UNIDEE - University of Ideas
UNIDEE NOTEBOOKS 2015 | N.1
Notes from the residential modules 2015 Spring/Summer programme mentored by Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico; Silvia Franceschini with Stefano Rabolli Pansera; Aria Spinelli with Tullio Brunone; Massimiliano Viel; Emilia Telese with Richard Shields; Giulia Grechi with Fiamma Montezemolo; Saioa Olmo Alonso with Sabel Gavaldรณn; Giusy Checola with Thomas Gilardi.
Cittadellarte Edizioni, 2019 ISBN: 978-88-98698-18-9 This booklet is part of the series of publications “UNIDEE NOTEBOOKS”. Curated by Giulia Crisci Designed by Annalisa Zegna Translations: Elena Pasquali
Cover image: Photo from the UNIDEE module “Changing nothing so that everything is different”, mentored by Silvia Franceschini, 2015. Credits UNIDEE.
UNIDEE - University of Ideas
UNIDEE NOTEBOOKS 2015 | N. 1
Notes from the residential modules 2015 Spring/Summer programme mentors and guests: Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico; Silvia Franceschini with Stefano Rabolli Pansera (Beyond Entropy); Aria Spinelli with Tullio Brunone (Laboratorio di Comunicazione Militante); Massimiliano Viel; Emilia Telese with Richard Shields; Giulia Grechi with Fiamma Montezemolo; Saioa Olmo Alonso with Sabel Gavaldรณn; Giusy Checola with Thomas Gilardi. Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella
UNIDEE - University of Ideas, STATEMENT 2015 by Cecilia Guida
UNIDEE - University of Ideas is a multifaceted platform offering an educational programme of residential modules - taking place both at Cittadellarte and at academic partners’ sites internationally - alongside a series of artists’ residency projects. Based on interdisciplinary research, knowledge sharing and experience exchange, the programme fosters processes of cross-pollination to investigate the relationship between art and public sphere. In keeping with Michelangelo Pistoletto’s foundational principle of Cittadellarte as an “interdisciplinary educational laboratory” (Manifesto Progetto Arte, 1994) – of which UNIDEE was one of the first pillars –, this new experimental programme aims to provide practices, methodologies and tools apt at stimulating the emergence of a new figure: the “artivator” – a catalyst of artistic projects for a responsible social transformation. UNIDEE - University of Ideas experimentally undertakes a collaboration with universities and other public educational institutions, not placing itself in an alternative position but rather proposing an alternative to the traditional educational system. Designed for multiple publics, it fosters processes of cross-pollination between academic and artistic knowledge. It aims towards the development of relational
skills, the acquisition of socially responsible behaviours that value diversity, the development of an “effective” practice of horizontal thought embodying the other’s point of view, and the possibility to “err”, to go off topic in the name of a constant research for new directions and means of expression. As an educational artistic project, UNIDEE - University of Ideas faces several challenges: its accretion in time and its impact on the locality. To succeed in becoming a natural site for daily learning and dialogue, the programme must be conceived as a long term endeavour. It shall be engaging continuously with civil society not only through dialogue and active participation, but also through the (re)localisation of those processes of symbolic identification on the side of the modules’ participants, once they go back to their original social contexts and groups. Pistoletto claims that “if there is to be any possibility of openness to change in humanity, this depends primarily on education” (The Third Paradise, 2010). UNIDEE - University of Ideas concurrently embodies a stepping stone and end point of a wider vision finalised at a re-foundation of the educational system as a whole, starting from childhood. This new system maintains the principle of educational offer as an agent for the development of collective
conscience and as an activator of ideas, dynamics and aesthetic and ethical devices for social transformation. For the year 2015 the three broad thematic areas and their interrelations are inspired by Michelangelo Pistoletto’s principle of trinamics: Trinamics is the dynamics of the number three. It is the combination of two units that gives rise to a third distinct and new unit. In trinamics the three is always a birth, which occurs by fortuitous or deliberate combination of two subjects. Trinamics is always a creation. It comes into effect in the process of conjunction, connection, combination, conjugation and interaction of two elements that are in themselves simple or complex, such as two cells or two people. The trinamic phenomenon is found in chemistry and in physics, extends to the physiology of bodies and can even be applied to social life in its cultural, political, economic, religious and philosophical aspects. (Manifesto of Education, 2015). This trinamic principle is as an apt way to create and regenerate knowledge processes: the modules will analyse, on the basis of a combination and (con) fusion of theory and practice, the acceptations and uses of the three key concepts: temporality, responsibility and participation. They provide an outline for an indepth analysis, and will function
as semantic groups unfolding not chronologically but following relational, associative and procedural modalities, set out to examine and critique their semantic ranges – deriving from their presence and appropriation by different disciplines within a variety of social contexts. Temporality is understood as the historical-artistic, philosophical, political and mediological discourse on time as a central element in participatory practices taking place in social contexts. Thanks to those transformative processes the languages of art have undergone since the first decades of the 20th century, art itself has acquired expressive freedom and autonomy and has overcome its self-referentiality. Furthermore, these processes have contributed to a transformation of both artistic thought and practices, questioning the traditional roles of the idea of artist and public, while critiquing the work of art and its function. Artists became less interested in object-making, preferring to activate long term relationships and collective processes, blurring the boundaries between time, situations and spaces of the everyday, as much as moving freely across disciplines (e.g. science, architecture, anthropology, economy, politics, communication, information technology). The concept of responsibility refers to the realm of physical habitat, embracing the
environment and how it is experienced at a private and public, local and global level. It is intended here not only in a strict urban and ecological acceptation, but also in a phenomenological, emotional and anthropological one. A twofold term, responsability is the ability to respond to the needs and desires expressed by certain constituencies dwelling in contexts undergoing urban/ social transformation. Here, the role of the artist becomes ethical, moving beyond its aesthetic nature: she/he is invited to imagine different ways of observing, listening to and analysing people to release them from socially imposed interpretations and schemes, whilst encouraging their self-awareness and knowledge of the other and their environment. The third topic is that of participation: through it, and the combination of art’s autonomy and artist’s social responsibility, individuals become co-authors in the making of an art work. The concept of participation in art is opposed to that of spectatorship (whose critique has Situationists’ origin), since it refers to the observer’s emancipation from her/his passive attitude and to the experimentation of new democratic and “demopractic” modes of action. However, these models of democracy in art do not intrinsically relate to those of democracy in society, rather their equation is misleading. It is the latter which does not
acknowledge art’s ability through new interdisciplinary interpretative models, to create new criteria for a re-imagination, reconfiguration and regeneration of existing sociopolitical structures. Cecilia Guida, Director and Curator of UNIDEE University of Ideas programme
The mentors and guests for 2015 are (in order of appearance): Spring/Summer term Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico; Silvia Franceschini with Stefano Rabolli Pansera (Beyond Entropy); Aria Spinelli with Tullio Brunone (Laboratorio di Comunicazione Militante); Massimiliano Viel; Emilia Telese with Richard Shields; Giulia Grechi with Fiamma Montezemolo; Saioa Olmo Alonso with Sabel Gavaldón; Giusy Checola with Thomas Gilardi; Fall term Alessandra Donati with SMart Belgio/Italia; raumlaborberlin; Beatrice Catanzaro; STEALTH. unlimited (Ana Džokić and Marc Neelen); Santiago Reyes Villaveces with Manuel Ángel Macia; Andrea Caretto and Raffaella Spagna with Attila Faravelli; Federica Martini with Anne-Julie Raccousier; Omer Krieger; Monica Narula (Raqs Media Collective) with Rasmus Nielsen (Superflex).
Module 1
Ubiquitous Infoscapes mentored by Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico 4 / 8 May 2015 TAGS: Participation, information, knowledge, experience, territories, public/private spaces, perception, behaviour, responsibility
Participants: Demetrio Giacomelli, Matteo Gatti, Victor Brustet, Genevieve Goffman, Anne Marchal.
