on Instagram.

Miguel-Manso is a poet. Published since 2008, his work is included in the portfolio of several publishers and appeared in a significant number of anthologies and literary magazines. João Manso has worked as a director, assistant director and video editor since 2007, and his work has been shown at national and international film festivals. 

Based on diary-keeping as a form of writing, the Mode Diaries initiative creates a field of interpretative potentialities within the context of maat Mode 2020, a public, experimental and participatory exhibition and activity programme under the motto “Prototyping the museum”. This is the scope that justifies and enables the twisting of the meaning commonly attributed to the term “diary” by transforming what’s individualised into collective, private into public, singular into plural, etc.