The Art of Balance #96 | Alberto Fiz, how will you communicate? The art critic, exhibition curator and journalist is the 96th participant in the initiative “The Art of Balance / Pandemopraxy”, launched by Cittadellarte. Alberto Fiz reflects on the impact of Covid-19 on communication processes (“By now, our lives have definitely become hybrid, and our days are rhythmed by emails, WhatsApp messages, Instagram posts, Skype and Zoom calls") and draws attention to the importance a simple encounter might have in the post-pandemic: “Meeting, seeing each other in person, hugging each other won’t be ordinary occurrences taken for granted anymore, they will acquire a more profound and authentic meaning”. BY Redazione IL 12/03/2021 Leggi di più
“How to farm an organic garden”, you can now sign up for Let Eat Bi’s new course The 2021 programme of the Green Academy, a project by Cittadellarte’s Food Office, offers an online initiative dedicated to anybody wanting to further investigate or discover how to farm an organic garden. To talk to us about the contents of the four sessions, held in March and April, is agronomist Alice Bordignon, who will curate the course together with her colleague Enrico Regis. BY Redazione IL 04/03/2021 Leggi di più
Pistoletto’s Mirror painting “Venere Maria – Nudo Color Seppia” at the Palazzo Pretorio Museum in Prato Carlo Palli, a collector from Prato, has donated the works "Venere Maria - Nudo color seppia" (Venus Maria – Sepia-coloured nude) by the Biellese artist and "Victoire de Samothrace" by Yves Klein to the Palazzo Pretorio Museum. “I am glad that my work can reflect the Palazzo Pretorio Museum in Prato together with all the visitors that walking past the painting will become part of it,” said Michelangelo Pistoletto. BY Redazione IL 23/02/2021 Leggi di più
When fashion becomes an example of excellence and sustainability, an interview with the co-founder of WRÅD Matteo Ward Face to face with the CEO of the startup which has become an international best practice: Matteo Ward talks about the role of communication in the process of raising social awareness on the theme of ethical fashion, highlighting the inspirational and collaborative relationship linking WRÅD to Cittadellarte and identifying the objectives his brand pursues in the field of global sustainability. “The fashion industry,” he said, “cannot be allowed to legitimately consume essential resources for life on Earth anymore”. BY Luca Deias IL 18/02/2021 Leggi di più
“100 Panchine per Roma”, when a place to sit becomes a symbol of community and sustainability The capital has launched a participatory, socially useful, low-environmental-impact project which sees a hundred benches made of recycled plastic being installed in different areas of Rome. Here is how to adopt and personalise one of them, or to contribute in a shared manner. BY Redazione IL 02/02/2021 Leggi di più
Embedded arts practices in a post-pandemic future, UNIDEE 2020 in ten weeks of residency The protagonists of last year’s UNIDEE programme were forty-six, coming from all over the world. The educational experience, structured in a blended physical and virtual format, led the residents to investigate and propose their own researches on the role of socially engaged practices in times of Covid-19, with the contributions of professionals, curators and art organizers and theorists. “The residency generated new ideas,” said Juan Sandoval, director of UNIDEE residency programs, “responding to the conditions of a changing world". BY Luca Deias IL 25/01/2021 Leggi di più
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". BY Paolo Naldini IL 20/01/2021 Leggi di più
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. BY Paolo Naldini IL 06/01/2021 Leggi di più