Oreste at the Venice Biennale

at theVENICEbiennale

oreste

Oreste alla Biennale Oreste at the Venice Biennale

Oreste alla Biennale Oreste at the Venice Biennale

Contents

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CARLOS BASUALDO A LOCATION FOR UTOPIA: A BRIEF NOTE

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ANDREAS BROECKMANN SOCIABLE MACHINISTS OF CULTURE

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CAROLYN CHRISTOV-BAKARGIEV DEAR ORESTE…

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RICCARDO HELD FANTASY ABOUT ORESTE

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AGNES KOHLMEYER WHO IS ORESTE, BY THE WAY?

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GEERT LOVINK THE IMPORTANCE OF MEETSPACE: A MANUAL FOR TEMPORARY MEDIA LABS

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ELISA OTTAVIANI ORESTE SAPIENS-SAPIENS

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PIER LUIGI SACCO THE ECONOMICS OF ORESTE

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HARALD SZEEMANN ORESTE ALLA BIENNALE

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ORESTE’S PRODUCTS

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DOCUMENTATION OF THE EVENTS

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DIRECTORY

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COLOPHON

CARLOS BASUALDO A LOCATION FOR UTOPIA: A BRIEF NOTE It might be said that one of the most urgent challenges of our generation is to reinvent the very notion of collective action. What is at stake is not only the subsistence of the figure of the intellectual (and, since Marcel Duchamp the intellectual has become synonymous with the artist), but the possibility of imagining a form of subjectivity that would not be totally at the mercy of instrumentalization.

All the above may sound at the same time a bit obvious and a little bit premature, like a statement uttered by somebody who jumps at the conclusions even before the facts are settled. Unfortunately, a closer analysis of the terms in discussion may probe not only the sheer fatality of the diagnosis but also the extreme difficulty of finding a productive way out of the current state of things.

But we may start by wondering about the truthfulness of the propositions advanced at the very beginning of this short text. Why is it important to reinvent the notion of collective action, and why is it a job that has to be carried out by a generation characterized as belonging to “us”?

The attempt at articulating a collective activity stems for, fist and foremost, a need for solidarity and a desire of abandoning the subjective positions associated with individualism and individual profit. For the last twenty years, individualism has come to represent the only operative ideology for the great majority of the cultural actors, at least in the countries of the so-called West. Clearly associated with a spectacular expansionism in a monopolistic economy – usually labeled as “late capitalism” –, individualism came to represent the only available option for cultural producers in the West.

Initially, the very notion of the individual clearly suited the older, romantic idea of the artist. But already in the mid-eighties it became quite obvious that the individualism of careerism and instrumentalization advanced by the very structure of late capitalism did not have much to do with the freedom of practical constraints implied in the romantic notion of the artist – that emerged, in the first place, in great part as a reaction against what was perceived as the oppressive mode of subjectivization characteristic of the factory worker. But workers now are apparently free, seemingly not subjected to rigid constraints, and even encouraged to developed their individual creativity – everything that would advance the process of capital accumulation. Finding themselves in this trap, the artists today seem to be willing to explore alternative models of subjectivization, and collective action regains a centrality in this whole context.

Generation wise, it is people in their twenties and thirties who are better placed in order to perceive these very changes, as it is this generation the one that has in fact being responsible for the changes in the economies of labor that characterized this stage of capital accumulation.

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In a way, the stakes are higher for them, since the failure of producing any viable alternative would finally fall on their shoulders as the impossibility of constituting any productive cultural comment on the current situation.

Right now, it is either collective action or simple repetition of the past.

But to reinvent the notion and the possibility of collective action is nothing but simple. First and foremost, because there is no alternative ideology at hand, nothing of the order of an Outside – of the market – that could be reached for as an active principle. In that respect, the situation is completely different than it was thirty years ago.

On the other hand, and in connection with that lack of ideological alternatives, the very notion of the flexible subject constituted by the logic of late capitalism blocks any uncritical access to both an idealistic individual subjectivity and an equal utopical and complementary group identity.

Today’s capitalistic worker is far more complex than it was thirty years ago, and its very subjectivity is grounded in mobility granted by the possibility of assuming multiple subject positions according to the situation.

Today’s capitalistic worker is a fragmented, fluid, heterogeneous subject, capable to establishing simultaneously relations of cooperation and competition, driven of course not by passion, but, a pathos almost equally powerful, by pure greed.

