Water, art, open reflections on the future We are publishing a text by Franco Piunti on the theme of water proposed on the occasion of the first meeting of the project “EU STARTS4Water”, held at Cittadellarte. The doctor and former president of the Textile and Health Association talked about the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, analysing the relationship between work, environment and digitalisation, to then focus on the role of art and the so-called ethics of responsibility. Redazione, 22/07/2021 Read more
Four drugs offered by culture as a cure against automatization Paolo Naldini, director of Cittadellarte, reflects on the automatisation of psychic life, to which the human being, in the current geological era of the Anthropocene, has been increasingly inclined. From this perspective, Naldini first analyses four devices that play a key role in this process - habit, fear, awe and conformation - then identifies as many antidotes to promote de-automatisation: creativity, research, dialogue and civic engagement. “The psychosocial research undertaken at Cittadellarte with workshops dedicated to art for social transformation and the art of demopraxy,” he says, “has led us to identify four antidotes, counterweights or drugs to work with to counterbalance the uncontrolled effects of the rampant automatisation we are experiencing”. Paolo Naldini, 06/04/2021 Read more
Participation and its (dis)contents. How can art contribute to collective deliberation processes and participation in civic governance Paolo Naldini, the director of Cittadellarte, presents a series of artistic initiatives focusing on effectiveness of impact, deeply rooted in their contexts and aware of human rights, thus proving that there exist socially engaged practices that have been dealing with participation and its discontents. “There may be hundreds of other inspiring projects,” says Naldini, “that could lead us to see, or at least to sense, that involving artists initiatives in collective deliberation processes is not only viable but also desirable. I hope these will serve as a shared knowledge basis for tackling more specifically the question of the possible relation between art and collective deliberation processes and participation in civic governance". Paolo Naldini, 20/01/2021 Read more
Deautomatisation and good infection for a pandemopraxy Paolo Naldini, director of Cittadellarte, intends to argue that the proposal of demopraxy and the method of social design that refers to it can offer adequate tools for dealing with the urgent challenges that our societies are called to respond to. The contribution focuses on four skills in particular (creativity, dialogue, research, civic engagement), taken as key devices to proceed along the path of deautomatisation. The argument develops into how to reduce the intensity of the automaton condition. In fact, it is assumed that the path traced by these four abilities opens up to the exercise of authorship. And that the latter form the basis of any conscious and responsible practice. The central thesis of the text is that demopraxy occurs when the organisations that make up the social fabric (community of practice) exercise conscious and responsible, therefore deautomatised, practices within their fields of action and along the supply chains and networks of which they are part. The thesis is supported by analysing the functioning of creativity-dialogue-research-civic engagement as counterweights to the corresponding and opposite psychic and social dynamics. Invoking the metaphor of the virus and the pandemic, the text proposes the good infection of demopraxy through these four abilities as an antidote to the failure in the fulfilment of the democratic promise. And it invites everybody to participate in a research laboratory of artistic practice, cultural studies, political science and active intervention with the actual experimentation of devices for social design based on participatory practices of civic engagement. Paolo Naldini, 06/01/2021 Read more
From circularity to tricircularity: for the development of a circular paradigm Cittadellarte’s director reflects on circularity, explaining how this concept is not ideal, inasmuch as it can preclude and lead to a ‘closure’, Naldini therefore illustrates three terms facilitating the development of a circular paradigm: interlocality, horizontal scalability and tricircularity. This last key word, which he is proposing, recalls a network of locality by expressing a vision addressed to building connections between ecologies and economies. “The paradigm of tricircularity,” – he claims, – “implies the concept of circularity, but it intends and extends it in a horizontal and polycentric, or rather acentric, perspective”. Paolo Naldini, 01/09/2020 Read more
It’s 2068, We Need a New Swarming Revolution Anna Moreno's essay invokes a fictional near-future scenario where the Colony Collapse Disorder (or the epidemiological demise of beehives) throws the world into a radical social and urban reconfiguration. Breeding on real data and impersonating the Head of the Urban Planning Division of the corporation implicated in the narrated facts, the author writes an apologetic opinion editorial that traces the recent urban and geo-political global developments. Its format is inspired by “Op-Eds from the Future”, a collection of essays from The New York Times that use present-tense and journalistic tone to refer to speculative events that have not occurred yet. Anna Moreno, 16/07/2020 Read more
Out of the picture, when the educational process leaves the frame Is it possible to take the theory of relativity into schools? Is the textbook the only learning manual? Ruggero Poi (Cittadellarte’s Learning Environments and Schools) shares his insight about the traditional educational system, highlighting its limits and proposing solutions and new perspectives to break the mould: imagining alternatives to the common textbook for each grade level and giving students the possibility to experiment with different creativities and discover their vocation. Our current state of isolation to contain the spreading of Covid-19 can represent an opportunity to “explore new grounds, searching for a different role as educators”. Ruggero Poi, 09/04/2020 Read more
The mirror is broken: it’s our turn to change Ruggero Poi (director of Cittadellarte’s Learning Environments and Schools Department) offers a personal reflection on the Covid-19 crisis: an analysis of past, present and future in a narrative sequence seeing him questioning reality, and personal and social responsibility. “What have we lost? What was important? Have we learnt anything in the process?” Ruggero Poi, 23/03/2020 Read more
