:pillow presents Pacto at MACAO Milan 16.07-26.07.2018

PACTO came together through a MilesKM research project in August 2017 and was originally meant to be a year-long project, consisting in three main residencies bringing all of the members together, one in September, one in January and one in July, plus one individual research project/residency for each member.

We got to know them through Nora, one of the members (who studied with a former course mate of ours), and started working to make the final residency happen in Milan.

The ten days residency took place in Macao and unfolded through many different activities, including workshops, a film screening, performances and a constantly ongoing dialogue on collective practice.

At the end of this experience (supposed to be the last), the members agreed that it was time for PACTO to become an autonomous collective, no longer temporary, and invited us to join them from then on.

As we are currently in the process of understanding how this collective should evolve, writing a new mission statement etc., we :pillow collected our memories from this wonderful residency in this fanzine.

:pillow is a soft and comfortable duo composed by Alessandro Moroni and Giulia Ratti, born out of the shared experiences made as /77. :pillow aims at supporting your stay in the art world by making it more pleasant. :pillow is pulpy, slushy, sloppy, supple, squishy, oozy, doughy and semi-liquid.

Pacto will encourage a dynamic dialogue around how artistic action can be a vehicle for enquiry and an apparatus for creating lines of agonistic discourse and empathy building. Pacto is looking to pose a proposition: What is communal negotiation of autonomy?

Pacto Hyun Gi Park / Samantha Penn / Merve Unsal / Daphne Politi / Sophie Mak Schram / Kelly Lloyd / Pedro Moreira / Demelza Watts / Sophia Simensky / Finn Thomson / Warren Andrews / Christopher Lawrence / Nora Silva

:pillow Alessandro Moroni / Giulia Ratti

MACAO is an independent center for art, culture and research. Avoiding the creative industry paradigm, and trying to innovate the old idea of cultural institutions, we started to consider art production as a viable process for rethinking social change, elaborating independent political critique, and as a space for innovative governance and production models. Macao is currently based in a former slaughterhouse in the middle of a huge abandoned area not so far from the center of the city. It is coordinated by an open assembly of artists and activists.

SCREENING This was the first public moment of the residency, featuring films by Finn, Demelza, Pedro and Chris.

METAPHORICAL SPAGHETTI

“Look at that! It’s got Italy written all over it!” - Finn.

This workshop had one goal: to collectively prepare and cook one single spaghetti, long enough to feed all the people working on it, without breaking it.

Alessandro told the group he had never prepared handmade spaghetti before but his grandmother would be proud knowing that curating a residency with an international collective finally gave him the chance to do that. The result was something actually closer to a soggy breadstick than spaghetti (we had to keep it thick, otherwise it would have broken), but Alessandro’s grandma will never know that.

WASHING MACHINE This workshop was run by Samantha. We found an old washing machine in the basement and proceeded to systematically dismantle it while Sam told us how each part worked.

ROLE PLAYING GAME This workshop was run by Chris and it consisted in a re-adaptation of the RPG “The Call of Cthulhu�. We were playing as members of an art collective who had been invited at Macao (and that sounded quite familiar) to investigate on the sudden disappearance of the last group of artists who went on residency there. While Chris acted as the dungeon master, each of us had to fill in their character sheet, knowing that their bio and cv could be crucial to accomplish the mission.

PERFORMANCE This was the second public moment of the residency, featuring performances by Demelza, Sophie and Hyun.

TATTOO We knew Hyun did stick and poke tattoos and we knew Alessandro V., a guy in Macao, who is a tattoo artist. They got introduced and started talking about an exchange, and our Alessandro, reflecting on his role as a curator, said: “while you’re at it, why don’t you both tattoo me as well?”. And this is how PACTO’s last night in Milan was spent.

MACUCINA // A KITCHEN FOR MACAO Since we first proposed the residency to Macao, they told us it would be nice if we built something to leave behind (and that by the way, they could really use a kitchen). We knew Nora had already built movable kitchens, so that sounded just right! We built one from scratch with stuff we found in the basement and around the building plus two portable hobs and cooked for everyone on our last night.

CONTACTS pulpypillow@gmail.com pactoresearch@gmail.com pacto_research