Data and information are everywhere. In our times, we constantly and ubiquitously generate data and information. The masses of data and information generated by others (people, objects, organizations and algorithms) radically transform our daily lives, the ways in which we work, relate to each other, express emotions, experience places and spaces, consume, do things together. Seamlessly augmented with information, the physical landscape becomes infoscape (a landscape of information). The module Ubiquitous Infoscapes combined experiential, theoretical, practice and performance based phases, each continuously flowing into the other. The experiential sessions, aimed at expanding knowledge and imaginaries, developed around case studies to unveil the many facets of the Ubiquitous Infoscape, how it radically transforms both our lives and our perception of the world, affecting public, private and intimate spaces, our rights, and our approach to knowledge-sharing, learning, expression and communication. Examples were drawn from a wide spectrum of international practitioners, including artists, designers, hackers, architects and researchers, with a more in-depth focus on AOS and Human Ecosystems. The theoretical sessions aimed at broadening the understanding of the subject through discussing those issues (social, political, aesthetic, psychological, cognitive, anthropological) highlighted within the experiential sessions. We explored the production of a number of theoreticians, researchers, writers and other influential figures, trying to discern the narrative(s) of the
mutation of human beings in the age of ubiquitous information. The practice and performance sessions aimed at constructing a small – yet meaningful - artistic and creative production inspired by those instances discussed within the previous phases and highlighting one or more elements of the human mutation brought by the continuous emergence of Ubiquitous Infoscapes. In this phase we created, and expressed ourselves, through texts, images, software, installation, movement, gestures and curious rituals. Previous technical knowledge was not required. The artists provided extensive support (even for writing small pieces of software) across all activities, ensuring active participation of all throughout all sessions. At the end of each day, a “ubiquitous ritual” allowed all participants to express themselves in meaningful ways. SCHEDULE MAY 4TH morning Guided tour to Cittadellarte, including the Pistoletto, Arte Povera collections and temporary exhibitions (curated by Luca Furlan). Group presentations. Methodologies and technical set-up. afternoon The artists present themselves and their philosophy. Experience Session I (examples and interactive experiences, discussion). Ubiquitous Ritual I. MAY 5TH morning Experience Session II (examples and interactive experiences, discussion). Theoretical Session I (short readings, screenings and discussing theoretical approaches). afternoon Theoretical Session II (short readings, screenings and discussing theoretical approaches). Practice &
Performance Phase I (brainstorming to define the concept of the production, and its iterative redefinition). Ubiquitous Ritual II. MAY 6TH morning Theoretical Session III (short readings, screenings and discussing theoretical approaches). Practice & Performance Session II (introduction to the tools to use for the creation of the artistic production, and set-up of the projects). afternoon Practice & Performance Session III (project development and collaboration). Ubiquitous Ritual III. MAY 7TH morning Documentation (all participants work on assembling the documentation so far). Practice & Performance Session IV (project development and collaboration). afternoon Practice & Performance Session V (project development and collaboration). Ubiquitous Ritual IV. MAY 8TH morning Documentation (gathering of all the materials generated in the last P&P sessions for inclusion in the documentation, including video, software, images, concepts etc.). Presentation. afternoon Performance Ubiquitous Ritual with all the guests coming to the presentation. REFERENCES · Transmedia Design www.artisopensource.net/network/ artisopensource/2014/04/30/ transmedia-design/ · Anthropological Innovation www.artisopensource.net/network/ artisopensource/2013/07/28/ anthropological-innovation-observingand-understanding-the-mutation-ofhuman-life/
AOS (Art is Open Source) by Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico
The Third Space
How can artists use digital data?
“The Third Infoscape: Michel De Certeau, Gilles Clément, Marco Casagrande and the re-creation of our cities” www.artisopensource.net/2013/11/20/third-infoscape-decerteau-clement-casagrande-smart-cities/
The project was born in 2004 as an interdisciplinary research laboratory focused on merging artistic and scientific practices to gain better understandings about the mutation of human beings and their societies with the advent of ubiquitous technologies.
Salvatore Iaconesi, Leaf++. www.leaf.artisopensource.net/ Marco Casagrande, Cross-over Architecture on Epifanio. www.epifanio.eu/nr9/eng/cross-over.html
Gilles Clément. Le jardin planétaire. Reconcilier l’homme et la nature, Albin MIchel, Paris, 1999.
The Third Landscape
The Third Generation City
¡ Cultures, communities, roles and emergence human-ecosystems.com/home/ relations-in-the-human-ecosystemscultures-communities-roles-andemergence/
The Human Ecosystems project is a city based project whose objective is to capture the myriads of micro-histories of citizens and city dwellers as they emerge, to describe the Third Infoscape of the city and its Relational Ecosystem. This is done by harvesting data and information through social networks, smartphones, Internet of Things, domotics, wearables and all of those ubiquitous technologies which permeate our environments. The data is transformed into a digital commons for the city, and can be used by anyone.
¡ P2P Ethnography www.artisopensource.net/network/ artisopensource/2014/07/30/ communication-knowledge-andinformation-in-the-human-ecosystemp2p-ethnography/
HE (Human Ecosystems LTD) www.human-ecosystems.com/
About the opening of the exhibition and final presentation of the module: www.facebook.com/ events/1430614807243159/
About OSMA: github.com/ OpenSourceMuseum?tab=repositories
“Together with artists Oriana Persico & Salvatore Iaconesi, students at UNIDEE (University of Ideas, Italy) Genevieve Goffman, Giulia Crisci, Victor Brustet and Anne Marchal built up the concept and form of OSMA : the Open Source Museum of Abandonment, in the course of the ‘Ubiquitous Infoscapes’ workshop at UNIDEE. It is based on the work and tools already developed by the artists (such as Human Ecosystems) and discussions about the space around them working, the city of Biella. The dynamics of abandonment of the city is matched to the open source tools capturing digital datas from people to shape this ‘living’ museum questioning the phenomenon in propositions of representations.” Anne Marchal, one of the participants of the module. Her video of the final presentation: www.vimeo.com/132529142
OSMA (Open Source Museum of Abandonment) The OSMA - Open Source Museum of Abandonment is a collective project created during the Ubiquitous Infoscapes workshop at UNIDEE - University of Ideas, in May 2015. It represents the first instance of a model for an Open Source Museum, in which ubiquitous forms of data, information, knowledge and expressions can be captured, archived and represented. It is a completely Open Source Museum, which can be extended, trasformed, adopted by other people, organizations, associations, administrations, artists, designers and more.
Module 2
Changing nothing so that everything is different mentored by Silvia Franceschini with the guest Stefano Rabolli Pansera (Beyond Entropy) 11 / 15 May 2015 TAGS: Transformation, city, entropy, tools, collective imagination, responsibility
Participants: Stefano Colombo, Eugenio Cosentino, Peter Philippe Schreuder, Maria Slavnova, Allard van Hoorn, Anna Andrich, Mohamed Z. Hamideche.
Radical pedagogy, dystopic visions, refusal of architecture and contamination with visual arts - radical designers and architects in the ’70s implemented all these strategies in different ways, to question the role played by humankind within territorial transformation. How could environmental thinking develop beyond the concept of sustainability? What are the possible strategies of urban regeneration and creation of new urban space? How can the city and the countryside merge into an uninterrupted social factory? How do we create new consciousness of precarious living between “cities” and “territories”? Revisiting the history of architecture and questioning the fundamentals of its theory, Beyond Entropy elaborated, through transdisciplinary research experiments, exhibitions and fieldwork investigations, a philosophy where interventions on site are realized through a methodology of Changing nothing so that everything is different. This workshop invited to a reflection on the idea of the city and its evolution after the end of industrialisation in Europe. The attempts at redefining the space of the urban settlement in keeping with the ideas of postindustrial economy and gentrification highlight the issue of the role of artistic practices in these processes. Taking as its starting point Aldo Rossi’s idea (The Analogous City, 1976) that the city should be shaped by historical imagination, collective memories and participation, the laboratory conducted a case study on Cittadellarte, to verify how this model could become a paradigm for the regeneration of post industrial cities in Italy and beyond. The week comprised of lectures, discussions and film screenings focusing on several examples of
pedagogical and architectural initiatives attempting to define new operational tools for urban and rural environments.
SCHEDULE MAY 11TH Guided tour to Cittadellarte, including the Pistoletto, Arte Povera collections and temporary exhibitions (curated by Luca Furlan). Group presentation. Introduction to the workshop’s core topics. MAY 12TH A day with Beyond Entropy. Film screenings. MAY 13TH Tool globalism. Case study lecture on Global Tools and Radical Architecture. MAY 14TH Self-study day: production. MAY 15TH Summary and reflection on the workshop’s outcomes.
REFERENCES The mentor prepared a reader for participants with key texts, some of which were discussed during the week. · Global Tools’ e-book www.beyondentropy.com
Aldo Rossi, A scientific Autobiography, The MIT Press, Cambridge, London, 1981.
AA School’s Beyond Entropy, When Energy Become Form, 2011.
Meeting with the guest Stefano Rabolli Pansera. Talk about Beyond Entropy
Valerio Borgonuovo, Silvia Franceschini, Global Tools 1973-1975: Towards an Ecology of Design, Salt, 2014.
nent “life as perma tion� global educa
Module 3
Curating as a form of assembly mentored by Aria Spinelli with the guest Tullio Brunone (Laboratorio di Comunicazione Militante) 18 / 22 May 2015 TAGS: Art politics, activism, curating, curatorial, imagination, imaginary, exhibition, culture, transversality, participation, horizontality, consciousness, responsibility
Participants: Sofya Postnikova, Edgar Tom O. Stockton, Linda Vigiani, Annalisa Zegna, Giulia Crisci, Ilaria Genovesio, Gemma R. Medina Estupiñán.
