The 2018 edition of Art at the Centre of a Responsible Social Transformation is just around the corner: the event is starting at 18.30 on Friday 25th May in via Serralunga 27 in Biella. Here is the complete programme of the artistic festival (please see our previous article for the complete list of the exhibitions).
Following the welcome drinks, the day will kick off with the artist Michelangelo Pistoletto’s and Cittadellarte’s director Paolo Naldini’s addresses, after which the exhibitions will be officially opened. This is not the end of the speeches though: Griet Dobbels will also take the stage to illustrate the peculiarities of her installation The Map is not the Territory, curated by Els Vermeersch, open till midnight, like all the other Art at the Centre’s exhibitions. Next will be the conferment of the Minimum Prize, the award celebrating people driving a responsible social transformation, dedicated to the protagonists who have committed their lives to the causes of peace and civil progress around the world. Hydro will be curating the entertainment from 20.00 to 4.00 (till midnight in Cittadellarte’s courtyard) with an evening of notes and listenings dedicated to the definition of the future musical landscape; in the meantime, you will be able to have dinner at Crossquare.

The other activities:
→  The programme of the day includes the interactive experiential exhibition “The Cosmos in your Hand”, curated by Ruggero Poi (director of Cittadellarte’s Learning Environments and Schools Department) and addressed to nursery and primary schools. In the context of the activity, participants will also discover (d)esctructura, a collaborative learning game leading to a dialogue on life’s fundamental values, dedicated to first and second level secondary institutes.

→ From 14.30 to 18.30 the spaces of Fashion B.E.S.T. Studios will host the workshop for the project Strame (Unweaves). The event will be curated by Silvio Betterelli with the support of Valentina Donadel, and will involve about 15 students from Biella’s Technical Institute of Superior Education “Q. Sella” (specializing in Textile Clothing and Fashion) and Institute of Superior Education “E. Bona”. Using scraps, leftovers and archive samples from the Antica Fabbrica Passamanerie (Ancient Passementerie Factory) MV1843, the students will “unweave” the fabrics (i.e. cause them to give way and lose their original structure of warp and weft, actually a defect) for the creative workshop. The participants will then re-sew forms, volumes and lines along new visions and solutions of textile frames made of warps and wefts. Passamenterie, ropes and threads will interweave around the silhouettes of tailor’s mannequins, regenerating the material and weaving the bodies working directly on them. The body, like a loom, will accommodate experimentation and research on intertwining, darns by the young creatives with an innovative look at the process through which clothes and fabrics are made.

→ Art at the Centre’s programme also includes the convention “(NOT) Understanding the Landscape”, organized by iLab – Industrial Landscape Biella, held in Sala Cervo on 25th May from 9.30 to 18.30 and the following day from 9.30 to 12.30. The initiative, born from a collaboration between the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences of the University of Turin and Cittadellarte, will feature special guests (please see our previous article for the complete list of participants): Michelangelo Pistoletto will start the work tables on Friday, while the anthropologist Marc Augé will close the convention on Saturday with a report. “The convention – write its organizers on the event’s Facebook page – is part of the research project called iLab – Industrial Landscape Biella. This project aims at investigating the cultural landscape in general and in reference to the case-study of Biella, an exemplary territory for the socio-economic dynamics it displays and for the limits and potentials connected to the present complex phase of transformation. Limits and potentials which have indelibly marked the territory.”