Reinventing collective action would be, then, nothing but inventing a possible site of agency for a subject that would not be flexible as in today’s capitalistic worker, but that neither would be rigid and massive, as in the traditional romantic artist, or in the equally rigid communitarian attempts of thirty years ago. That agency still does not exist, and somehow it has to be imagined. Artists – these cultural producers who are able to imagine, meaning, to construct possible worlds with the use of images –, are maybe in a extremely advantageous position to accomplish this. After all, if they don’t, they might become the unwillful victims of a system that ultimately doesn’t seems to have any viable place for what they have been doing since the beginning of Modernity.

New York, 2000

ANDREAS BROECKMANN SOCIABLE MACHINISTS OF CULTURE While the modernist notion of art is still being defended in the bastions of “gallerism”, an increasing number of individuals and groups are practicing art in the form of process-oriented communication and cooperation projects.

This form of working has, throughout the 20th Century, existed in the shadow of the dominant art discourses. As examples we can think of Futurism, Dadaism, Situationism, Mail Art or Fluxus, elements of which could always be objectified and assimilated by gallerists, but whose inter10

disciplinary and transient nature never really fits the modernist mould.

What is currently taking shape is a new internationalist artistic practice that is centrally concerned with the diversity of local situations, the idiosyncrasy of individual pursuits, and with the flows of connected, translocal actions.

This new practice takes on many disguises, but it frequently makes use of the new technological tools that facilitate translocal cooperations between creative people of all trades.

The Internet is the most important of these tools. Unlike other media – telephone, radio, newspaper, audio-storage media –, the Internet is a multi-channel medium which encompasses communication, presentation and distribution of text, image, video, sounds, live performances, and other formats.

More generally, we can observe how the arts are increasingly opening up towards media practices, and how through this combination, the distinction between autonomous artistic practice and other, socially and culturally rooted practices, become inseparably mingled. From the perspective of “gallerism”, this constellation forms both a threat, in that it devalues many principles of an art that serves market requirements, and an opportunity, because “gallerism” is ever hungry for the new and seeks to devour and assimilate such developments wherever it can. Only the prickly, the sour and the indigestibles are ignored.

The new practice is made possible by a technological development through which many people get access to media that offer an alternative to the regime of mass media. Howard Slater, a cultural critic from England, has defined these as “post-media” practices or operations, a term that he borrows from Félix Guattari.

While I fully agree with Slater’s definition – which is paraphrased in the following paragraph – the term “post-media” is problematic because it throws us back into the false teleological claims of the post-everything debates of the 1980s, which is why the term “minor media” seems more appropriate. It is derived from the discussions of minority, of a minor literature and of becoming-minor as developed by Guattari and Deleuze: “Whenever a marginality, a minority, becomes active, takes the word power (puissance de verbe), transforms itself into becoming, and not merely submitting to it, identical with its condition, but in active, processual becoming, it engenders a singular trajectory that is necessarily deterritorializing because, precisely, it’s a minority that begins to subvert a majority, a consensus, a great aggregate.

As long as a minority, a cloud, is on a border, a limit, an exteriority of a great whole, it’s something that is, by definition, marginalized. But here, this point, this object, begins to proliferate (…), begins to amplify, to recompose something that is no longer a totality, but that makes a former totality shift, detotalizes, deterritorializes an entity.” (Guattari 1985/1995) 11

Becoming minor is a strategy of turning major technologies into minor machines, of appropriating media, tools and discourses for the proliferation and articulation of heterogeneity.

Minor media practices are characterized by small, diverse, distributed networks of operators who make use of the new, digital means of production and distribution. Minor media operations grow out of the networked activities of passionate individuals and groups working in local and translocal contexts and using such media as magazines, record labels, websites, club events, mailing lists, etc. Differences in these networks are not eliminated but relished. Minor media practice is characterized by a critical attitude towards the media in use, acting in lateral rather than vertical configurations, and an acceptance of the processuality and continuous transformation of context and practice.

If we look at the field of art production that makes use of media technologies today, we can see that some of the most exciting developments can be found in an area where there is not individual artists realizing their singular projects, but groups of artists working together in open-ended creative and collaborative processes.

An exemplary project in this respect is the Xchange network for audio experiments on the Internet that was initiated in late 1997 by the E-Lab in Riga. The participating groups in London, Ljubljana, Sidney, Berlin, and many other cities, use the Net for distributing their original sound programs. Xchange is a distributed group, a connective, that builds creative cooperation in live-audio streaming on the communication channels that connect them. The people of Xchange and others are thus also exploring the Net as a sound-scape with particular qualities regarding data transmission, delay, feedback, and open, distributed collaborations.

Moreover, they connect the network with a variety of other fields. Instead of defining an “authentic� place of their artistic work, they play in the transversal zone of media labs, live-venues and networked personal computers. The mailing list of the Xchange network functions as an important communication medium between like-minded people who share ideas and information, announce events and contact potential project partners through the list.

