The residential educational project ARC (Artistic Research @ Cittadellarte), a boot camp, the programme of evening events Talk&Drink: these are the first novelties of the new year brought by Accademia UNIDEE and ArtEZ Academy. Let’s start from the participants, i.e. 15 youths from the school in Arnhem arrived at Fondazione Pistoletto on 7th February to take part in the artistic residency. As it happened last September (all the details in a previous article), the students are in Biella to develop their individual researches through artistic practice with the contaminations of Cittadellarte. Not only that: in the week from 3rd to 8th February – the day of the final open studio – the programme will include a boot camp involving 35 more students from Arnhem.

“This year, in parallel with the research residency, – explains Michele Cerruti But, the academic coordinator of Accademia UNIDEE – we are running a programme of evening events, ‘Talk&Drink’, in the spaces and with the collaboration of Hydro. These talks have a double objective: on one hand, to present Cittadellarte and its researches, on the other, to debate (also with guests from the outside) the research themes the students are investigating”. The talks in question, even if organised for the young Dutch students, are freely open to the public. This new device represents an informal opportunity of exchange and dialogue with a selection of speakers invited by Accademia UNIDEE, who will give the participants the chance to both network with the institutions – facilitated by the gathering and meeting of new people – and better understand the work and research of their fellow artists.

As anticipated by Cerruti But, the programme covers two main areas of interest: one set of talks is about Cittadellarte seen as an institution; the second addresses contemporary issues and involves numerous constituencies, artists, scholars and curators from the Accademia UNIDEE’s network.
As far as the talks about the Biellese institution are concerned, the events will analyse and investigate the way Fondazione Pistoletto develops its basic lines of thought. Important, for example, is the reference to Manifesto Progetto Arte (Pistoletto, 1994), with the aim of changing the role of art in society. In this view, art is a device able to connect every branch of human culture; through its twenty-year-long history and experience, Cittadellarte will in fact present its “Uffizi” exploring the way the foundation sees art in the present day.
The second set of talks involves instead scholars, artists, curators and institutions working in the art and society sector, or investigating contemporary topics. ‘Reflecting’ the students in their residential individual research, these meetings have the objective of opening a wide and intense debate among current points of view on mankind and culture.