[Experitivo] 01.08.08 Venerdi at Cafe Teatro

Do we have go to university to be educated? Do we always need a “expert” for solving our problems? Do we have to have a certificate to be an “expert?” We say NO! Experitivo (Expert + Aperitivo), inspired by the project, BlackMarket, tries to bridge the gap between institutionalized education and more informal education, which is based on sharing knowledge and information as a collective experience. For Experitivo, our experts in the following fields will be available, Learning Italian/Making Crochet/Drawing/Identity/Art Marketing Communication/Hand Massaging/Wrinkle Massaging/Making Body lotion & Toothpaste, hoping to pass on a specific skill/knowledge/information to people at Caffe Teatro. Our experts will be happy to welcome you all.

Experitivo is organized by the residents of Universit delle Idee as a part of event series, Universit delle Idee al Caffe Teatro/Scciale in collaboration with Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto, and with generous support from Cafe Teatro/Sociale. More events are coming up in September.

Caffe Sociale: P.zza Martiri della Liberta, 15 Biella

Sakiko

quick thought for a mountain performance…

Soon, we will have to do it.

To climb the mountains surrounding us.

Whose greatness seemed overwhelming in the beginning of our stay here.

Oh, how we would have liked to jump on them right away, not so much to conquer as to dive into them, to be embraced by their ancient calm natural generosity.

This first impulse remained unexecuted, for different reasons and mainly weak excuses. We still talked about them with desire in our voices, but nobody managed to make up an efficient plan.

The non-plan developed towards not more than an ever present sense of a tempting promise, never fulfilled.

And as time went by, it got to the point of being an annoying tiresome obligation, one of the tasks to be done before leaving our tiny valley and going back home.

This evolution in our relation to the mountains, affected our perception of them drastically.

Where initially we regarded them as immense divine statures, this image shifted towards a sublime but nevertheless 2dimensional painting from some other time,

and ended up being a vague uninspiring idea about these mountains as our physically equal fellows, not more and not less than a simple daily reality that still needs to be confronted from nearby.

Or: how beauty became duty.

(this is an invitation…..Sarah)

Social Fabric /// Fabric for Thought..

The textile factories, the artists, the guided tour and many thoughts…

In the past weeks we visited textile factories in the neighborhood: Zegna and Cerruti. 

Producing thread/yarn/wool/fabric is one of the main characteristics of Biella, and is world wide known for it’s high quality. 

The ‘lanifici’ are amazingly well structured, have big machines-almost Starwars looking-, beautiful big bulbs of wool laying in buckets ready for take off, people checking meticulously every piece of fabric that is woven together before it goes to the client.

The factory even has charts and diagrams of the pieces of fabric produced: to exactly say what will happen to the fabric when you cut it etc.

Almost everyone who lives in Biella and arround is in some way connected to a textile factory. Either a relative works in a factory (or used to work..) or possibly the cousin of the neighbor. 

It seems like the production of yarn is strongly connected to the Biellese social fabric.

but what about China <textile labour costs € 0,30 per hour> 

and what about Cambodia/Laos <textile labour costs €0,18 per hour> ?

To be continued….

Elisa M.

 

               

Democracy?

Usually we associate democracy with elections, politics, individual rights, and transparency in the decision making process. Supposedly we know how it functions.

Therefore the aim of the workshop, organized by Luigi Coppola (“Theatre and Democracy”), is to demonstrate how difficult and complex it is to make democracy work. Everyone thinks he/she respects each other and their beliefs, the workshop will explore the limits of tolerance and how the individual decision making process works.

The workshop is a laboratory, trying to create an untouched environment where a community is formed by people who decide to participate. The fundamental rule is simple, there is no rule. The community has to find its own way by outlining a new set of rules. In other words it will be a theoretical and practical framework on which the community can function and base its interactions.

Where do we begin? We discuss everything. Nothing is taken for granted, not even the language used in the discourse.