Similarly, the Syndicate network and its mailing list can be described in the context of the emerging minor media practices. Though less oriented than Xchange at concrete artistic production, the Syndicate creates a social and communicative context in which artistic projects can develop and thrive.

A crucial aspect of such community-building mailing lists is that a significant portion of the people on the list have opportunities to meet in the real world. In the case of the Syndicate, these meetings take place at exhibitions, art festivals, in workshops, etc., and at special Syndicate meetings which are organized about twice a year.

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In 1999, such meetings were held at the Next 5 Minutes conference in Amsterdam, and in the Oreste project space during the opening days of the Venice Biennale.

Many artists are currently discovering the Internet as a creative space for the experimentation with new forms of presentation and interaction between artist, artwork (project) and audience/user.

Although there are already some masters of this new genre, what is termed as net.art is mostly still in its infancy and tied to the existing technologies and the dominant, commercial aesthetics of that media environment. Yet, what this net-based work is signaling is a paradigmatic shift away from an object-oriented art practice, engaged in representation, towards process-based work that turns communication into the very material of artistic practice. At the moment this claim is pretty much a matter of belief, but there are indications that the new media ecology is catalyzing a radical transformation in the conception of what constitutes art, a shift away from representation towards communication.

The breeding sites, the incubators of these emergent practices are the temporary laboratories, the hybrid workshops and make-shift meeting places of minor media operators. The Next 5 Minutes conferences in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, the Berlin Biennale’s Hybrid WorkSpace at the documenta X in Kassel in 1997, the 1998 Revolting Media Lab in Manchester, the ongoing Polar Circuit residencies in Tornio – these and other events put the focus on what been defined “the most lively and attractive aspect of new media.” (Lovink) The Oreste alla Biennale project played a particularly important and brave role in this context, because it brought many minor artistic and media practices to one of the key sites of the art market.

It thus sought to infect different artistic and social practices with each other, and to bring them into a dialogue with each other. It offered a site of communication and exchange in the Italian pavilion and created a public space from where new forms of international cultural cooperation could arise.

We will have to see how this whole movement of sociable communication and artistic cooperation will evolve in the future. It needs more incubators, and innovative strategies for reaching beyond the communities of artists and media operators who are already “online”.

The historical importance of a playful, purposeful and effective development of the minor media environment will be clear to everybody who critically observes the pressure that convergence media, global financial markets and the deliberate depoliticization of the public domain are exerting on the heterogeneous field of independent cultural practices.

Berlin/Rotterdam, February 2000 13

CAROLYN CHRISTOV-BAKARGIEV DEAR ORESTE… Dear Oreste, I think of you in personal and public ways, intimate and expanded. I don’t know what you are, nor of course do you.

There is a poem by Rilke about the inside and the outside of a building, perhaps it is a cathedral. The light comes from without – and fills the space within, or perhaps it is the reverse. It is about the gaze, and a certain slant of desire, and, for me, the question of transubstantiation – language and life, the mind and the body, an individual and her/his communities, translation.

There is a place where people come and go, a repository of expectations, sometimes it is uncomfortably full of remonstrances. I wish it were not a loss of the self, I hope it is not at the service of packaging and commercializing software and the net. I am wary and suspicious of it when I sense it is an excuse for a certain loss of depth, and responsibility. However, there are individuals in it who dream and have dreams. They are intelligent and live on its edges and thanks to it, they find the hope and the desire to look for something. I remember a young person from Lecce, he wrote me long emails about the blue and about his goals. I did not respond, he wrote no more, but I think of him at times.

There is a video I saw recently, by an artist called Nina Katchadourian.

You see tweezers repairing a spider web, or maybe it was a needle sewing a word into it made up of little red twigs. Over and over, the spider rejects this work and battles against the red word, so that the twigs fall out. It is a battle between a person and a spider for the control of a web.

Personally, I would like to live in a small house on a cliff in the Aran Islands, but I am always pleasantly surprised by the things you manage to put together and by how they fulfill – whether briefly or in more complex ways – and orient the people who do them.

I like the anarchy that underlies such dreams.

Received: 19-03-2000 19:50

RICCARDO HELD FANTASY ABOUT ORESTE The idea of an extremely moving structure that manages to tend at a high speed to a mental place, to a project, to the place of the lack of a project, to the presence in that place of the desire of a project, to the desire of having not so much of a project, to the place where one can has the desire of not having any project, without feeling not so much of a lack; on the contrary, feeling that it is possible to do that thing, that nothing to do, and just do it, but together with others.

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The idea, then, that that speedy, and moving, and structured thing can arrive to touch even a real place, a magnificent, too-much-done, irritating, and dazzling city, and that that city is my city.