Taking from recent forms of anticapitalist protest, this module on exhibition practice wants to focus on alternative modes of thinking society. In reference to the political imaginaries that have been provoked by temporary occupations of public squares, through this week-long module we embraced and analysed the notion of collective and political consciousness in the writings of J. K. Graham and Gibson, and transposed their methodology to the framework of curatorial practice. “Curating” here became a process of gathering, a situation of social engagement that should have been declined under terms such as horizontality, transversality and cooperation. In this sense, the act of curation did not want to allude to a top down, authorial process of selection and installation, but to a context-specific and reflective mode of positioning cultural production within a given situation. The week was fragmented into three different sessions: the assemblybuilding collective consciousness; curating: means and modes of addressing necessities; gathering: temporary situations of conscious and unconscious engagement. All three fragments were composed of a series of actions, activities and readings, including a one-off workshop with Laboratorio di Comunicazione Militante (Tullio Brunone). By the end of the week, students created their own form of assembly, embodying the week-long research and experience. In its final stage, the module wanted to reflect on the potentiality of political imaginaries in a contemporary context, and how “curating” in its broadest sense is key to shifting power relations between artists, authors and contexts, specifically through the
use of imaginative forms of political emancipation.
SCHEDULE MAY 18TH morning Guided tour to Cittadellarte, including the Pistoletto, Arte Povera collections and temporary exhibitions (curated by Luca Furlan). Group presentations. Methodologies and technical set-up. afternoon Workshop and group presentation. Curating: means and modes of addressing necessities (Case study: A lived practice SAIC, Chicago). The assembly-building collective consciousness - role taking: mediating/ minute taking/questions manager. Participants presentations. MAY 19TH morning Gathering: temporary situations of conscious and unconscious engagement. Exercises: Alan Kaprow. Readings: J.K. Graham and Gibson (reading groups - regrouping collective discussions). Curating: means and modes of addressing necessities (Case study: the 7th Berlin Biennale). afternoon Curating: means and modes of addressing necessities (brainstorming, keywords, collective discussion). Curating: means and modes of addressing necessities (exercises and short per-formances). Participants presentations. MAY 20TH morning Gathering: temporary situations of conscious and unconscious engagement. Exercises: Ultra Red. Readings: Paul O’Neill (reading groups - regrouping - collective discussions). Curating: means and modes of
addressing necessities. (Case study: Democracy, a project by Group Material). afternoon The assembly-building collective consciousness - role taking: mediating/ minute taking/ questions manager. Curating: means and modes of addressing necessities with Laboratorio di Comunicazione Militante. Participants presentations. MAY 21ST morning Gathering: temporary situations of conscious and unconscious engagement. Exercises: Brett Bloom (reading groups - regrouping - collective discussions) Curating: means and modes of addressing necessities. (Case study: Instituting, Simon Sheikh). afternoon Curating: means and modes of addressing necessities - roundtable: thematic brainstorming. The assemblybuilding collective consciousness - role taking: mediating/ minute taking/ questions manager. Participants presentations. MAY 22ND morning Gathering: temporary situations of conscious and unconscious engagement. Exercises: Amy Franceschini.Readings: JK Graham and Gibson (reading groups - regrouping - collective discussions). Final regrouping and organisation of assemblies. afternoon Self-organised assemblies (public or not). evening Party.
REFERENCES The mentor prepared a reader for participants with key texts, some of which were discussed during the week. The reader includes pieces by authors, artists, curators and intellectuals such as Paul O’Neill, Irit Rogoff, Mick Wilson, Dave Beech, Mark Hutchinson, Simon Sheikh, Judith Butler, and J.K. Graham and Gibson. Artists & Artists’ projects: · Mosireen Collective www.indiegogo.com/projects/ mosireen-independent-mediacollective-in-cairo · Collectivo En medio www.enmedio.info/en/ · Bruguera, T., Museo D’Arte Util, 2013 www.museumarteutil.net/ · Grupo Etcera, C.R.I.S.I Bologna, 2013 www.crisiproject.wordpress.com/ · Fortune, B. & Bloom, B., The Library of Radiant Optimism... Guide, 4th & Final Edition, January 2013 www.mythologicalquarter. net/2013/01/13/the-library-of-radiantoptimism-guide-4th-final-editionjanuary-2013 Shows: · “A Proximity of Consciousness: Art and Social Action”, September 20– December 20 2014, Mary Jane Jacob, Kate Zeller. www.blogs.saic.edu/alivedpractice/ · “Art Turning Left: How Values Changed Making 1789–2013”, Tate
Liverpool: Exhibition 8 November 2013 - 2 February 2014. www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/ tate-liverpool/exhibition/artturning-left-how-values-changedmaking-1789-2013 · “JO EM REBEL. LO, NOSALTRES EXISTIM” 2013. www.fundaciopalau.cat/fundaciopalau/ca/exposicions-temporals/ exposicio.html?title=JO%20 EM%20REBEL%E2%80%A2LO,%20 NOSALTRES%20EXISTIM&html=13230. html · ARTUR ŻMIJEWSKI, “THE 7TH BERLIN BIENNAL”, Associated curator: Joanna Warsza Associated curators: Oleg Vorotnikov (a.k.a. Vor), Natalya Sokol (a.k.a. Kozljonok or Koza), Leonid Nikolajew (a.k.a. Leo the Fucknut) and Kasper Nienagliadny Sokol from Voina, 2012. www.berlinbiennale.de/blog/en/1st6th-biennale/7th-berlin-biennale · Group Material, “Democracy: A Project by Group Material - Discussions in Contemporary Culture 1987-89”, DIA:Chelsea New York (USA). www.diaart.org/programs/main/70 www.eipcp.net/transversal/0910/ ashford/en Martha Rosler, “If You Lived Here… Discussions in Contemporary Culture”, DIA:Chelsea 1987-1989. www.diaart.org/programs/main/69 Enrico Crispolti, Biennale di Venezia, sezione italiana, “Ambiente come sociale”, 1976.
How do we get out of this Capitalistic Place?
A week to build our own assembly > take a role > change it > change it again...
* mediating * questioning manager * collective consciousness
Self-organised assembly at the end of the week. We involved people of Cittadellarte in the final assembly.
Skype meeting #1 - Group Etcetera
Skype meeting #2 - Alison Green presenting Group Material’s Practice
Angela Madesani, Armamentari d’arte e comunicazione. L’esperienza del “Laboratorio” di Brunone, Columbu, Pasculli, Rosa negli anni della rivolta creativa, Dalai Editore, Milano, 2012.
Meeting with Tullio Brunone at Cittadellarte: Curating: means and modes of addressing necessities with Laboratorio di Comunicazione Militante
Module 4
Patterns and Music mentored by Massimiliano Viel 25 / 29 May 2015 TAGS: Listening, music perception, pattern composition, history of western music, performing arts, participation, temporality
Participants: Giorgia Zoe Righini, Aela Yanina Royer, Alma Oneida Sauret.
To escape the identitary cages we are surrounded by, whilst dealing with today’s culture with its complexities, diversity and pervasiveness, a conscious approach to the whole range of music phenomena is fundamental both for curatorial and artistic/music practices and the perception of the habitual music listener. The module put forth an approach to music stemming from an analysis of listening, and proposed a series of techniques for music production as well as strategies to deal with music in its broadest acceptation. Specifically, it traced the consequences of embracing the conceptual frame of cognitive patterns when dealing with the complexities of the evolution of music structures (from the history of Western musical tradition up to the forms and styles of the music practices in today’s media culture). Alternating discussion of theoretical notions and listening experiences with practical laboratories (production/ composition and performing with voice, body-percussion and found objects), the module was suitable for participants with any degree of music knowledge from novice to skilled musician, as no previous knowledge of music theory and music notation are required.
SCHEDULE MAY 25TH morning Guided tour to Cittadellarte, including the Pistoletto, Arte Povera collections and temporary exhibitions (curated by Luca Furlan). Group presentations. Methodologies and technical set-up. afternoon Introduction of the main
topics of the course. Collective discussion.
Knowledge, trans. by S. Smith, Pantheon Books, New York, 1969.
MAY 26TH morning A simple technique of pattern composition. afternoon Laboratory: My first composition.
· Foucault M., The Subject and Power, in Hubert L. Dreyfus & Rabinow P., Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Harvester Press, Brighton, 1982.
MAY 27TH morning Special and notorious patterns. afternoon Laboratory: Using the voice.
· Huron D., Sweet anticipation: music and the psychology of Expectation, MIT Press, Mass, Cambridge, 2007.
MAY 28TH morning A pattern history of Western music. afternoon Laboratory: My first music performance project. MAY 29TH morning What is there in music besides patterns? afternoon Laboratory: Let’s build a collective pattern performance.
