Biography Laureata al Dams di Torino in Storia delle teoriche del cinema con lode e dignità di stampa, è co-fondatrice di NiniQa, società che sviluppa progetti culturali e crossmediali per realtà locali e internazionali, con l'obiettivo di individuare forme sempre più articolate di salvaguardia della memoria. Conduce una ricerca sul linguaggio visivo e performativo, spesso in dialogo con altri artisti. Nel 2012 con A. Vaneycken ha partecipato al programma di residenza per artisti Viadellafucina con un progetto su arte e gentrification dedicato all’area di Porta Palazzo a Torino. Nel 2010 con F. Macrì è stata invitata dalla commissione Arti Visive della Regione Piemonte a prendere parte ad una residenza di formazione presso Villa Arson a Nizza (FR) ed è stata designata dal network interbazionale Resò quale assegnataria della residenza a Capacete (Rio de Janeiro/ San Paolo, BR), dove ha sviluppato un progetto su arte, discriminazione e consapevolezza di genere. Ha realizzato installazioni e interventi per Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto (Viadellafucina A.I.R.), Artissima 18 e Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Let's talk Resò), Palazzo Ducale a Genova e Castel dell'Ovo a Napoli (Living in Lift), XX Giornata FAI di Primavera - Palazzo dell'Arsenale (TO), 'nei limiti' (La Biennale di Venezia 54/Padiglione Italia/Piemonte), XIII edition Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and Mediterranean, Biennale dell'Assurdo, Premio Celeste, FMPQ – City Veins, Yourtime 2010 Torino European Youth Capital, Food Design 5, Proposte XXIII, ZooArt e ManifestaZoone, Festival di Architettura in Città, Fusion Art Gallery. Ha partecipato ai workshop proposti da Krystian Lupa nell’ambito della Biennale di Venezia 2000, da Massimo Bartolini e a.titolo per Proposte XXIII, da Documentary in Europe, Bruna Biamino, Doriana Crema, Dario Neira, Caretto e Spagna.
Irene Pittatore graduated with honors at Dams (University of Torino, Italy). She is co-founder of NiniQa, a company who develops cultural and crossmedia project for national and international institutions, with the aim of devising forms for the preservation of memory. She is involved in a personal - though open to the dialogue with other artists - research on visual and performative language. In 2012 with A. Vaneycken she took part in the A.I.R. program Viadellafucina realizing a project on art and gentrification focused on the area of Porta Palazzo in Torino. In 2010 with F. Macrì she has been invited by the Piedmont Regional Commission of Visual Arts to join an artists’ residency at Villa Arson (Nizza, France) and she has been selected by Resò international network for a residency at Capacete (Rio de Janeiro/ San Paolo, Brazil) to develop a research on the role and the influence of female gender on the creative process as well as on the admission to artistic career. She has realized installations within Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto (Viadellafucina A.I.R.), Artissima 18 e Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Let's talk Resò), Palazzo Ducale a Genova e Castel dell'Ovo a Napoli (Living in Lift), XX Giornata FAI di Primavera - Palazzo dell'Arsenale (TO), 'nei limiti' (La Biennale di Venezia 54/Padiglione Italia/Piemonte), XIII edition Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and Mediterranean, Biennale dell'Assurdo, Premio Celeste, FMPQ – City Veins, Yourtime 2010 Torino European Youth Capital, Food Design 5, Proposte XXIII, ZooArt e ManifestaZoone. She has joined in the workshops proposed by Krystian Lupa within Biennale di Venezia 2000, by Massimo Bartolini and a.titolo within Proposte XXIII, by Documentary in Europe, and those ones leaded by Bruna Biamino, Doriana Crema and Dario Neira, Caretto and Spagna at the Living Art Park.