Let’s say, just to say something: Venezia, Venise, Venedig, Venice. Exactly that kind of stuff, I mean. And inside that stuff, not at all an “any” place, like an out of the way little theater of passionate, and desperate people.

No, a great place, enchanted, and bewitched, and damned, and twinkling, and rotten itself enough.

Let’s say, just as a hypothesis: the Biennale, the Giardini. And inside there, for days and days, many men and women who usually write about art or make it; and they also smell at each other a bit, and they speak and even understand each other, and also don’t. And we, these women and men are us, we are sometimes skeptical, but not too much, not for a long time, and it seems to us to stand in the middle of something, that we don’t know exactly what it is, but that is quite nice, and that makes us feel fine. And that is possible. We still don’t know exactly what Oreste is.

For us there are two Oreste. They are both very beautiful in their persona, and discreetly busy. Let’s suppose their names are Elisa and Emilio. They have shown up, and now they are there and I’m happy to meet them. If they are Oreste, then, for me, it’s fine.

It’s true, there’s a faint leftover of anxiety; the feeling of not catching the whole thing, of not hearing very well the harmonics; that there might be many Oreste and that perhaps we wouldn’t have been so happy if we had known all the others. But with Elisa and Emilio yes, we’re happy. And that thing was there, and it was working. During those days the readings, the performances, the sounds and the talks, they were there, and they were good. They were very close to something communicating, communicated and able to communicate. And around the only subject of communication, the following, fragmentary considerations move.

Standard communication is behavior where someone says something to someone else who understands what has been said and if necessary, answers with something concerning what he has understood.

Every day it becomes something more rare and precious, that happy connection (like those at the station), tiny moments of reconciliation within a wider context of alienation. The present time has been defined as the age of communication, in other words, a time in which that happy connection should occur in the overwhelming majority of the cases, that is to say, it goes without saying. This definition contains, on one hand, a fair amount of irony which fails to be funny, and on the other hand it’s just an attempt at justification. The expression “the age of communication”, makes sense only when a radical transformation in the meaning of the world “communication” is accepted, and where it means command, reception or execution. I believe this is what has happened, but, as in the game of the three moving boxes, the coin has moved without anyone noticing, without warning. Coin is the key word here. It means money, dough, cash, 15

cheque, interest, share, and income.

Sometimes fashion and history produce incredible lapses of memory, hiding the key to a whole phase. In this case it is in the culture industry that the truth comes into the limelight much as in “The Stolen Letter” by E. A. Poe; it is there, right under everybody’s nose, it’s the truth in its full evidence. I find it wonderful that, regarding this matter, EMI, one of the first record companies to plan mass diffusion of music at all levels of production, had chosen as its logo a little dog which answered the sound coming out of a gramophone by barking. The words are the same in every language. His Master’s Voice, Des Herren Stimme, La voix du Maitre, La voce del padrone.

On a page from “The Castle,” one of the most frighteningly beautiful in the novel, Kafka describes a quarrel between the surveyor and Frieda.

This is an extremely violent quarrel such as lovers have, acrimonious and passionate. At a certain point, Frieda shrieks out words and phrases one by one as if she wanted to make them unusable for ever after.

This was an early description of the communication age. The total continuity and the trendy fungibility without residual of the language and of every compartment belonging to it, they systematically make it increasingly unusable for simple, normal, human purposes.

Unusable? Completely unusable? No. Somewhere, indeed everywhere, this unusable language used, can be bent, can be turned in the same way like you turn cheques, it is used as money.

Here we are again, playing the three box game. Practical worries, success, what the public wants, sharing, the audience, average taste is not contemporary, there is nothing new about it. It has always existed; cumbersome, and central to the thought of any creator in his time. From Catullus to Shakespeare. From Lopez to Balzac, all writers have paid attention to these problems and have sought solutions.

The peculiarity of this relationship now can probably be described by making reference to the Kantian distinction between regulating and constituting ideas. The idea of useful is one that regulates; the idea of God is constitutive. We have the feeling that all these aspects, which we sum up using the world audience, are on the point of completing an immigration, are on the point of becoming the statute of law that constitutes a work of art. They put themselves, we may say, on the side of God. This is really an innovation, this is our problem. I realize that I wandered from the subject, but I hope it will be clear that I didn’t want to avoid the question.

I really would like to talk about poetry, illustration, form, literary property and poetics, but I feel that it would be senseless for me to do so before suggesting at least the idea of clarification (like Wittgenstein does) about some key knowledge of our daily experience. In fact, considering its peculiar nature, we note that it is becoming day by day the same thing as the sounds and senses of a possible esthetical experience for us.

