Art Put to the Test
Palermo as a Training Ground for Dialogue
One of Palermo’s most marked features in recent times has been the liveliness of an emerging generation that has found the energy to organise its own present autonomously, and to take charge of the understanding — or construction — of its own physiognomy. This can be deduced above all from the proliferation of spaces self-managed […]
Artists’ Studios and Project Spaces
Making Communities in Naples
Historically a vibrant centre receptive to international trends, Naples is a city where the concept of community, with all its share of light and shadows, has formed many layers. Looking more specifically at the artistic community, over the decades Naples has followed the same process that has affected Italy and Europe throughout the last half-century. […]
Constellations of Communities
An Eye on Rome
Any bid to capture an artistic community in Rome is bound to come up against a critical methodological problem, given the multiplicity and layering of languages typical of such a large and plural city. Indeed, we would more accurately speak not so much of a single artistic community — i.e. one understood as an organic, […]
Artists as Activators of Communities
Collective and Shared Spaces in Florence and Prato
From futurism to metaphysics, from magical realism to the Roman school, from spatialism to the piazza del Popolo school, or from arte povera to the trans-avant-garde — the history of twentieth-century Italian art is criss-crossed by movements, currents, classifications or labels that are more or less forced, more or less necessary, more or less artificially […]
Doing Things Together
Bologna, Between Communities and Spaces of Freedom
The city of Bologna is a complex, living organism. It has grown up around groups of people who, starting from the basic gesture of being together and sharing, have spontaneously given rise to seminal experiences. In recent decades, art communities have contributed to building a heterogeneous, often pioneering cultural scene. Amidst continuities and fractures, this […]
From the Bevilacqua to Collective Ateliers
Communities of Relations in Venice*
The following text was written as a possible means to orient communities of young and emerging artists in the Venice area, from the historic centre of the lagoon to Mestre. Contextualising my role — given my experience working at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa — I would first like to remark upon the importance of […]
Physical, Digital and Literary Spaces
Groups, Collectives, and Networks in Milan
From the early 2000s to the present, artistic communities have been a constant presence in Milan. In the 2010s, no few artists — often assisted by curators, critics and cultural animators — came together in associations or collectives, forming communities and sharing studios and spaces for engagement also with the public. In the world of […]
Histories and Placese luoghi
Independent Artistic Communities in Turin
Torino, città sfaccettata e complessa dove il passato autocelebrativo sabaudo si scontra con una realtà postindustriale, caratterizzata dalle ondate di immigrazione e dalla resistenza di un sentire underground dedito alla sperimentazione. Numerosi festival, progetti e realtà compongono, ormai da decenni, un sottosuolo di attività culturali strutturate e diversificate: cinema, musica, sonoro, arti performative, arti contemporanee. […]
The Paul Street Boys
The Gang as a Form of Life
For cultural anthropology, the “gang” is an elementary form of organisation among individuals, which predates the tribal form and thus also the state form. It is characterised by a low level of political cohesion, a rather fluid internal structure, and a lack of formalised authority. A gang is made up of a relatively small number […]
A Generation That Didn’t Agree?
A Testimony Through a Decade
The year was 2017. New York had fallen.Pestilence and fear were running rampant across America, threatening the entire Western world.This is what happened in my first feature film, NYsferatu — Symphony of a Century (2017), which I decided to introduce with the following, short quote from System Of A Down’s Sad Statue (2005): You and […]