Statement La ricerca che conduco si nutre di una riflessione sulla responsabilità che l'artista ha nel concorrere all'assetto sociale e muove una ferma critica al sistema dell'arte attuale, strutturato, con poche eccezioni, sulle dinamiche spettacolari ed economiche dell'industria culturale. Di fronte ai cambiamenti e ai conflitti in atto, propongo interventi che combattano isolamento e costrizione, perpetuati dall'attuale sistema di potere con la messa ai margini delle proposte non conformi ai dettami del mercato o con la cooptazione, che rende le medesime inoffensive - e ininfluenti rispetto allo stato delle cose esistenti. La mia proposta prevede un assiduo lavoro sulla presenza e risponde alla necessità di prendersi carico della propria consistenza nel mondo, del proprio dire e agire quali individui membri di una collettività. Ciò che sta in campo o in scena, oggetti come attori, attori come oggetti, si (s)offre nella sua essenziale dimensione di frammento incapace di costituirsi in forma univoca e definitiva. Percorro questo terreno accidentato agendo l'errore consapevole e individuale della ricerca inattuabile di una proposta artistica senza spettacolo. Crudelmente rovinando le rovine del teatro, dell'affollata arena della comunicazione visiva, dell'oggetto attore che piega (piaga) alla visione l'urgenza di un dire per sé.
My research feeds on a consideration about the active responsibility of an artist towards the contemporary social shape, then firmly criticize the current art system, structured - with a few rare exceptions - on entertainment and economical dynamics of the cultural industry. Facing the changing and the conflicts now playing out, I propose actions capable to fight isolation and constraint, that are both perpetuated by the present system of power devoted to marginalize all the proposals that are not conform to the marketing diktats, or even to co-opt them, making every opposition unoffensive - and uninfluential - as for the actual matter of facts. My proposal is a strong affirmation of the necessity of presence and it claims the urgency of taking charge of one’s own weight on earth, of speech and action, as conscious members of a community. What’s on the screen or on the stage - objects playing actors, actors playing objects - offer itself (and suffer) as a simply bare part unable to take up an univocal and permanent form. I’m moving on this uneven field, consciously staging my personal effort searching in vain for an artistic not entertainment proposal. Spoiling with no mercy the ruins of the theatre, the ruins of the visual communication’s crowded arena and the ruins of the actor - subject and object at the same time - who turns (and hurts) the urgency of the speech into a vision.
The Regenerators Public action, in association with Annelies Vaneycken Which kind of artworks do the inhabitants/institutions/artists want/need/expect for the neighborhood of Porta Palazzo in Turin? The project deals with questions about the role of the artists — and art in general — in processes of gentrification in city neighborhoods. It has been developed in the neighborhood of Porta Palazzo in Turin. The first action of the project resulted in a public intervention in the middle of Piazza della Repubblica: a round table art and urban requalification strategies on the district. The square, which is center of many business activities, takes back its role of place for the cultural debate, as the ancient agorà. Both artists, coordinating the round table, had invited a series of experts on the topic. A cultural mediator invited the public to participate to the talk by handing out (free) admission tickets and explain the work. Ironically the round table, enclosed by a frame, was drown on the floor with a caption. The project was realized during the artist residence viadellafucina, Kaninchenhaus in Turin. It was shown in a first phase during the exhibition “Arte al Centro” in Cittadellarte — Fondazione Pistoletto (Biella, Italy) October 2012 and in its final phase during the exhibition “Viadellafucina Anno 1” in K-Hole (Turin, Italy), November 2012.
IN GENERE Research project conducted with Francesca Macrì, 2010-2011 In genere is a research and art production project in which the female role and its stereotypes are raised and handled from new points of view. It is to be carried out on both a local and international level on the conditions of equal opportunities in the fields of research, production and careers, as well as a study on the forms in which the human body is represented (female in particular) in contemporary culture. We would like to study the current rebounds of centuries of a predominantly male history of art, characterized by a distinct lack of female authors and the practice of massive resorting to the representation of the female body. During the residency in Capacete (Rio de Janeiro, San Paolo – 2011) we discuss about identity, practices, exclusion and market together with Alicia Herrero, Ana Holck, Ana Linnemann, Ana Maria Tavares, Ana Paula Cohen, Anna Bella Geiger, Cris Bierrenbach, Daniela Labra, Ernesto Neto, Estelle Nabeyrat, Fernanda Gomes, Joao Modè, Jorge Menna Barreto, Helmut Batista, Laura Lima, Leda Catunda, Lenora De Barros, Marcos Chaves, Mariana Lanari, Rosangela Renno, Teresa Riccardi, Vivian Caccurri, Walter Riedweg. The blog ingenere.altervista.org accompanies the research path in such a way so as to not only share the information acquired, but also in the hope of stimulating debate. The whole edition of the interviews will be published by Resò in a collection of four dvd.