REFERENCES · Agamben G., What is an apparatus? and other essays, Stanford, University Press, Palo Alto, 2009. · Besseler H., Das musikalische Haƒaren der Neuzeit, Berlin, 1959. · Akademie-Verlag, L’ascolto musicale nell’età moderna, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1993. · Bregman AS,. Auditory Scene Analysis: The Perceptual Organization of Sound, Bradford Books, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990. · Delalande F., Le condotte musicali, Clueb, Bologna, 1993. · Foucault M., The Archeology of
· Margolis H., Patterns Thinking and Cognition, Univ. Chicago Press, 1987. · Maturana H. Varela F., The tree of knowledge: the biological roots of human understanding, Shambhala, Boston, 1992 · Nattiez J., Musicologie generale et sémiologie, 1987. Musicologia generale e semiologia, EDT, 1989. · Ockelford A., Repetition in music: theoretical and metatheoretical perspectives, Ashgate, London, 2005.
What is there in music besides patterns?
Massimiliano Viel, In the Name of the Pattern.
Massimiliano Viel, In the Name of the Pattern.
Pattern recognition is an active and complex process. It can be seen as a search for structure in data.
Module 5
The Artist as Entrepreneur: relationships between artists, society, markets and world economy mentored by Emilia Telese with the guest Richard Shields 8 / 12 June 2015 TAGS: Artists and the economy, fundraising, making a living, sustainability, ethics, responsibility, artist-led activity, participation, temporality
Participants: Anna Teresa Pfeiffer, Karim Rochdi, Giulia Roncucci, Irene Ruiz Bazán, Milica Ćirović.
This module included a series of lectures and hands-on group and individual activities to provide tools for working independently as a professional artist. It was designed to be non-site specific, offering information about the art world in different countries. The module was born out of the view that artists are professionals and should be treated as such by society, whilst themselves holding knowledge of practical matters such as rates of pay, fundraising for their practice, marketing, proposal writing and effective networking and interaction with the art world. All sessions contained practical and hands-on techniques and exercises. SCHEDULE JUNE 8TH morning Guided tour to Cittadellarte, including the Pistoletto, Arte Povera collections and temporary exhibitions (curated by Luca Furlan). Group presentations. afternoon Being an Artist is a Profession. Introduction to the different roles and places of artists in society; the concept of artists as professionals. Work rights, concepts and ideas of being an artist in today’s economy. JUNE 9TH morning - afternoon The Art World: Dynamics and mechanics. How does the art world works, and what is the relationship between artists, their ideas and their representation in the world’s art stage? An outline of the contemporary art world in different countries; different kinds of art scenes and different ways artists can interact with them.
JUNE 10TH morning - afternoon Can you live of art alone? A practical session discussing ways in which artists can create a sustainable, independent career. Making a living through art; creating a workflow of funded projects; how to deal with institutions and collaborators; copyright issues; creating a self-employed practice; calculating your rate of pay; writing about art; budgeting. Different aspects of fundraising from different sources; the landscape of funding in Europe and beyond; how to write an effective funding proposal; how to create a project budget; how to find sources of appropriate and relevant funding. JUNE 11TH Anatomy of an indie profession. What dynamics are at play between artists and today’s economy? A day with Richard Shields, articulated through two seminars aimed at generating a series of questions around artists-led change. An open discussion salon will create an impromptu platform to discuss the issues raised by the relationship between art and money. morning Introduction to Richard Shields’ artistic practice, including an overview of historical background and methodology, through examples of site-specific projects. Case studies: the artworks Adeptness Indebted (2010 2012), The Journey Of the Artist And The Price Of The Ticket (participants are required to take notes throughout and ask questions at the end). afternoon Having been fully immersed in the world of debt activism and using the Situationist détournement method of turning a capitalist act against itself, the workshop will be a handson approach in turning debts into artistic commodities. Each participant will be encouraged to nominate one of their own debts in order to appropriate the ephemeral data/
objects associated, as an art material, found object. Hypothetical Debt letters can be fabricated on the day if appropriate. The communications between a creditor and debtor can provide a wealth of literature and imagery, from corporate language to administrative graphics. The participants will then work on how they can use their material to create sellable art works that can be priced in order to eradicate the debt. Each participant will be given individual assistance in order to best produce a work that they can manage and confidently promote. The workshop aims at a better understanding of debt and offers creative means to eradicate the participants’ own. JUNE 12TH morning - afternoon Lifeproofing for artists. The day will include personal and group activities in a final workshop to showcase, discuss and bring forward the issues raised during the week. REFERENCES · Hans Abbing, Why are Artists Poor?: The Exceptional Economy of the Arts, Amsterdam University Press, 2007. · Various Authors, Read This First, Growth and Development of Creative SME’s, Utrecht School of Art, 2007. · Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter, My Creativity Reared: A Critique of Creative Industry, Institute of Network Cultures, 2007. · John Howkins, The Creative Economy, How people make money from Ideas, Penguin Books, 2001. · Don Thompson, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art, Aurum Press, 2012. · Alistair Gentry, Career Suicide, Ten Years as a Freerange Artist, Lulu Press, 2010.
More references: · www.emiliatelese.com · www.a-n.co.uk · www.artquest.org.uk · careersuicideblog.wordpress.com · richardshields.blogspot.co.uk · christbanksartcoffeetables.blogspot. co.uk · richardshields.blogspot. co.uk/2010/07/everything-is-purgedfrom-this-account.html
Writing Artists’ Statements, Reader compiled in March 2014 by Emilia Telese.
Meeting with Richard Shield: to analyse the relationship between art, money and market.
Richard Shields, Adeptness Indebted, 2010 – 2012.
Richard Shields, The Weight of Inflation, 2011.
Richard Shields, Inherent Wealth, 2006, re-worked 2012.
Module 6
Performing Anthropology mentored by Giulia Grechi with the guest Fiamma Montezemolo 15 / 19 June 2015 TAGS: Temporality, critical anthropology, contemporary art, archive, ethnographic museums, post-colonial museum, body, participation, identity, difference, migration, performing museology, museum as sense-scape Participants: Adelaide Cioni, Marta Ferretti, Olivia Garro, Lucia Mammana, Ewa Rossal, Aleksandra Anna Czuba.
Here are plates with no appetite. And wedding rings, but the requited love has been gone now for some three hundred years. Here’s a fan – where is the maiden’s blush? Here are swords – where is the ire? Nor will the lute sound at the twilight hour. Since eternity was out of stock, ten thousand aging things have been amassed instead. (…) The crown has outlasted the head. The hand has lost out to the glove. The right shoe has defeated the foot. As for me, I am still alive, you see. The battle with my dress still rages on. It struggles, foolish thing, so stubbornly! Determined to keep living when I’m gone! Wislawa Szimborska, Museum, 1962
How, and on which premises, can we imagine a “post-colonial museum” or an “affective archive”? This contemporary entanglement was explored through an analysis of the relationship between anthropology and contemporary arts, from the experience of Ethnographic Surrealism in the 1930’s and through the idea of “the artist as ethnographer” (Hal Foster). Rethinking the current relationship between anthropology and contemporary arts from different points of view, we took into account artworks, performances, curatorial processes in contemporary art exhibitions and/or ethnographic museums, actions inside and outside the museum, experimentations on the construction of othered archives (affective or diasporic archives). The aim was to unmask the assumptions beneath our cultural understanding of key concepts like museum, archive, modernity, linked to a precise and not universal ideas of time, space, identity. How to turn a museum from a temple for the conservation of Archives,
History, Nation, Cultures as essential categories, into a site where to activate dynamics, trying to transform it into a critical, radically self-reflective space? Such transformation calls for an ethical stance – the museum as a cultural form – which is, in turn, extremely useful in building imagined communities. The challenge is to experiment with new methodologies, by conceiving these communities in a transnational, intercultural and transdisciplinary way. The module attempted to envision the idea of a post-colonial museum yet to come – which might no longer be a “museum” – as a site where the strategies and processes of memory creation are strongly affective. A site activating the bodies and agency of its spectators, beyond co-action; a porous and strongly political space, an experimental laboratory for new forms of citizenship, for a different “community to come”. SCHEDULE JUNE 15TH morning Guided tour to Cittadellarte, including the Pistoletto, Arte Povera collections and temporary exhibitions (curated by Luca Furlan). afternoon Workshop presentation and group presentation. Anthropology and Contemporary Art from Ethnographic Surrealism to the present (Case study: The Museum of European Normality). Collective discussion. Participants’ presentations. JUNE 16TH morning For a contemporary ethnographic museum: strategies of displaying in relation with contemporary art (Case study: The Ethnographic Museum of Neuchâtel, analysis of two exhibitions). afternoon Presentation of actions
inside the Ethnographic Museum Pigorini in Rome (Crossing Bodies and Impression d’Afrique). Collective discussion. JUNE 17TH morning “Othered”, affective, diasporic archives: contemporary artists working on the archives of modernity (case studies presentation). afternoon Screening (artists videos, focus on the archives of modernity). Collective discussion. JUNE 18TH morning Presentation of the work of the contemporary artist and anthropologist Fiamma Montezemolo afternoon Meeting with Fiamma Montezemolo. JUNE 19TH morning Collective discussion. Group work towards drafting a “Manifesto”, or an artistic/ curatorial/ design project focusing on the workshop’s topics. afternoon Group projects. evening Party. REFERENCES · www.routesagency.com · www.roots-routes.org · www.mela-project.eu · www.mela-project.eu/publications · www.studioazzurro.com · www.fiammamontezemolo.com · Arjiun Appadurai, Archive and Aspiration pzwart3.wdka.hro.nl/mediawiki/ images/c/ce/ArjunAppadurai_ ArchiveandAspiration.pdf · MEN - Ethnographic Museum Neuchatel www.men.ch/fr/accueil
Could you remember your first visit in an ethnographic museum?
