Everything is ready and very little time is left: Art at the Centre of a Responsible Social Transformation is coming soon. The 24th edition of the initiative will take place, as per usual, in the spaces of Fondazione Pistoletto. Its programme includes new exhibitions intended as devices for activities open to the collaboration of different subjects – as well as to the enjoyment of visitors – and will highlight artistic practices of transformation of the social contexts in which they are developed, carried out by Cittadellarte and its international network consolidated over the years. Breaking with the tradition, this time the initiative will be divided into four key moments held from July until summer 2023 (dates tbc). This way, the contents – which will be renewed from time to time – will be presented in a structured way and accessible at different times. While we wait for the future, let’s go back to the present: Friday 1 July sees the official opening of the new edition of the event. Here is the first set of information!
Four (not so) easy pieces
Group exhibition curated by Giorgio Verzotti, in collaboration with Woolbridge Gallery.
Artists: Filippo Berta, Massimo De Caria, Carlo and Fabio Ingrassia, Daniele Innamorato.
Four (not so) easy pieces represents a new form of collaboration between Fondazione Pistoletto and other art centres in Biella. Four artists from different generations, Filippo Berta, Massimo De Caria, Carlo and Fabio Ingrassia and Daniele Innamorato, will start a dialogue among the most diverse artistic practices: video, sculpture, drawing and painting will coexist in a shared space, curated by Giorgio Verzotti. The title of the exhibition stresses the complexity of thought that the artists infuse into their different works. The initiative stems from the decision of Michelangelo Pistoletto – who participated in the collective exhibition Zona Bianca Zero, opened in November 2021 at the Woolbridge Gallery in Biella – to invite four of the other artists who took part in it to exhibit at his Foundation, in order to structurally connect its activity to the artistic context in which it operates and open up to new forms of research.
S+T+ARTS4Water
Exhibition “Rebuilding relationships with river systems”.
Artists: Theresa Schubert and Joshua G. Stein.
Curated by UNIDEE Residency Programs and Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto’s Art Office.
Rebuilding relationships with river systems presents the final works of artists Theresa Schubert and Joshua G. Stein, the result of their residencies within the project S+T+ARTS4Water (2021-2022), part of S+T+ARTS (Science, Technology and the Arts), an initiative of the European Commission promoted within the framework of the research and innovation programme Horizon 2020, supporting collaborations between artists, scientists, engineers and researchers. The project saw the two artists engage with two regional water-related challenges, with the involvement of a network of experts and a focus on the relationship with river systems, namely Exploring people’s relationships with rivers and streams and River systems as indicators of climate change and its impact. Thanks to the contributions of and discussions with many professionals, researchers and local experts, the two artists worked on artworks that intersect artistic research with scientific and technological research in order to critically explore the main issues relating to the management of river systems. The aim of the project S+T+ARTS4Water is to raise awareness of a sustainable use of water resources with reference to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030.
Glacier trilogy (in progress) by Theresa Schubert presents three works inspired by glaciers as points of origin of river systems, as water reservoirs, ‘memory’ of the Earth’s past and indicators of climate change. Ice provides information about climate from thousands of years ago, radiation, pollution, organic materials, information that is bound to be dispersed due to the ongoing climate change. The three works explore the topic of glaciers through different media and technologies to stimulate an emotional involvement of the public on these issues.
Joshua G. Stein‘s project, entitled Sediment as Cultural Heritage, re-imagines the western Po Valley as an area whose hydrology is both directed by and composed of anthropogenic activities, saturated with the positive and negative aspects of human culture and development. Sediments mobilised by watercourses become the common means to conceptualise a vast system that operates on a territorial scale both spatially and temporally.
The S+T+ARTS4Water consortium of partners includes LUCA School of Arts (Belgium) in collaboration with Gluon (Belgium), Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary – TBA-21 (Austria), Universal Research Institute (Croatia), V2_Lab for the Unstable Media (Netherlands), Ohi Pezoume / UrbanDig Project (Greece) and Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto (Italy), and in cooperation with the Palais des Beaux-Arts BOZAR (Belgium).
Water as infrastructure
Award for the production of a work of art.
Within the framework of the S+T+ARTS Academy programme, the educational section of the S+T+ARTS4Water project, Accademia Unidee launched a call open to students from academies and universities awarding a contribution towards the production of a work of art which would be displayed at Arte al Centro. The selected proposals were created during an intensive residency at Cittadellarte, with the tutorship of artists and scholars. Water as infrastructure, the theme of the call, looks at river systems as a stratification of social, historical, industrial, mining, colonial, environmental and geological issues. In the works on show, the body of water is conceived as an infrastructure capable of supporting a different way of inhabiting the tensions of contemporaneity and the frictions of the future.
Credits: Unidee Academy and UNIDEE Residency Programs for S+T+ARTS4Water (2021-2022), as part of S+T+ARTS (Science, Technology and the Arts), an initiative of the European Commission promoted within the research and innovation programme Horizon 2020.
Biella Città Arcipelago – Sustainability and creativity at work in the Biella area (updated and expanded)
Exhibition and research project curated by Cittadellarte, Art and Politics Office.
Coordinated by Paolo Naldini with the collaboration of Elisa Gilardino, Andrea Trivero, Tancredi Pino.
With the support of Fondazione BIellezza and Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Biella.
The permanent exhibition intended as an interactive model of Biella Città Arcipelago has been updated with new maps and new contents, such as the addition of a display panel that illustrates the historical evolution of the archipelago territory by juxtaposing aerial photographs taken by the photographer and journalist Pietro Minoli between the 1960s and 1980s with photographs of the same places taken in 2022 by Fabrizio Lava; a video installation that shows a series of interviews conducted with the mapped organisations entitled Tales from the Archipelago; a panel with photographs of events and working groups that have animated and made the space participatory over the last eight months; a new screen in the central room introducing the subjects recently included in the mapping; the presentation of the development of the activities of the groups of action that have shared ideas and projects during these months around the Tables of the Third Paradise.
Public! [substantive use of the adj.; see the Latin Publĭcum “public domain” and the phrase in publĭco “in public”]
Research conference organised by Accademia Unidee – School of Visual Arts.
30 June – 1 July.
What about the public? Who can define what is public? How is the idea of the public constructed? Can the public represent a form of resistance and survival to the environmental and biopolitical crises of contemporaneity? Based on a call for papers that selected around thirty contributions from the disciplines of art, sociology, economics, philosophy, architecture and literature, Public! is an academic research conference that questions how the public dimension acts in the contemporary socio-political complexity. The scientific committee of the conference includes Pier Luigi Sacco, scientific expert responsible for the paper selection; Laura Barreca, Palermo’s Academy of Fine Arts; Daniela Ciaffi, Turin’s Polytechnic; Priscila Fernandes, ArtEZ Academy of Art (NL); Alessandra Pioselli, Bergamo’s Academy of Fine Arts G. Carrara; Antonio Vercellone, University of Turin.
This news is being updated: stay tuned!