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Finally, I only want to add, that I’m increasingly convinced, that nowadays, not always in the past, not at all times, beauty, formal consciousness, writing and art have to act as the voice of poverty, suffering, and exclusion. If that doesn’t happen, it won’t have any comprehensible meaning.

AGNES KOHLMEYER WHO IS ORESTE, BY THE WAY? The question “What is Oreste?” is not an easy one to answer. Certainly Orestes’ projects have became a fundamental component of what we could define as the young Italian art scene: a network of roughly one hundred and sixty-four members, more or less stable, generally artists themselves.

When Harold Szeemann took his first steps in preparing for last year’s Venice Biennale, visiting several artists studios dislocated in the Italian cities, searching for anything of interest, inevitably amongst the artists he met there were those already belonging to Orestes’ net.

After that the initial meeting with the individuals became increasingly meaningful, as a result of the acknowledgment of the mutual membership of Oreste, and it soon became clear that, with this collective project, Italy, notorious for its lack of institutions able to support young artists’ work, had, almost unconsciously, created something wholly new.

Oreste is a net, a network devoted to collaboration and collective reflection, solidarity, discussion and circulation of information. It is also quite simply devoted to the peaceful sharing of experiences. Its field of action, thanks also to the Venice Biennale, is spreading beyond Italy’s borders, seeking similar situations and, if possible, giving birth to projects still more complex.

This trend of young Italian artists towards mutual organizational forms corresponds with a trend recognizable also in others cultural realities.

Today’s artists often demonstrate to the world models of behavior that are completely different from those proposed by their colleagues in previous generations, even only a few years ago. Working and communicating together, they reveal themselves to be more solid and curious about others’ research, as well as being more interested in involving the public in their work and actions. Art is trying more than ever to become part of daily life. There are numerous artists today who consciously consider themselves to be “giving artists”, sweeping away the old system of superstars, Primadonna’s and lonely creators. This situation in Italy, working to the advantage of those younger, has been fed by the absence or the precariousness of structures such as the “Kunsthallen”, galleries and museums, far more diffuse in other European countries.

Contemporaneous artistic research, in Italy, on the other hand, has to face the difficult situation of a lack of social recognition and cultural confirmations.

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A meeting place such as that offered by Oreste at the Biennale, shouldn’t amaze us but rather appear as a judicious and positive opportunity.

Aside from the opportunities to establish new contacts and stimulate new ideas – even for those who consider art to be a personal adventure – and to mature them in mutual critical verification, Oreste is certainly a happy example of how it is possible to break down the barriers of an elitist world such as contemporary art, still too dominated by isolated “combatants” and by mistrust. A world in which it is uncomfortable and hard to spend one’s existence.

Orestes’ presence in the “Italy” pavilion at the Biennale, with its five months of incessant and lively activity, was good for the huge Venice exhibition. Every day in Hall A of the exhibition it was possible to find a place to sit, stretch benumbed limbs sip a fresh drink and, at the same time, participate in an event, listen to something, meet someone and make plans for the future.

The unexpected was also possible such as becoming the involuntary protagonists of an artistic performance or the offering of a piece of bread fresh from the oven.

GEERT LOVINK THE IMPORTANCE OF MEETSPACE: A MANUAL FOR TEMPORARY MEDIA LABS The idea of a temporary media lab, situated within an existing event, museum, or similar institution originates from dissatisfaction with the current forms that presentations of media projects typically take during conferences and other public events. Exhibiting webpages still does not make much sense: their lively, layered complexity gets lost. Even the interactive installation is not the proper medium to express net.works. In previous years much has been done to introduce new media to an evergrowing audience. But the networks themselves, their mysterious and seductive aspects, remained invisible. It is hard to represent or even visualize what is actually happening on a mailinglist, a newsgroup, a chatroom. Demo-design can give us a clue, but it remains soulless, empty and too easily turns flows and exchanges into dead information. Now that the varieties of virtual communities are growing, it is no longer enough to merely announce their existence. People demand substance – not only outsiders but, most of all, the members of the groups themselves.

The best way to speed up the process of production is to meet in real space, to confront the loose, virtual connections, to engage in the complex and messy circumstances of real time-space, and to present the audience (and possible future participants) with actual outcomes. And then go back again, in scattered places, on-line.

New media are not merely storing the old. They do not only give access to existing information. Their most lively and attractive aspect lies in their 18

aspect of communication, collaboration, and exchange.