Arjun Appadurai, “Archive and Aspiration” in Information is Alive, Joke Brouwer and Arjen Mulder (Editors), Rotterdam: V2_Publishing/NAI Publishers, 2003 (pp.14-25).
Talk with Fiamma Montezemolo, artist and anthropologist.
List of projects: 1. Field Notes, interactive installation, 2015. 2. The 3 Ecologies: first step, installation, kilim, cactus, grass, people, 2015. 3. Echo, digital video, 38’, 2014. 4. Traces, digital video, 20’ 26’’, 2012.
c.o.s.a. The result of our reflections about life of objects inside and outside museums and things as relational nodes was the collective project “c.o.s.a.�, the italian acronym of activating centre for lost objects.
Module 7
Group Matters mentored by Saioa Olmo Alonso with the guest Sabel Gavaldón 22 / 26 June 2015 TAGS: Group behaviour, behavioural art, participation, temporality, creation of situations, art experiences, interactions, cybernetics, relational systems, transactions
Participants: Jessica Esther Decorvet, Ekarasa Mara Doblanovic, Julie Martin-Cabétich, Chiara Tirloni, Eszter Wolf.
Group Matters was a module on group dynamics. It was an art laboratory to research about how relationships happen in groups. It focused on generating practical knowledge to be applied to participatory art projects, as well as awareness of the transformative potential of art when applied to power relationships within social situations. Group Matters was a series of experimental group sessions on human interactions through artistic devices. Different situations are created for working on specific themes through the experience of the participants. The group is considered as a powerful gear of common knowledge and art is taken to the encounter of group behaviours to find new ways to unveil, appoint and transform them. Group Matters is a methodology in progress, the complicity of its participants is crucial for it to continue evolving and for getting shared outcomes that everyone in the group can utilise as tools on in their respective practices. To date, several dynamics have been designed and tested: “The Line: Binomies, Borders and Dual Thinking” (on cultural identity), “Eromechanics: The Erotic of the Social Machinery” (on libidinous power relationships in social structures), “Interdependencies” (on live sociograms) and “Behavioural Choreographies” (on deconstruction of habits). Group Matters was the final phase of the larger research project “TRANSART. Participative art practices and social behaviour”, focusing on behavioural aspects of participatory art practices.
SCHEDULE: JUNE 22ND morning Detecting interrelationships. Guided tour to Cittadellarte, including the Pistoletto, Arte Povera collections and temporary exhibitions (curated by Luca Furlan). afternoon Sociograms as tools for acknowledging and visualizing relationships. Interdependencies. A life sociogram to work about relational contexts in which interdependencies and relative positions are significant. evening Film: The Wave (Die Welle) (2008, directed by Dennis Gansel, 107’) or Dogville (2003, directed by Lars Von Trier, 117’) JUNE 23RD morning Displaying interactions morning (10:00 am – 2:00 pm). Life sociograms. Inventing different ways of sociograms for understanding a scene. afternoon Audio-visual Source Code on Group Behaviours. A narration about group behaviours through fragments of films. Psicodrama. Choosing one of the screened situations to explore it through the projections of each one’s experiences on it. evening Film: The Exterminating Angel (El Ángel Exterminador) (1962, directed by Luis Buñuel, 93’) JUNE 24TH morning Role Games. Presenting the idea of role game and matters related to participatory processes in art that can be explored through it. The Line. A role game on the idea of limit, border and identity.Inventing other possible role games. afternoon Sharing ideas of selected texts on participatory art and group behaviour while walking through Biella. evening Film: Them (2017, directed by Artur Zmijewski, 27’).
JUNE 25TH morning Power Relationships. Special Guest: Sabel Gavaldón, on “A Museum of Gesture”. afternoon Dynamic on gestures and power relationships. Exploring in groups correlations among gestures and social classes, gender distinctions and group identity. Individual, peer and group gestures. Re-enactment of Eromechanics. Using the dialogues of this performance about libidinous fluxes on human interactions to re-experience power relationships through them. evening Film: The Method (2005, directed by Marcelo Piñeyro, 115’). JUNE 26TH morning Performative strategies for de-constructing behaviours. Destabilising power structures through performative strategies and the creativity of the group. Proposed exercises: “Words of plasticine”, “Joining voices”, “Chained Gestures” and “The surrealist conference”. afternoon Proposed exercise: “Inertias”, sculpting inertias and trying to evolve them with the help of the group. Integration & closing. evening Party. REFERENCES · ARDENNE, Paul. Un arte contextual. Creación artística en medio urbano, en situación, intervención, de participación. Murcia: Cendeac, 2002. · BISHOP, Claire (ed). Participation. London: Whitechapel; Cambridge Mass: The MIT Press, 2006. · BISHOP, Claire. Artificial Hells. Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. Londron, New York: Verso, 2012.
· BUTLER, Judith. Mecanismos Psíquicos del Poder. Madrid: Cátedra, 2001. · DUARTE, Ignasi y BERNAT, Roger. Querido Público: El espectador ante la participación: jugadores, usuarios, prosumers y fans. Barcelona: Centro Párraga, Cendeac y Elèctrica Produccions, 2009. · EVANS, Gregory S. Art Alienated: An Essay on the Decline of Participatory Art. 1989. [on-line] [Entrance: 25-72012] cafeirreal.alicewhittenburg.com/art.htm · FERNÁNDEZ, Ana María. “De lo imaginario social a lo imaginario grupal”. Revista Actualidad sicológica, Colombia, November 1992. · RANCIÈRE, Jacques. El espectador emancipado. Castellón: Ellago ed., 2010. · The Century of the Self. Documental, 4 part, Directed by Adam Curtisek, Distributed by BBC Four, United Kingdom, 2002. · www.ideatomics.com · sabelgavaldon.com · transarte.wordpress.com · lacapella.bcn.cat/sites/default/files/ umdg-2013-011_0_2.pdf
How relationships happen in groups?
Exhibition guide produced for the exhibition “A Museum of Gesture” (2013), curated by Sabel Gavaldón at La Capella, Barcelona. Bilingual edition. Design by cordova. Published on Nov 27, 2013.
Meeting with Sabel Gavaldón presenting his curatorial project “A Museum of Gesture”
Eromechanics Eromechanics is a project that plays with erotic and libidinous fluxes that keep operative normalizing institutions such as: the prison, the hospital, the work, the politics, the legal system...
Module 8
The artistic production of the common between territorialization and (re)localisation mentored by Giusy Checola with the guest Thomas Gilardi 29 June / 3 July 2015 TAGS: Place-making, territory, common, omnitheism, territorialization, reterritorialization, temporality, presentism, trinamics, pluralism, responsibility, selfrepresentation, symbolic values, public space, participation, social imaginary meanings Participants: Nour Abd Elrahman Abu Arafeh, Valentina Bonizzi, Thomas Fabien Martin, Alexia Mellor, Marianna Orlotti, Fabienne Trotte.
The module focuses on the research about spatial and symbolic production of the common in art and placemaking practices, meant as a tool for territorialization processes and (re) localisation of artistic practices within socio-cultural contexts. Cultural denomination of spaces and places could affect our relationship with society, space, as well as with environment and time. It could encourage forms of spatial regeneration and self-alteration of societies (future); the experimentation of new spatialities framed both in the sustainability of territory meant as common good and/or the monadic immaterial and material public spaces, as spatial configuration of the global logic (present); but also the production of new forms of spatial and social control responding to modern cartographic strategies (past). By interacting with geographical disciplines such as cultural geography and geophilosophy, the module explored the forms and the images of the common sense, as origin of the ways in which societies institute their imaginary meanings, “what remains unchanged when a message is a code that is translated into another” (Cornelius Castoriadis, 1975), that could lead to new forms of local and global objectivities. This meaning seems to be subverted by Michelangelo Pistoletto, who theorized omnitheism as the “artistic and spiritual philosophy that divides the concept of god in the singularity of each person” by placing the common between secularity and transcendence. The module included periods of research and production, with the aim of tracing non-predefined territorial and extraterritorial relations through concepts, forms and images of
the common that eventually would compose a spatial configuration of the (re)localization process of the participants’ own artistic practices.