Can we combine the various propositions so in the end it leaves everybody happy, maybe not. However, we can try to vote on the individual proposals and see which one gets more votes if everyone can agree on a system for voting. The strategy of debate and consensus could also be used.

Difficulties are everywhere and they can try to be resolved through sitting down at the table and discussing the issues, but perhaps there is also a shortcut. Switch off democracy temporarily until a decision is taken.

Francesco

Francesco

Gathering@Cafe Social

This beautiful cafe, “Cafe Social” in front of Piazza de Mercato, friendly agreed with us to do creative interventions. We are doing a series of gatherings/meetings/events in September. And to do it, we want to have as many crazy, creative, fun, serious ideas as possible.

Gathering@ Cafe Theater (The name is undecided)

[Objective]
This event series will focus on “Potentiality” of informal education system, which is based on an exchange of knowledge and sharing collective experiences. Its mission also includes “potentiality” of connecting local people’s immediate interests with our interests, without exploiting each other’s “need.” Contents of the events should be as diverse as possible, from art-related issues, the local economy, food, politics, performance, ecology, etc… with traditional/experimental methods. Through the interventions, we also hope to introduce who we are, why we are here, and what we are doing here in Cittadellarte.

[Possible Contents]
- Food (Food tasting local food and foreign food, maybe inviting local farmers???)
- Body, dance, more perfomative interventions
- Film Screening
- Local and global economy
- Immigration Issues
- Ecology
- Listening group

[Form]
Traditional/experimental lectures, perfomative interventions etc… will be used depending on the contents. Since we are hosting the events at a cafe setting where people are coming and leaving, and passing by, we want to cope with the fact that people participate in the events to a different degree, some actively participating, some only listening, and others not listening at all. Simonetta, owner of the Cafe Social, is pretty open to new ideas as long as we make our intentions and methods very clear.

[PR]
A great thing about organizing events at the cafe, a semi private/public place, is that you have customers as audiences. This is an advantage especially given that this type of event usually face a challenge of gathering a diverse group of people. Nevertheless, for gathering additional audiences, we will print posters and flyers, at least 2 weeks in advance (mid August), and distribute them in the city. Also we can ask Communication Office for help.

[Date]
September
Tuesday (9/2, 9, 16, 23, 30)
Friday (9/5, 12, 19, 26)

[Time]
19:00 – 20:30 (Around aperitivo time)

[NOTE]
- For a advertisement reason, all the schedule with at least, the titles of the events should be fixed around mid August.
- For a first test case, we are thinking about borrowing the “Blackmarket

(http://www.mobileacademy-berlin.com/englisch/2008/s_wien.html)” idea, to introduce who we are and see how things work or don’t work.

Outside seatings

The outsourced reader

What seemed to be a promise at one time turned out to be a big problem for me: the concept of multitasking, coming true in the simultaneous managing of several things at the same time. Instant messaging, mobile communication, email, listening to music mainly in front of a computer can be distractive, that’s common sense. But my hypothesis is that multitasking on a long term perspective has also the potential to weaken one’s ability to concentrate. Too bad! The reading circle in the musicroom goes the opposite direction. An empty room, silence, the readers voice. Nothing else. No distraction by checking words on the wiktionary website, no hyperreading by following a promising link to another website. When I read now a theoretical text on my own, I am trying to hear Markos voice reading in my head. He could become an outsourced process in my brain, a tiny text-to-speech programme providing that I can concentrate on the content.

– Christoph

thought on a potential silence

Yesterday I was joining the “ reading circle” initiated by Marko. We were 7 people in the conference room, sitting in a circle, listening to Marko’s reading of “on potentiality” by Giorgo Agamben.