This is the essence of today’s computer networks. Large media corporations, on the other hand, view these innovations differently. For today’s virtual class, new media merely offer new ways of electronic commerce and e-business, efficiency, and flexibilization of the labor force and control over the on-line behavior of the masses. The role of the former welfare state is ambivalent, to say the least. On the one hand, it was the state which did the groundwork and built the costly infrastructure, while this very state now is selling out, cutting social costs to zero, installing a new regime of (private) control, and policing its populations (mainly young people). Communication means noise to them, empty exchanges that can be studied to maximize their attention profit. Users are being reduced to potential buyers of goods and services, controlled by companies and police units.

This is not a doomsday scenario. It is becoming a reality, despite all naive, neoliberal talks of bright cyberfutures, dating from the early days of the Internet hype. People are indeed becoming aware of this dark aspects of the use of digital technologies. One way not to give up on these positive, utopian aspects is to increase awareness, to fight conspiracy mythologies, and, most of all, to organize scattered users in the struggle against surveillance and corporate takeover. Should we still dream of interactivity and other, more accessible interfaces? Access to what? Are portals with the CNN type of WebTV the only remaining option now that the Net is rapidly approaching its controlled and regulated status of mass medium? And is this return of the real closing down our fantasies? How would we define tactical use of media? Which particular connections between text, audio, image (and noise) do we find useful? In what way could radio, Internet, print and real-time/on-line events be combined?

The idea of temporary media labs were born of the desire to cover events, conferences, festivals, and demonstrations in search of a specifically Internet style of reporting. We could mention here some early examples, such as the live web journals produced during Next Five Minutes 2 and 3 (www.n5m.org), the Ars Electronica festivals since 1996 (www.aec.at), the Euro-protests in Amsterdam, June 97 (www.contrast.org), or the hackers’ gathering Hacking in Progress in August 1997 (www.hip97.org). The format of the on-line journal is trying to bridge the real and virtual by building-in interactive elements between on-line audiences and the actual site. Web journals are exploring unusual ways of reporting, with image, sound and text, allowing remote participation, before, during, and after the event. These days web journals are almost standards for all sorts of corporate events, intergovernmental meetings and global summits, conferences and fairs. The websites of such live events now all go with streaming media features, with image and/or sound.

The Temporary Media Lab concept goes one step further. It no longer covers an ongoing event but, instead, targets the hands-on production of 19

content in and around an already-existing group or network of groups and individuals. It is patently clear that networks are good at discussing and preparing but not at actual production--that has to be done on the spot, face-to-face. Only in this setting can we overcome the tensions that so easily build up in virtual worlds and, thereby, produce small multimedia pieces together using available resources.

Conferences are known and respected as effective accumulators and accelerators. They offer ideal opportunities to recharge the inner batteries in the age of short-lived concepts. Temporary media labs are even more effective in this respect: they focus, speed up, intensify, and exert a longer-term effect on local initiatives and translocal groups. Meetings in real space are becoming a more and more precious good for the way they add a crucial stage to almost any networked media projects, whether in the arts, culture, or politics. Unlike conferences, though, the role of the (passive) audience remains open yet undefined. As with any other concept, the broader public will be confronted with the issue anyway, sooner or later. Temporary media labs are experimenting with social interfaces, visual languages, and cultural/political processes. Though the immediate outcomes can be presented at the end of the session, the real impacts of such small task forces, perhaps, only comes later, elsewhere.

Hybrid WorkSpace (HWS), which took place during the 1997 Documenta X in the Orangerie in Kassel, went on for a three-and-a-halfmonth period; it received an impressive share of the 620.000 visitors who came to the event. Fifteen groups stayed for a ten-day period each; among those groups were the German Innercities campaign, No One is Illegal, We Want Bandwidth (www.waag.org), some audio initiatives (which later turned into the Xchange real-audio/net.radio network: www.re-lab.net), loosely affiliated or unaffiliated tactical media practitioners involved in focusing on global media (www.n5m.org), the Deep Europe/Syndicate group from former Eastern Europe (www.v2.nl/east), a group preparing the nettime _README!_ book, which has now been published (www.nettime.org), and finally the first Cyberfeminist International, which brought out their own documentation (www.obn.org).

The documentation of the Workspace can be found at www.medialounge.net. Medialounge is a database of 250 small European media art labs, a result of Hybrid Workspace and other meetings in which bottomup networks of European new media culture is being created.