MADONNA DEL PARTO NE35 Photography on medical prescription. Action performed with Pino Chiezzi. 2013 Focus point of the project is investigate the gender stereotypes and cooperate in overcoming them. Starting from a personal experience, I tried to give form to a new kind of Nativity, in dialogue with the classical sacred icons (Pregnant Virgin Mary and Nativities), but dealing with adult people and different social roles. Is the power of giving life prerogative of young women? Is the birth a matter concerning exclusively the come into the world of a child? Is the birth connected only with the natural possibilities of reproduction?
LA CONTESA Video installation. Irene Pittatore and Lucia Nazzaro. 2011 Two videos, on two walls, one opposite the other, show the mute dialogue between two artists, Lucia Nazzaro and Irene Pittatore. Who from the gap between two different generations, contend a dead fish: the aspiration for a meal that will never be eaten: art. The two of us play a conflict without solution. We emerge from the blackness. She, the artist, is smoking, contending my leftovers. We find ourselves one in front of the other (that’s what we want to look like to an onlooker anyway). The fish is the meal (the leftovers) that we do not eat. Involuntary witness of absolute necessity. I was waiting. Her waving her hands about around that yarn stimulated my desire for slumber. Are we looking at each other? Art is at slumbering in its resting place.
Coazioni (I-V) Coazioni, a series started in 2009, focuses on daily gestures (eating, sleeping, working, communicating) and on a controversial relation with nature. The series consists of actions that hit me straight in the conscience and whose visceral revelation is treated by means of fiction, the most complex form of genuineness, indeed. Which are the practicable languages and the strategies to contrast a system that relegate art in the margins of big events, numbers, market, entertainment? The actions have often been performed together with ones sharing a common artistic practice or visions of some kind.
COAZIONE 1 Videoinstallation, photographies. Action performed with Pino Chiezzi. 2009 «On dit tout. Tout ce qu’on peut. Et pas un mot de vrai nulle part» Samuel Beckett, Oh les beaux jours In the mild mud of a paddyfield near Novara, the frog croak sounds up and down. An inquiry about the mechanics for to shape the object of love in times of alienation and crushed identities; the obstinacy in associating with Impossible and Distance; a deferred relation; an unsteady and unexpected form of assistance.
COAZIONE 2. DE GENERE Videoinstallation. Action performed with Pino Chiezzi. 2010 An unsolved action, hovering between sleep and vigil, in search of a never coming rest and of an impossible reconciliation between free creation and marketing. Irene Pittatore fodera i muri con materassi sui quali non ci si può permettere di riposare. La loro verticalità coincide con lo schermo su cui è proiettato un conflitto costante tra sonno e veglia, tra realtà e rappresentazione. "Immagina una ninna nanna e dormi" sembrano suggerirsi i due individui, mentre sono sopraffatti dall'incessante tramestio di banconote e dal bisogno costante di riposizionarsi per non cadere. Sono vincolati allo sforzo di uscire dai margini che li frantumano, dalle costrizioni di uno spettacolo che li vuole spettatori della propria acquiescenza. Non possono esimersi. Ne va della loro propria identità, ridotta e frammentata da logiche di mercato ineludibili. Agiscono nei limiti tra il reale e l'illusione e chiedono allo spettatore di riposizionarsi a sua volta, di non abdicare dal ruolo critico che gli è necessario per distinguere la finzione dalla finta, dall' “impero del falso” (Jost). Michela Sacchetto, Art.ur
COAZIONE 3 Videoinstallation, frames. Action performed with Pino Chiezzi. 2010 An endless lunch and two lightly dressed banqueters under the snow falling onto the Murazzi banks of the river Po in Torino. Two silent figures, facing (and standing) the cold and the gaze of the few people walking by. Little switches in daily gestures break down the already unnatural flow of the meal.