SCHEDULE JUNE 29TH morning Guided tour to Cittadellarte, including the Pistoletto, Arte Povera collections and temporary exhibitions (curated by Luca Furlan). Group presentation. Presentation of the program, objectives and the tools for investigation and production at disposal of the participants, within Cittadellarte and outside. Introduction of participants, their statement and their interest about the workshop’s issues. The participants are required to share their own definition of common accompanied by iconographical, textual or any other kind of documentation that relates it to strategies of potential processes of (re) localisation of art practice in the social – environmental space from the place of provenance. afternoon “Collective Dictionary / the Common”: On Line Meeting with Campus in Camps, Palestine. Following screening video and discussion. JUNE 30TH morning Between art and geography: presentation of the work and research of geographer Thomas Gilardi, who will introduce methods and issues on which is based the investigation and the production of knowledge of the place by the new cultural geography. Between art and geography: investigation, research and collection of territorial datas, visual and/or non visual, conceptual and/or figurative, inside and/or outside Cittadellarte, considered symptomatic, narrative or
representative of the common. afternoon “Self-ethnographic Constellation”, the self-colonization of the social imaginary: On Line Meeting with Thiago Florencio (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), PhD in Literature and Contemporary Culture, specialized in Afro-Brazilian History. Following screening video and discussion. JULY 1ST morning Between art and geography: investigation, research and collection of territorial datas, visual and/ or non visual, conceptual and/or figurative, inside and/or outside Cittadellarte, considered symptomatic, narrative or representative of the common. Individual and collective discussions about the outcomes of the investigation and the spatial configuration of territorial and extraterritorial relations. afternoon The regeneration of the place between past and future: On Line Meeting with UK artist Jyll Bradley about Green/Light (For M.R.), public art installation commissioned by the Folkestone Triennial 2014 curated by Lewis Biggs. Following screening of a selection of audio-video works and discussion. JULY 2ND morning Between secularity and transcendence, the production of new rural archetype as new spatiality of the common: On Line Meeting with Gaetano Carboni, PhD in Law specialized on common goods and founder of the project Pollinaria, Abruzzo, Italy. Following screening video and discussion. afternoon Collective sharing of outcomes of individual researches and discussion about the final collective spatial configurations of the (re)localisation process of Unidee participants’ artistic practices.
JULY 3RD morning-afternoon Composition of the spatial configurations of art practices’ (re)localisation process on individual or collective display. Public presentation of the module’s outcomes and collective evaluation of the program. evening Party.
draft.of.the.territorialists.society. manifesto.pdf
REFERENCES
· PISTOLETTO Michelangelo, Omnitheism and Democracy, Biella, Cittadellarte, 2012. Available at the link: www.cittadellarte.it/attivita.php?att=70
· CASTORIADIS Cornelius, The imaginary institution of society [L’institution imaginaire de la société, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1975], translated by Kathleen Blamey, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1998. Available at the link: base.mayfirst.org/wp-content/ uploads/2013/03/cornelius-castoriadisthe-imaginary-institution.pdf · DELEUZE Gilles, GUATTARI Félix, «Geophilosophy», What is philosophy?, Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1991. Available at the link: nfk.be/CUDI/levinas-2009-2010/ deleuze-3207-what_is_philosophy. pdf%20%28fenomenologie%20 van%20schilderkunst%29.pdf · HARTOG François, Time and Heritage, Oxford and Malden (USA), Blackwell Publishing, data. Available at the link: collectivememory. fsv.cuni.cz/CVKP-52-version1-Hartog. pdf · HOLMES Brian, Continental Drift project. Texts and images available on: brianholmes.wordpress.com/ · MAGNAGHI Alberto and the Territorialists’ Society, Manifesto, translated by Marie-Anne Gillis, 2011. Available at the link: www.societadeiterritorialisti.it/images/ DOCUMENTI/manifesto/110221b_
· MARKUSEN Ann, GADWA Anne, Creative Placemaking, Washington DC : Markusen Economic Research Services and Metris Arts Consulting, 2010. Available at the link: arts.gov/file/1919
· SUBIRATS Joan, «The commons: beyond the market vs. state dilemma», Open Democracy, 12 July 2012. Available at the link: www.opendemocracy.net/joansubirats/commons-beyond-market-vsstate-dilemma · TURCO Angelo, «Mythe et Géographie», Cahiers de géographie du Québec, vol. 45, n° 126, 2001, p. 369-388. Available at the link: www.erudit.org/revue/cgq/2001/v45/ n126/022999ar.pdf · Vv.Aa., Cartes et Figures de la Terre, Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1980. Catalogue of the namesake exhibition that took place at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, from 24 mai 1980 to 17 novembre 1980, curated by Cci, J. Mullender, G. Macchi. Info: https://www.centrepompidou.fr/ cpv/resource/ciBqEe/r9nkggq · Vv.Aa, «Regimes of Temporality», Investigating the Plurality and Order of Times across Histories, Cultures, Technologies, Materialities and Media, Oslo, UiO Kultrans - University of Oslo, 2013. Published on the occasion of the International Conference which took
place at the University of Oslo from 5 to 7 June 2013. Available at the link: http://www.uio. no/forskning/tverrfak/kultrans/aktuelt/ konferanser/regimesoftemporality/ program/abstracts-regimes-final-5internet.pdf · Campus in Camp / Collective Dictionary: www.campusincamps.ps · Jyll Bradley, works and texts: http:// jyllbradley.com/writing/ · Pollinaria project: www.pollinaria.org · Future Farmers, “Consortium Instabile”, 2014: http:// www.futurefarmers.com/ consortiuminstabile/
Talk with the geographer Thomas Gilardi about perception of landscape, horizontal and vertical methods and language of places.
Between art and geography: investigation, research and collection of territorial datas, visual and/or non visual, conceptual and/or figurative, inside and/or outside Cittadellarte, considered symptomatic, narrative or representative of the common.
Individual and collective discussions about the outcomes of the investigation and the spatial configuration of territorial and extraterritorial relations.
Skype meeting #1 - Campus in Camps (Palestine) Campus in Camps is a project-space for communal learning and production of knowledge grounded in lived experience and connected to communities.
Skype meeting #2 Jyll Bradley (UK) We spoke about Green/Light (For M.R.), public art installation commissioned by the Folkestone Triennial 2014.
Skype meeting #3 Gaetano Carboni (Italy) He presented Pollinaria Project, a concept of regeneration of the agrarian environment.
SALVATORE IACONESI AND ORIANA PERSICO
SILVIA FRANCESCHINI
Created by Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico, AOS - Art is Open Source is an international informal network exploring the mutation of human beings and their society with the wide and ubiquitous accessibility of digital technologies and networks.
Silvia Franceschini is an independent curator and researcher in contemporary art and architecture. Her practice deals with the political intersections of education, history and institution making within research based art and design practices. Her recent curatorial projects address the connections between radical pedagogy and the operaist theories during the “years of lead” in Italy (Global Tools 1973-1975: Towards an Ecology of Design, SALT, Istanbul), institutional critique and political commentaries in the urban sphere of post-socialist Eastern Europe (The Way of Enthusiasts, VAC Foundation, Venice Biennale, 2012) and the notion of “strategy” in global art practices (Sources go dark, Futura Center for Contemporary Art, Prague, 2015). She studied Cultural Policies at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow and Design and Art Theory at Politecnico di Milano, where she is now a PhD fellow. Silvia Franceschini is a member of the curatorial team of the upcoming Second Kyiv International Biennale of Contemporary Art 2015 led by Georg Schöllhammer and Hedwig Saxenhuber.
“We move across arts and sciences, using technology, communication, performance, art and design, to instantiate emotional actions and processes able to expose the dynamics of our contemporary world. We are interested in cities (and in how they have become infrastructures for ubiquitous flows of data, information, knowledge), bodies (and the ways in which they are being extended with technologies and network connectivity), economies and education (and the ways in which they are being redefned through peer-topeer models and ubiquitous practices of many different kinds). We turn these observations into designs, artworks, scientifc research and innovative business models.” Salvatore is Designer, Artist, Robotic Engineer and Philosopher, TED Fellow 2012, Eisenhower Fellow 2013 and Yale World Fellow 2014; Oriana is Communication Scientist, Artist, Writer and Cyber-Ecologist.