The Revolting Temporary Media Lab in Manchester, which took place for five weeks in August/September 1998, has been a follow up of HWS. Revolting, organized by Micz Flor (www.yourserver.co.uk) took place in very different social environment, compared to Kassel, away from the big art crowds. It had a similar mix of people, themes, and low-tech approaches. It brought together local groups and communities to focus on practical outcomes, small presentations, and debates. Revolting had a special emphasis on spreading specific content via different media, such as a regular free newspaper, local radio, and the Net. 20

The third Temporary Media Lab took place in the project space on the fifth floor of the Kiasma, the Helsinki contemporary arts museum, which opened in June 1998. The media lab went on for five weeks (October/ November 1999 The name TEMP is a reference to the TEMPOLAB meeting in the Kunsthalle Basel (June 98), a closed session of a distant though neighboring tribe, the global contemporary arts scene, curated by Clementine Deliss. It is of course also reference, and tribute, to Hakim Bey’s Temporary Autonomous Zones, a reminder that revolts of anger and desire, of passionate bodies and souls, remains an option, despite the overall victory of global capitalism.

Five groups each worked on five different topics (www.kiasma.fi/temp).

First came a newly formed European network of groups working on issues of refugees and illegalized emigrant workers. The group organized and coordinated the demonstration held in Tampere during the Euro summit on this delicate political topic (see: www.contrast.org/border). In December this group again gathered in Amsterdam where this network was officially founded, with participants from even more countries.

Balkania was the name of the second gathering. Twenty media artist from South-East Europe discussed the situation in their region after the Kosova conflict and drew (negative) utopian images to bypass the current dramatic situation in the Balkans. The third, all Finnish group focused on the technology policies in Finland itself. “Nokia Country/ Linux Land” dealt with the growing power of this telecommunications giant on the one hand, and a free operating system on the other. What influence is Nokia have on the ever shrinking welfare state? And is power really challenged with the introduction of open source software such as Linux, which originates in Finland? During the fourth group a Nordic/Scandinavian/Baltic network of media labs and media arts institutions was created, with a special emphasis in the program on the difficult situation in Belarus. Two events marked the closing of temp: a one day conference on the urban condition in Asia, organized in conjunction with the opening of the Cities on the Move exhibition in the same Kiasma building, and an environmental web-base game, open for public participation. Temp finished with a small exhibition of the results.

To close with, some general remarks. Some groups and individuals are making a good use of the facilities on offer, others do so in a lesser way.

So what? The temp media lab concept is not an army setup or a content factory. It is just a model, connected to similar initiatives and situations, such as the Polar Circuit in Lapland ANAT’s summerschools in Australia, the recent workshop in Ljudmila (Slovenia) of Virtual Revolution and obviously Oreste at the Venice Biennale of 99. Digital media arts and culture are all in a flow. Our social networks are unstable media and the outcomes are hard to predict in the short run. But I am convinced that temp media labs are a strong motor behind the networks of digital culture we all envision. The temporary, local truth has made it worth the effort to 21

organize such events. Time and time again, until the format runs out of energy and we all know, by intuition, how to set up networks, servers, sites - and most of all: how to deal with the all too human flaws in communication.

ELISA OTTAVIANI ORESTE SAPIENS-SAPIENS “… The great debates are less important than the spaces of knowledge which make them possible…”

—G. Deleuze, Multiple becoming

Dislocation, juxtaposition, simultaneity, synchronicity, M. Foucault writes that the present age could be considered the epoch of space, the epoch of the near and the far, of the side to side and separate. Perhaps the world is experienced less as a great journey which unravels through time and more as a network which crosses through various points and which interweaves its threads.

The individual is a part of a social network, a tiny nodal point in it and only artificially can he consider himself as isolated. There are horizontal ramifications, with other individuals, at home, at work, in the institutions as well as vertical connections, with the family, one’s geographical origins, biological heredity, evolved and primitive/archaic elements.

Associations and specialized, analytical and experiential work groups can have a function in this social context; they can represent a non-place or a “heterotopia” as Foucault would define it, which is a place where other places can be represented, put in a context and subverted at the same time. Group thought provides a sort of spatial support for the thoughts of the individual; in other terms the individual can utilize the polyhedral structure of the group as a “particular space” which offers itself to his thoughts. There is no necessity for a fantasy of fusion but the thought of the single person can go alongside the thought of the group “… as in the mirror one sees where one is not, in an ideal space which opens up behind the surface. But the mirror really exists and it produces a return effect; from the gaze which comes back to us from the depths of this virtual space, we return towards ourselves and reconstruct the place where we are.”1 This was my basic hypothesis when a year ago I decided to contact Cesare Pietroiusti so that he could tell me about his experience within and through the group. I had worked with therapeutic groups for a long time, as a natural development of my training as a psychologist, and for some years I had also been particularly interested in artistic groups, participating in various artistic-social events, laboratories and theatrical performances which had made a deep impression on me. I found out about Oreste about a year ago when it had already been in existence for three 22

years and had been invited to participate in the forty-eighth edition of the Venice Biennale.