COAZIONE 4 Photographies. Action performed with Pino Chiezzi. 2011 This project starts on the occasion of the opening of an observatory on a Torino suburban area, less than 5 km from the city centre, including several unauthorized camps along Lungo Stura Lazio river banks, various kind of urban vegetable gardens and the so-called 'Toxic Park'. The borders of a urban society, ever more globalized, and the discards of a metropolis, ever more excluding, are staged and performed in search of “imagin-actions”, intended as way to give voice to “a minor humanity”, people who are considered and created as minor ones: pushed to the borders, counted as minority and deprived. “A minor humanity”, people living of objects ill treated, consumed and wore out. The acting discloses the “minor human landscape, shaped by the single discarded object and by the piles of trash, an ever-changing and temporary landscape, where the human figure (here represented by the perfomers) cannot but pick up, manipulate and use some objects to regain possession of them, to give them a sense of a kind. But what is it, in fact? It is a “coaction”, to be repeated day by day - “ironing the grass, “phoning”, “driving an imaginary car” - as if the “minor humanity” cannot but mime the “major humanity”and conform, wallowing in the “ends of goods” instead of the “comsumers twinkling paradise”, both places of the same despair. Unless from these objects - picked up among piles or from the river bed, then recovered, assembled and relocated - a new chance could arise: from “remains” to “remainders” and then to something that is “away”... a chance of redemption (whatever, wherever...) (...) Excerpt from Il futuro del mondo passa da qui. Dai “resti” al “resto” e “resta ciò che resta” by Roberto Mastroianni
COAZIONE 5 (TRENT'ANNI) Photographies. 2011 Dresses by Clara Daniele A reflection about the inner chances of visual language in times of image overexposure and mass distribution of recording disposals. The performance is about the field of action, the responsibilities and the possibilities of those ones who use images for their work of self-expression. The obstacles are in the precarious conditions of nowadays work, overall here in Italy and first of all owing to a power system that perpetuates itself by means of the practice of favouritism and of marketing dynamics. This hard sociopolitical environment is coupled with each one’s personal stories or issues and with a slight but steady habit of self-delegitimation, mostly coming from the historical marginalization of female work. The thread of a conversation snaps down, twists into a cultivated wood and nevertheless moves up and down tracing visionary and sensitive architectures of a thought.
POSTCARDS Installation and performace. With Viviana Rossi. Sound: Ugo Nicolò, 2005 Room 1: Prints on wooden panels equipped with sound headset and loud-speaker, goldfish, medical drip on a metal support, nylon sheet, petals. Room 2: Prints on wooden panels equipped with sound headset and loud-speaker, bath, flour. Postcards represents obstinate eyes eagering to see into a deep dark, where nothing comes to sight but some frantic figures rising up from daily routine, disguised images of intimate life. This such a perceptive distortion marks the sound panels. No images accompanies the ten postcards. The word, in strict relation to the sound, evokes a missing, lost interlocutor and denounce a compromission with a visual imaginary.Throughout the performance, two bodies come up facing all sort of internal hurdles and restrictions, whereas developing those cautious ploys that keep them alive. Finally their efforts strike an alter/n/ate credulity, a fragile bridge that links an enamelled, amniotic red to the exhausted white of dehydrated figures. Colours and forms have to be worn as testimonies of an identity of excess, more solid than the features themselves.