For about 20 minutes, we were sitting almost motionless, to not miss any word of the lecture. Not only because its content was so interesting, but also because of the medium: the only way to get the information, was to surrender to the ongoing sound of the voice of the reader. I experienced the difference between “I read a text” and “I hear a text, being read”. The difference between “I absorb” and “I am being absorbed”. This is where the text gets another value , because it’s presented to me as a whole, as a stream, as a complex and round thing, rather than as a chopped-up body that I can analyze easily when I read it, not only analyze but also judge and even almost censor it by the means of my own thinking, my own pre-knowledge, my own emotions. There was no place to reflect during the reading, no place for (too) fast interpretations. The action of the one reading, postponed the reflection from the others till after the reading. In these 20 minutes, there was basically nothing else than the text itself.

This was not only audible, but visible as well, in the non-activeness of the eyes and the bodies. Funny detail for me was that Sakiko, who was sitting next to Marko, at one moment turned away from him, turned her face to the wall and her ear to him.

I was witnessing- and part of- a communal act, rather than having an individual experience.

Although my thoughts were sometimes flying away, the presence from the others and the text itself, always brought me back to the thoughts of another, the writer, so to a different structure of thoughts as well.

In the end, there was a general feeling of satisfaction. I had eaten the whole dinner and I had a general taste of it in my mouth. I still could remember the different courses and my ideas about them, but it was very clear that the text was constructed as a whole, and needed to be ‘eaten’ like that, within a certain time frame.

Rather than being a critical artist, I felt like a child listening to a fairy tale, only able to enter the (theoretical in this case) world presented to me by fully accepting it at first.

After the reading, first silence. Time to reflect. On potentiality. On language, on listening as well. I wonder: what is the potentiality of this lecture? And what is the potentiality of this silence now?

Thinking about Barthes, who refers to ‘silence’ and distinguishes two different kinds: sileo and taceo. In early Latin tacere stands for verbal silence, while silere stands for stillness, absence of movement and of noise.

I wonder what the quality of the silence is after this lecture. And I wonder if in the lecture itself , there is not an extreme big potentiality for the second type of silence.

If it’s not by filling the space with words, a potential sileo is created in the (communal) body of the listeners.

To be continued.

Sarah

Economics of Art or What’s the value of a blue sky?

Some words in other words:

Public goods

Assets

Stocks and Flows

GDP (Gross Domestic Production)

The lecture of Giovanna Segre was followed by mixed reactions. I perceived interests in the ideas proposed by Prof. Segre as well as some skepticism and criticisms. She talked about the possibilities to use economics to describe and categorize art, and by extension the artist, and how they should behave within the society. However artists and those who work in creative fields are not easy to generalize nor label.

I’m not an economist or an artist, but I think it is worth trying to merge the two worlds because eventually the outcome could be very interesting. The data prof. Segre showed us in the second part of the lecture are indeed interesting. Of course, it is quite banal to say that smart people make the society richer from an economics point of view, but to demonstrate this through data is not at all banal.

In my opinion, economics and the arts are two different languages which can be used to describe a complex and multi-faceted reality. They have a different point of view, use a different approach, and they espouse to have different scopes. Basically two questions come to my mind: Is it possible to find a common language, or even just a few words, to intersect the two fields? And if so what for?

Francesco

Lecture by Pascal Gielen next Monday (7/7)

Manifestare Potenza

Fresh Air and Full Lungs

Make way for an art of the full horizon

Pascal Gielen and Paul De Bruyne

Since the wall that separated us from our eastern neighbours came down in 1989, nearly the whole world has been living in the triumphant grasp of neo-liberalism. Like any victorious ideology, it presents itself as the only possible, imaginable way, an ineluctable, logical and positive realism in which the manager is the key protagonist.

We would be the last to deny that the freedom of neo-liberalism opens up marvellous opportunities for the arts. But we are just as convinced that this ideology also curtails the horizon of opportunities for the arts. We consider it our task to continually name that cultural horizon and to poke holes in the mask of the horse that have been placed on our heads, in order to let in some fresh air with which to fill our lungs.