STEFANO RABOLLI PANSERA Beyond Entropy was founded by Stefano Rabolli Pansera in 2009 as a trans-disciplinary research laboratory at the Architectural Association, School of Architecture, London. Beyond Entropy is now an independent collaborative practice operating at the threshold between art, architecture and geopolitics while developing a variety of projects: from curatorial activities to art installations, from architectural interventions to master-plans, from public debates to publications. Beyond Entropy is structured as a network operating in situations of territorial crisis: from the urban sprawl of the most industrialized parts of the planet to the derelict infrastructures of deserted islands; from the overcrowded urban development of emerging countries to the preserved areas of historical urban centres. Beyond Entropy questions preconceived notions in order to produce new ideas about the space we inhabit — our homes, cities, and territories. www.beyondentropy.com
ARIA SPINELLI Aria Spinelli is an independent curator and researcher, currently a Phd Candidate at Loughborough University with a project on curatorial practice and the social imaginary. Her primary area of research is investigating the relationship between art and activism. Her research suggests that the “assembly”, as both a curatorial format and exhibition display, will possibly activate forms of agonistic politics that can potentially affect the social imaginary necessary for capitalist reproduction. She holds a BA and a MA in Art History, Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies. Since 2009 she acted as curator at Isola Art Center, an open platform of experimentation for contemporary art that has developed in the Isola neighbourhood in Milan, Italy. In 2009, she also founded the art and curatorial collective Radical Intention and created long-term research projects on socio-political issues related to art and its practices. Recent projects include: Decompression Gathering Summer Camp with Amy Franceschini (Corniolo Art Platform, FI, Italy); FLOAT residency at Luminary art centre, St. Louis (MO, USA); Marfa Dialogues, Pulitzer Art Foundation, St. Louis (MO, USA); Collateral Effects - Beyond a Radical Milan, Homesession, Fundacio Tapies, Sala d’art Jove Barcelona, Spain; Taking Positions-Identity Questioning Fare arte, Milan, Italy w/ACSL-Art and Cultural Studies Laboratory, Yerevan; Milano Radicale, Medionauta/Liceo artistico Caravaggio, Milan/Corniolo Florence, Italy.
TULLIO BRUNONE
MASSIMILIANO VIEL
Laboratorio di Comunicazione Militante was co-founded in Milan in 1976 by Tullio Brunone, Giovanni Columbu, Ettore Pasculli and Paolo Rosa, to unmask the ambiguous mechanisms of communication. Until 1978, LCM started a number of experiments, among which the noteworthy experience of Fabbrica di Comunicazione - in Milan’s occupied church of St. Carpoforo - an artistic endeavour deeply connected to that historical period characterised by political engagement and activism. Yet, Fabbrica di Comunicazione still stands today as an example of cuttingedge, stimulating research criticising those very means and strategies of communication that would later become central to political and social studies.
Massimiliano Viel is a composer, musician and researcher. His manifold activities as composer, keyboard player and sound designer brought him to collaborate with ensembles, orchestras and theatres all over the world and with composers such as L. Berio and K. Stockhausen. Besides the production of scores for acoustic and electronic instruments, from solo works to orchestra pieces, he developed his artistic path around the relationship between music and other media, realizing performances and installations in close contact with theatre, visual arts and dance. He is member of the Italian collective “otolab”, devoted to audiovisual performance. He is a professor at Bolzano’s Conservatory (Italy) and PhD researcher at the Planetary Collegium T-Node, University of Plymouth (UK).
EMILIA TELESE
RICHARD SHIELD
Emilia Telese is an artist based in Warwickshire, UK and working in London and Europe. Born in Italy, she graduated in Painting from Fine Arts Academy in Florence in 1996. She is currently an AHRC award PhD researcher in Cultural Policy at the University of Warwick, with a Collaborative Doctorate Award threeyear research project which will look at artist-led contributions to the cultural value agenda in order to develop theory, methods and policy insight. She has exhibited worldwide since 1994, including in the New Forest Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale (Venice, Italy), Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), ZKM (Karlsruhe, Germany), Chashama (New York City, USA), Centro Cultural Telemar (Rio De Janeiro, Brazil), Manege (St Petersburg, Russia), Leeds City Gallery, ArtSway (New Forest, UK) and the Freud Museum (London UK). Her work has been presented at major events at Tate Britain, Royal Festival Hall. She was invited by Michelangelo Pistoletto to create an artwork for the first RebirthDay in 2012. Often site specific, Telese’s work deals with conscious engagement, political and social debate, non-verbal communication and the questioning and deconstruction of behaviour. She is a lecturer specialising in the relationship between art, economics and professional practice at more than ten UK and Italian institutions. She represented practising artists on the Arts Council England Regional Council until 2013.
Richard Shields’ practice investigates varied contemporary issues through the use of the site specific, found objects and traditional skills. His pieces contain a duality between what is often seen as valuable permanence found in the process of drawing and mark making and the disposability of everyday encounters. Whilst producing contemporary works Shields looks to history both as an indicator and to contextualize events that occur in his own life and to the wider public. His past curatorial explorations in the site specific have seen him apply a range of media from oil paint to swimming pools, projectors and paper coffee cups. His topics of interest lie in financial posturing, religion and the autopsy of artistic process through an allegory with a sense of humour. Richard is Northern Irish and graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University, gaining a BA Hons in Fine Art Sculpture. He currently holds studio space in Manchester and writes for varies online publications. www.richardshields.blogspot.it/
GIULIA GRECHI
FIAMMA MONTEZEMOLO
Giulia Grechi holds a PhD in Theory and social research at the University La Sapienza (Rome, Italy). She was a research fellow at “L’Orientale” (Naples) since January 2015, as a member of the EU Project “MeLa - European Museums in the Age of Migrations”, where she worked on the relation between museums, curatorial practices, anthropology and contemporary art. Her research interests include cultural anthropology, cultural and post-colonial studies, museography, contemporary art, embodiment and emotions as a field of knowledge’s production. She teaches Photography – social communication at the Fine Arts School of Brera (Milan, Italy), Sociology of cultural processes at the European Institute of Design (IED) in Rome, and Cultural Antropology at the Naples Academy of Fine Arts. She is editor-in-chief of the on-line journal roots§routes – research on visual culture. She is a member of Routes Agency - Cura of contemporary arts, a team of independent curators based in Rome.
Fiamma Montezemolo is both a Cultural Anthropologist (PhD University Orientale of Naples) and an artist (MFA San Francisco Art Institute). She has taught for many years in Mexico, Italy and USA and she is currently teaching at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. As an established scholar in border and urban studies, she has patiently designed rigorous and long-term ethnographic-artistic interventions at the Tijuana-San Diego border. She is widely published and the author of two monographs: on Zapatismo and on Chicano/a politics of representation, as well as co-author (with Rene’ Peralta and Heriberto Yepez) of Here is Tijuana (Blackdog Publishing, London, 2006) and co-editor (with Josh Kun) of Tijuana Dreaming, Life and Art at the Global border (Duke Press, 2012). As an artist she situates her work as a critical extension and overcoming of the ethnographic turn in contemporary art. She works with various media, including installation, cartography, video, digital photography, industrial materials, performance, archival documents, and ethnography.
SAIOA OLMO
SABEL GAVALDON
Saioa Olmo is an artist and researcher interested in the mysterious beings that people are: with their manias, passions, patterns of behaviour and unpredictability… and above all the way they relate to each other and the contexts within which they move. She explores power relationships from the disruptive field of art. Saioa has been working about “cultural identity”, “gender & feminism” and “mechanisms of desire” through collaborative and participative art processes. She is now delving into these issues in light of collective behaviour. Derived from her artistic creation on participatory art, Saioa is now conducting a Phd research on “Participatory Art Practice and Social Behaviour”.
Sabel Gavaldon (b. 1985, Barcelona) is an independent curator and researcher based in London. In 2012, he graduated from the Curating Contemporary Art programme at the Royal College of Art. Recent projects include the exhibitions “Axolotlism” at Galería Nogueras-Blanchard, Madrid; “M/ Other Tongue” at Tenderpixel, London (2015); “Contretemps” at CaixaForum, Barcelona; “Llocs comuns” at Can Felipa, Barcelona (2014); and “A Museum of Gesture” at La Capella, Barcelona (2013). “A Museum of Gesture” is an ongoing research project that explores the potential of gesture, body movement and style as forms of semiotic resistance adopted by subordinate groups and political minorities.
GIUSY CHECOLA
THOMAS GILARDI
Giusy Checola (San Severo, 1973) is scholar and curator of artisticinterdisciplinary projects often focused on the relationship between art and public sphere and developed in relation with geography and geophilosophy. Her current research is devoted to place-making, to the creation of cultural conditions encouraging processes of generation and regeneration in the public spaces and/on common places, and to the effects produced by public art. Founder of the platform and archive Archiviazioni (Southern Italy), she is part of the curatorial board of SoutHeritage Foundation of Matera (Italy), researcher for IPA (Institute for Public Art, US and China) and PhD candidate at University Paris VIII Vincennes Saint-Denis (France).
Thomas Gilardi (Milan, 1973) graduated in Geography at University of Genoa. His studies have focused on the terraced landscape and the urban one. Since 2003, alongside the research, he is consultant for public and private institutions for the production of laboratories of geography, which pay particular attention to environmental and intercultural issues. He is PhD candidate at University of Milan and teaches geography in secondary schools.
About Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto Cittadellarte’s aim is to inspire and produce a responsible change in society through ideas and creative projects. Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto was instituted in 1998 as a concrete action of the Progetto Arte Manifesto, where Michelangelo Pistoletto proposed a new role for the artist: that of placing art in direct interaction with all the areas of human activity which form society. Cittadellarte is dedicated to the study, experimentation and development of practices translating the symbol of the Third Paradise* into realty, implying it into every sector of society. It is a great laboratory, hosting many young artists, which generates unedited processes of development in diverse fields of culture, production, economics and politics. Cittadellarte is a vibrant international network of cultural and social innovators, individuals actively interlaced with their social contexts where they often act as catalyst of change. The interrelationship between people and projects is based on a common vision whose roots lie in an accumulative thought&practice process, developed by a wide range of thinkers, managers, innovators of all field. Pistoletto’s work, from the 60s to today, acts as a pumping brain for Cittadellarte’s communities. Cittadellarte has developed an extensive networks of collaborations with Institutions (various United Nations Agencies, Ministries, Universities and Educational Organizations) global enterprises and local businesses, civil society collectives, organizations and individuals from all fields.
* “The symbol of the Third Paradise, a reconfiguration of the mathematical infinity sign, is made of three consecutive circles. The two external circles represent all the diversities and antinomies, among which nature and artifice. The central one is given by the compenetration of the opposite circles and represents the generative womb of a new humanity”. Michelangelo Pistoletto www.cittadellarte.it www.terzoparadiso.org
About UNIDEE University of Ideas UNIDEE - University of Ideas is a higher educational programme based on a weekly modular format investigating the relationship among visual arts, public sphere and activism by combining critical theory with practice. Through residential dynamics, UNIDEE is designed to form artivators, people who intend to use art as a methodology, practice and language, in order to become agents for the activation of responsible actions and processes in the territories in which they live and carry out their professional activities. For the first year, and with a long history of residency programmes for international students (2000-2013) behind it, the new UNIDEE format proposes for the year 2015 a close examination of three macro-themes: Temporality, Responsibility and Participation.
UNIDEE - University of Ideas 2015 Programme directed and curated by Cecilia Guida With the collaboration of Juan Sandoval Under the supervision of Paolo Naldini Programme Coordinator: Elisa Tosoni (Spring/Summer term) Roberta Bernasconi (Fall term) Assistant Director: Giulia Crisci
@unideeuniversityofideas unidee_universityofideas @unidee_universityofideas @_unidee unideevideo
www.cittadellarte.it/unidee/
CECILIA GUIDA Cecilia Guida (1978), Programme Director and Curator, UNIDEE University of Ideas. She is Doctor in Communication and New Technologies of Art (IULM, University of Milan, 2011), specializing in relations among participative art practices, new technologies and contemporary public space. She is Professor of Contemporary Art History at the Academy of Fine Arts (Bologna). She has taught at the Academy of Fine Arts (Florence, 2013-2016; L’Aquila, 2011-2014; Rome, 2004-2007), at IUAV University (Venice/Treviso, 2008-2009) and at La Sapienza University (Rome, 2004-2007). Member of the IKT - International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art, she has curated exhibitions in museums as well as public and independent spaces in Italy and abroad (“ARTInRETI. Art practices and urban transformation in Piedmont”, Cittadellarte, 2012 and 2013; “Take Your Time”, Tank Space for Performing and Visual Arts, New York, 2009; “Fuori contesto”, public spaces in Bologna, Milan, Trento/Rovereto/ Bozen, 2008; “Menu”, Spaziorazmataz Prato, 2007; “Aprés le diner sur l’herbe”, Villa dei Quintili, Rome, 2007 etc.). She is author of the book Spatial Practices. Funzione pubblica e politica dell’arte nella società delle reti
published by Franco Angeli in 2012. She is editor and translator of the Italian version of Artificial Hells. Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship by Claire Bishop (Inferni Artificiali. La politica della spettatorialità nell’arte partecipativa, lucasossella editore, 2015). Cecilia is a former UNIDEE resident (2009).
JUAN ESTEBAN SANDOVAL
PAOLO NALDINI
Juan Esteban Sandoval (1972), Head of projects and Director of Cittadellarte’s Art Office.
Paolo Naldini is the Director of Cittadellarte since 2000. In 1996 he gained a degree in Economics from Turin University with a dissertation on urban derelict buildings and lands, in connection with the Faculty of Architecture. From ’94 to ’97, he worked as an account manager at F.&T. Srl Consulting in Turin, then moved to England’s West Country; from ’97 to 2000, he worked for Westland Helicopters Ltd, Yeovil, in the finance department, as Accounts Officer and Trend Analysis Researcher.
As artist, he has exhibited internationally since 1994. He is the co-founder of “el puente_lab” art collective in Medellín, a platform for artistic and cultural production which uses contemporary art as a tool for the social trasformation. Since 2002 he has been the director of the Art Office of Cittadellarte, coordinating the realization of 13 editions of “Arte al Centro” exhibitions within the Foundation’s premises and a number of exhibitions in other locations, among others, the MuKHA in Antwerp, the Island of San Servolo for the 50th Venice Biennial, Modena’s Galleria Civica and the MAXXI Museum in Rome. He co-curated the exhibition “Cittadellarte. Sharing transformation” at Kunsthaus in Graz, the first two editions of the seminar “Methods. Research project on art-society relation” and two workshops of shared interdisciplinary planning in Venice and in Gorizia, Italy. Juan is a former UNIDEE resident (2000).
Paolo writes texts and often talks at conferences on Art and Society. His aptitude for words has recently brought him to create the word demopraxy, “a tension toward a new and pulsating declination of the concept of democracy along the lines of concrete experimentation, of direct and working commitment, open and ongoing involvement” or, to say it more plainly, democracy in first person, which refers to all those practices and methods that focus primarily not on the power of the people, but rather on what people do in and of the public space, the things they create in practice as urgent and de-ideologised responses to expropriation in all fields of life. He founded a web project dedicated to exploring creative collaboration by meeting and writing in different places in the city of Turin.
GIULIA CRISCI Giulia Crisci (1989), Assistant Director and Curator in 2015 and 2016, UNIDEE - University of Ideas. She studied Art History at the universities of Palermo and Turin. An independent curator based in Turin, she is interested in the relationship between art and activism within the public realm and the social sphere. Enacted practices – often in the form of collectives or assemblies – are concentrated on territorial communities, with a particular focus on the city and its tension zones, in the attempt to trigger spaces for critical thought and collective action. She was part of the coordination team of Resò - International Network for Art Residencies and Educational Programs. Giulia curated Valentina Miorandi’s itinerant project “Turning Tables”, consisting in the collective construction of an archive of cultural activist experiences. Since 2011, she worked as personal assistant to the artist Marzia Migliora. She collaborates with “Libera in Sicily. Associations, names and numbers against mafias” towards a creative rethinking of social antimafia. She curated several projects within the artistic/curatorial collective Balloon, whose research lays at the boundary between critical writing, projects, web platform and independent micropublishing.
She was assistant curator for the 2014’s edition of Eco e Narciso, Turin’s public art project, and she was a member of the educational department of Palermo’s Museo Riso.
ELISA TOSONI Elisa Tosoni (1981), Programme Coordinator in 2015, UNIDEE University of Ideas. Trained at Stockholm University (MA, Curating Art with Management and Law) and AICA Armenia (6th Summer Seminars for Art Curators), and at the University of East London (BA, Sculpture), Elisa also studied some geology. A curator of the enabler breed, whose research focuses on residential formats and temporality, she is also a professional chef and occasionally serves as a critic and a fiction/scriptwriter. Curator of international exhibitions and projects (Arkitekturmuseet, Botkyrka Konsthall, Galleria Alberto Peola, Elevator Gallery, public realm ...), she also worked as curatorial assistant at Iaspis, Cardi Black Box, “Manifesta 7” for “The Rest of Now/Tabula Rasa” and “Bucharest Biennale 3”. In 2013, she lived through the project one|year|of|curatorial|residencies (Nordic Artists’ Centre Dale, Kunsthaus Aussersihl/rotationatelier). Keynote speaker and panelist at “Alter Edge/ Reflections on peripheral dynamics” (nkd, 2013), she also presented the paper Transnational artistic events: on temporality and its repercussions on the local context, at Mekhitar Sebastatsi Art School in 2011.
She led discussions on artists’ projects and exhibitions at Counter Space, Mesopotamia, Elevator Gallery. Elisa is currently working on a new column focusing on process-based studio visits, for the web magazine “Fisk Frisk”. Her writings and interviews appeared on “Arte e Critica” and undo. net.
UNIDEE - University of Ideas 2015 is made possible thanks to the collaboration and support of: Piedmont Region; Compagnia di San Paolo; Creative Europe programme of the EU; CRT Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Torino; Fondazione Zegna; illycaffè S.p.A.; RESÒ Network; A.M. Qattan Foundation (PS); Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation (IN); Università degli Studi di Torino (IT); Polo Universitario di Biella e Novara (IT); Politecnico di Milano (IT); Università IUAV, Venice (IT); Ars Academy, Milano (IT); Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan (IT); Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma (IT); Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze (IT); Università La Sorbonne, Paris (FR); École supérieure d’art et design – ESAD, Grenoble (FR); École cantonale d’art du Valais – ECAV, Sierre (CH); University of Dundee - Visual Research Centre, DJCA - Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (UK); Stipendium for Depth Development Artistic Practice, Mondriaan Fund (NL).