art and life, the continues evolution of being an artist

art and life — the continues evolution of being an artist — experiential workshop

art and life — the continues evolution of being an artist — experiential workshop

by artway of thinking, Venice, Italy and Love Difference (Pistoletto Foundation), Biella, Italy — 5 days (30 hours) workshop — There are many ways to introduce a workshop, we chose a form that best accompanies our years of research: exploring life by responding to the questions it poses.

Questions always occasion a state of reflection for us.

The responses we give emanate from our point of view on our experience of being artists and through our processes of research and methodologies.

This experiential workshop seeks to emerge from your responses— individual and collective—as you seek to be an artist free to chose your own path.

Together we will reflect on four key questions.

How can you sustain your art practice?

To sustain your art practice, it is necessary to arrive at a state of clarity about your artistic research, finding the right and proper way for yourself— an approach that allows for experimentation, learning by doing, working with self-criticality, balancing elements of free gestures and good management in the processes, so also cultivating your capacity to plan, organize, and undertake a project.

We brings to this workshop the methodology of co-creation developed by artway of thinking over nearly two decades of research and which we have tested through our own projects. In the process, we have explored seven hypotheses, which have now become the seven principles on which we base our artistic work.

So to start, we offer you these seven principles on which to reflect: 1. Reality is a matter of our point of view.

2. Every creation is a reflection of its creator.

3. The self is itself a group made up of four aspects: intellect, emotion, body, and energy.

4. Creativity is energy available to every aware individual.

5. The attainment of creative awareness contributes to personal growth.

6. Co-creation is a process of “awakening.”

7. An action is sustainable to the degree to which both the individual and the environment are in equilibrium with resources, limits, and potentials.

In this workshop we will examine each of these methodological principles through exercises, simulations, and group work, arriving at a shared understanding and providing tools that you can use individually in your future work.

How can you sustain your life as an artist?

To sustain your life as an artist involves recognizing and realizing your life as a professional with the capacity to contribute to processes of change in diverse realms of society; valuing your professional work beyond of the monetary value of your artworks; and being open to entering into arenas outside of the conventional art market where your work as a creative professional can be valued by others and give value.

We will share with you the methodological tools, individual and collective, that will permit you to widen your outlook on being a professional artist, offering you possible ways in which you can maneuver as you sustain your life and your profession.

What is it to live the life of an artist?

From our experience, we would say that to live the life of the artist is to be free to take continual inspiration from our interior and social lives and from nature. It is to use our awareness to: contribute concretely to constant evolution, allow the emergence of essential aspects (symbols), inspire future possibilities, create new forms, and innovate through beauty and harmony.

To read and better understand the complexity of the contemporary world, as artists we need to develop our capacity to read the subtle links that unite the universe, translating it for ourselves and rendering it visible—through our work and through our being as an artist—so that we can use it to evolve a greater awareness. This is our responsibility and role in within society.

In this workshop we will experiment with tools to read work made and draw out the relationship between your life and your artistic research, amplifying your vision of the future space for action and ways to act in society.

In particular, experimenting with these tools will reveal an enable your understanding of your being, your personal story, your values, limits, fears, and vision of the world, and your relationships as read through your unique expressiveness. We will see how all these elements can become a greater power in realizing and integrating your being an artist in society.

What is it to live your life as a work of art?

Art and life is an approach; it is an existential journey. And life itself is the greatest work of art. But how we recognize its uniqueness? How can we nourish it to make it better? At the same time, how can we identify the connections that tie us to other lives and to a more expanded universe, so that we can feel part of all this and not separated entities?

During the workshop we will give value, form, and substance to this hypothesis: If life is a work of art, there cannot be a work of art that is not sustainable.

You will experience how to integrate your art into your daily life, so that this “alliance� becomes a generator of creativity, beauty, business, and personal growth for you and others.

artway of thinking —

artway of thinking is a cultural association founded in 1996 with the aim to research on collective creative processes. This research was started by artway founders at the beginning of 90s inside the “community based-public art” stream. In this practice the artist enters actively the processes of change of society, he/ she is able to collaborate with different professional figures and can apply the creative thought, the perceptual senses and the talent in conceiving “new beauty” in a whole system.

Art is a way of thinking Creativity, trans disciplines, systems and complexity are the main paradigms experimented in this research that lead to the definition of a methodological model to orientate the collective creative process. The co-creation methodology indicates phases, directions, dimensions and tools and it affects the process of change of the considered system.

There is a way of thinking art that generates human processes instead of object artway of thinking is a multidiscipline group that activates collaborations with administrative authorities, companies, professionals. In the past years the Association worked in Italy and abroad on 36 different land and sociocultural processes of change; and it activated 6 workshop models focussed on the increasing of the capacity of “co-create” new realities.

This way of thinking art has a methodology that sustains its own actions. +39 329 2482465 info@artway.info www.artway.info

Love Difference ⁄ Pistoletto Foundation —

Love Difference is a cultural association established in June 2002, founded by the artist Michelangelo Pistoletto together with international institutions, cultural centers, researchers, curators and artists, and was intended as an extension of the activities and vision of Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto.

Love Difference aim is to develop creative projects in order to stimulate dialogue between people of the Mediterranean Basin and wider, belonging to different cultural, political or religious backgrounds, and to build a strong network among individuals who wish to confront each other and solve social issues through art and creativity.

Since 2004 Emanuela Baldi and Filippo Fabbrica coordinate Love Difference projects: workshops on creative collective processes; “making together” actions in collaboration with artists; networking and expertise on group dynamics for public and private sectors; artistic projects for dialogue among cultures; food events; conventions, meetings, seminars, concerts, performances, exhibitions.

Love Difference won an Evens Prize for Intercultural Education 2005-06 for its creative, interdisciplinary approach in favoring responsible transformation of society, by setting up an international network for spreading a new model for cultural integration through art and creativity. +39 348 2117246 filippo@lovedifference.org www.lovedifference.org