There is a tendency sometimes to deny the ideological character of the contemporary climate. We see this, for instance, in the cultural policy of the Netherlands. It makes no difference whether the minister of culture is of white or black political colouring, the policy is solidly neo-liberal. The effects of this can be seen in the increasing number of commercial productions in theatres, the demand that museums be self-supporting, the obsessive boosting of artistic and cultural entrepreneurship. It is also visible in the thorough restructuring of the Dutch broadcasting foundation (NOS) budget and the auctioning off of radio frequencies to the highest bidder.

The debate about culture has no political signature whatsoever, but exhibits all the characteristics of a bureaucratic and technocratic dispute. The discussion of the cultural planning system is deemed more important than a debate on the content of cultural policy.

What strikes us is that the discourse on policy simply adopts the neo-liberal logic unquestioningly. In the recent publication Cultuurbeleid in Nederland (Cultural policy in the Netherlands – 2008), published by OC&W and the Boekman Foundation, expressions such as ‘government infiltration’, ‘commercialisation’ and ‘cultural entrepreneurship’ circulate as if they were neutral and self-evident terms that present the current situation objectively.
That the official apparatus meekly or unthinkingly reproduces the reigning ideology may seem obvious. Bureaucrats have a reputation (and a political stance) to protect in this regard. But this should not apply to the Boekman Foundation, where in recent years the intellectual and ideological debate has systematically been traded in for a technocratic discourse. We are thinking here, for example, of the recent issue dealing with professional arts education, a subject that is close to our hearts as art professors. In that issue, a disproportionate amount of attention was paid to the position of directors and organisers of the training programmes. The Boekman Foundation considers itself exonerated from the task of looking at the policy of an educational programme from the perspective of the student as well, or from portraying the social horizon apart from neo-liberalism. That is very odd, and frightening.

The limitations of neo-liberal ideology are often invisible in discussions on policy. Its blessings, by contrast, are loudly trumpeted. Above all its potential blessings.
The entire art world has ended up being a cheerleader for the creative industries, a notion eloquently developed by Richard Florida.
Biennials and arts festivals are springing up like mushrooms around the world, in the context of a constantly expanding network of city marketing projects. Professional arts education programmes are quickly redefined as production units in which (artistic) competencies are developed in order to be directly applied within an entrepreneurial climate.
Our critique of these developments is not so much that the quality of the artworks as such declines within a context of neo-liberalism. That is simply not the case. There is no lack of beautiful art being created in all the various disciplines, as well as in the mixed forms being stimulated through the creative industries and political contexts.
But what we are apprehensive about is that Florida’s optimistic account, precisely because it exudes and generates positive energy, will not be evaluated critically. Will artists become better for it? Will their art be better? Can the artist’s creative sources still be explored freely if the surrounding environment has very clear conceptions of the finality of art (social cohesion, tolerance and economically productive open spaces).

The answer to these questions will be nuanced. But the nuance will have to come from the social critics, because the majority of politicians, arts mediators and cultural entrepreneurs are not interested in a precise and therefore contradictory observation of the state of affairs.

Our potential critique of the growing symbiosis between artistic tradition and creative industries does not imply that we automatically agree with the strategies that are developing an open critique of the existing neo-liberal artistic situation. The so-called new commitment in the visual arts, architecture and performance arts in a sense fit perfectly into Florida’s strategy. Many committed artists strive for the same goals as the economists and politicians, with whom they at first sight seem to be in conflict. That is, the so-called NGO artists run the same risks as the development cooperation NGOs, for instance. Do their interventions not lead to a certain laziness and addiction that are more a hindrance than a help to development?
Other, so-called revolutionary artistic strategies that stand outside the neo-liberal discourse are also subjected to a critical approach, since the actual art trajectories do not fully measure up to the revolutionary pretentions of their precursors.

Finally, the ecological Jeremiahs seem to be trapped in a paradox according to which the certainty of the approaching ecological decline renders every artistic achievement futile, or even counter-productive.