Fotografia: Roberto Goffi
RIBALTA Installation realized with Francesca Macrì in the occasion of Proposte XXII workshop. Curtains, theatre chairs, audio, spotlights, 2008 The emergency at the focus of the project is the widespread bulling of the critical abilities in the spectator’s way of life, which has become the most common way of life as nobody feels as an active part of the community neither of the decision-making processes, but just an observer, who limits himself to look at the surface, to complain and then comply with the events. Subject of the ‘show’, marked by a blanket of red tents/curtains, are some lines of seats in the stall, unhinged at the arms and toppled at the ground. After the attack against them is consumed behind the scenes, the seats shows their uselessness to the spectators who can still hear the sound of the fallings, of lacerations, thuds, as an echo that attempts to persist. These damaged armchairs stand on a stage equivalent of an audience: this is the time when the critics do not criticize, the artists do not dare to expose and the public visits the exhibitions just to follow a trend, and finally art is just an event. Even considering the place of the exposition - an Academy of Fine Arts - it seems urgent to denounce the overbearing turning of culture in a show, in a phenomenon of mass entertainment, which is ever more the most usual trend. The driving force of the project is the wish to offer an impossible support, that would precede (artist’s optimism of the will?) the sudden awareness of the urgency of standing up and the consequent act, indeed.
GEOGRAPHY OF CHANGE Interactive website, www.geographyofchange.eu. Realized with Francesca Macrì. 2008 Project of interaction design, selected for the 13th edition of the Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean, dedicated to kairos. The project attempts to stimulate artists and visitors to interact with a map of Bari - venue of the event - and leave on it messages recalling the most important and prolific creative change in everybody’s lives. A flow of moveable and multilingual messages ideally and visibly slides along the streets of the city, gradually animating squares and avenues, so as to draw a kairos of millions of voices – each one talking of creative tensions that had found a way to outcome and then yielded fruits. The amount of contributions to the map, which can still be monitored on line, has been observed in its continuous evolution during the premises of the Levant Fair, screening the video of the website.
GEOGRAPHY OF CHANGE IN SAN SALVARIO Interactive installation. Ink on recycled cloth, threads. Realized with Francesca Macrì, 2008 On the occasion of the presentation of the project in Turin, IP and FM had interacted by direct means - without any mediation of the network - with the neighbourhood of San Salvario and its community of inhabitants, workers and passers-by. To measure the sense of the kairos inside the community, people has been requested to offer messages and stories about their lives and swings, stimulating an effort of consciousness and its manifestation through writing. The Artintown Exhibition area became a base for gathering, contact and irradiation of signs left by passing-by subjects, who rightfully became actors in the construction process of a map of possible change. GEOGRAPHY OF CHANGE, LAYOUT Carpet. 400 x 400 cm, ink on recycled cloth. Realized with Francesca Macrì, 2008 Layout is a material assemblage of the contributions, gathered during the exhibition weeks at Artintown, in the form of a carpet/curtain composed of coloured strings made of recycled cloth and carrying the marks of proposals and answers given by San Salvario inhabitants and the exhibition’s visitors to the question “What can you do that is innovative or different in order to contribute to the transformation of your neighbourhood?”.
On-going projects
BASAMENTO PUBBLICO Video installation. 2013 A reflection on the role of art and contemporary monuments in the public sphere. A video will show the walk of the performer with a big pedestal in a urban context and the reaction of the passers-by.
SPRECHEN VERBOTEN A project for the small village of Paraloup, significant heart of the partisan fight in the area of Cuneo and currently undergoing an architectural renovation. A year of talks, walks, silences with Ferruccio Maruffi, a deportee to Mauthausen and now President of the ANED - National Association of Nazi camps deportees. The end project results in a short video: near a level crossing - inescapable detonator of Ferruccio Maruffi’s memory - a firm, naked and sweet gaze consults us and silently understands us without asking to be understood. Here is the strength of a solid and clear interlocution, which goes beyond the role of a historical testimony to become a dialogue on the present and with the present, full of absolute resistance. The aim is meeting and portraiting one by one other deportees. I choosed the video-portrait for its relevance across time: a possible meeting between the one who now offers himself to the camera eyes as well as the one whose eyes who will, one day, face the evidence.