We are not advocating a weak-kneed critique of all that is and will be. But we do want to seek out new or overlooked possibilities. It is precisely by bringing these to the surface that we hope to find some ways at least of escaping the reigning hegemony. Such an undertaking is called a vitalistic, critical trajectory that draws playfully on the many possibilities which neo-liberalism offers us, at times even subverting them in order to pursue different paths. What it comes down to is fresh air, full lungs, a cry of revolt against branding and a longing for a full, 360 degree horizon. We believe this is the attitude that will enable us to make the least meaningless contribution to the wonderful world of the highly fluid political and artistic meanderings which we are given to experience at this juncture.

Lecture by Yona Friedmann at Ratti Foundation this Thursday (7/3)

During the opening lecture, entitled Intelligence starts with improvisation, Yona Friedman will talk about his work and his Como site specific project (visible from 20 July) designed and produced especially for the Antonio Ratti Foundation; on the same day there will also be Corso Aperto, an exhibition project where the young artists of the Course will exhibit their works, projects and documentary material in Spazio S. Francesco and in Como’s streets and piazzas.

Friedman’s Como site specific project is a new version of his recent project Musée dans la rue (2008), originally commissioned by the Municipality of Paris. A new and unique version of the project will be in fact designed and produced in Como, in collaboration with the Course students, as part of the project’s circulation across a number of European cities. Each Musée dans la rue is an agglomeration of transparent cubes and parallelepipeds; placed in various public spaces of the city of Como, each of which bearing different historic and social identities, the Musée dans la rue will become a street museum, a free space for people to leave a sign in. Each Musée dans la rue will become a place of gathering and social relation, a democratic monument in continuous transformation, and a truly public museum. Friedman, as always in his work, has designed a simple basic structure supposed to be activated, modified and completed by the intervention of the user. Musée dans la rue is a public platform, an open space questioning the very concepts of museum, public space and social participation.

Friedman states: “Art can be considered as one of the expressions of the individual related to a community. Art is always addressed to somebody. A work of art carries a message, but does not include the codes with the help of which the message could be understood. The message can be also for the artist exclusively. Everybody has something to send as a message. Thus everybody is a potential artist. There is no object that cannot be looked on as an artwork. We have to facilitate for everybody who feels the need to become an artist, to find a code technically simple to use for his/her message. Such codes have the characteristic to be improvised. Art begins with improvisation, intelligence too. In the Public Improvisations seminar we will explore improvisation, simple techniques, not needing complicated instructions or drawings, plans. For being accessible to a general public, art has to employ simple techniques, easy to implement.Improvised public art can be explored anywhere in public spaces: in streets, in woods, in a hall, on a lake. The site itself is part of the work of art.”

Born in Hungary in 1923, Yona Friedman has been living in Paris since 1957. Architect and a theoretician, he studied in Budapest and at the Technion in Haifa. In 1956, at the X International Congress of Modern Architecture (ICMA) in Dubrovnik, the rational planning typical of the Modern Movement was called into question by his “universalistic” approach and his belief in the role of the individual. In December 1958, Friedman founded the Groupe d’Études d’Architecture Mobile (GEAM) whose focus was adapting architecture to the changes occurring in modern life. He would rise to prominence with the publication of L’Architecture Mobile (1958 ) and his idea of Ville spatiale. With his concept of “superstructures” to be built over existing cities and locations, he has always sought to provide people with the knowledge and tools to determine their own living environment. Friedman advocates a combined analytic and holistic approach. Among his texts are Towards a Scientific Architecture (1975), Utopies réalisables (1976), A Better Life in Towns (1980), Pro Domo (2006). He took part in several international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale and Documenta, and his works belong to collections of some of the most important international museums. Among his most recent works are the project for the Contemporary and Modern Art Museum of Rovereto in 2006, and his solo shows in Bordeaux (arc en rêve CAPC) and Portikus, Frankfurt.