My notes on the first meetings with Cesare P. are as follows.

Telephone conversation, April 6, 1999. He tells me about Oreste being invited to the Biennale by the curator Szeemann. He seems somewhat anxious but this strikes me as perfectly normal.

8 April 1999. Meeting in his studio. We speak about the Biennale as the “phase of the mirror” and of the need for the group to develop a “skin” which can delimit and contain it, giving it a form.

We speak of the group as an “organism.” The psychic apparatus of the group has only a phantasmatic body… the actual room at the Venice Biennale will give the possibility of creating a symbolic space, a synthesis between imaginary and real space. We speak of the summer “residencies” in Paliano and the sensation felt there of the infinite possibilities of expansion, the continual interplay of projects and the ramifications of relationships… now the group must become delimited and represent itself within a real space inside the Italian pavilion… I warn him that the construction of a skin around the group will involve a sensation of loss… of mourning. The elaboration of this mourning will then allow the mythopoietic function to emerge The cuts and limitations should make it possible to channel the work towards the process of symbolization. It is however important that the sensation of loss should not be too overwhelming… the primary group illusion felt in Paliano (“nascent group state”) will no longer be experienced but instead it will be represented…

Thus Paliano can become a group myth.

The Biennale can also represent “the rite of passage” for Oreste, from that nascent state to the collective identity, entailing the group as a social entity.

Lately (after two preparatory meetings in Milan and Bologna) I have been explained that the group has the intention to utilize the space in the Biennale to create a place of welcome, open to new meetings.

“Collective organisms” similar to Oreste will be invited, also from abroad and there will be attempts to set up relations and create projects in common with them. It occurs to me that Oreste is making visible what psychologists define the “common space of the group”. This space does not have a material and measurable extension, nor does it correspond to a territory that can be described or traveled through. It does not coincide with the geographical or organizational borders of the group, but it is more of a mental and relational space: its dimensions correspond to the capacity of thought which has been acquired by its members. I also had the opportunity to look at a drawing, that was discussed in one of the preparatory group meetings as the portrait of Oreste at its present stage.

It is very striking.

On an approximately 30x40 centimeters sheet of paper there are drawings of: large boxes with indications of the projects/events of Oreste 23

(Paliano 1997, Paliano 1998, Montescaglioso 1999, Matera 1999, Naples 1999) very small boxes which indicate the people involved and many thin penciled lines which indicate the connections between the people and the projects.

A red pen is used to draw the little boxes and a pencil is used for the big project-boxes and for the lines of connection between the people and the projects. It would seem that parts of the people have flowed into the projects; to be precise the red box-container flows into the grey box-container or vice-versa. In addition, within the red box the initials of the persons involved are indicated, not always legibly, with a blue pen, which has not been used for anything else, as if to try and maintain and recognize the symbolic individuality of each single member of the group. What I would like to point out here is that this drawing could be considered as an attempt to represent in a two-dimensional way the “field” of Oreste.

In the drawing a modality of relation between the persons involved in the group is represented. It makes me think of the “mother solution” from which crystals grow and which determines the structure in which the molecules will aggregate, but not the precise form that the crystal will take.

Each molecule becomes the content and container of the individual projects and the general project. The modality with which Oreste lives and produces would seem to be the continual creation of a network of relations, which revolve around certain work projects. This network is not a neutral space but is an active container with the capacity to elaborate the material, which is put into it in order to make it operative. It is an energy field, it is everybody’s project, in as much as it represents the need for containment and expansion of each single member. It is an attempt to integrate the internal/external sensation of fragmentation and dispersion with the persecutory anguish deriving from that sensation and the ideal state which is felt as lost and unobtainable. It is already a symbol.

Every artist, H. Segal2 writes, creates a world. The perception that his/her present world is broken, disintegrated, chaotic and persecutory leads him/her to create something that s/he feels to be completely new. In Oreste there seems to be the attempt to resolve the depressive conflict, probably connected to a particular condition of contemporary Italian art system, through the search for a unity which could contain both paternal order/productivity and maternal fusional containment. The messianic awaiting of salvation and redemption seems to be connected to the reparative restoration of an internal parent couple, able to institute a new environment of feeding and development. In the relational structure of the group/network in itself, Oreste communicates the awareness of fragmentation as well as the depressive anxiety and the attempt at reparation.

What is the field? “… My idea in brief is that it is the objects which tell the field how it must curve and the field which tells the objects how they must move…”

—A. Einstein 24

The structure described above, even if more similar to a spider’s web or a network, could be seen as a “nervous system”, referring in particular to the structure of certain neurons which are called “multipolar” because they have a rather large cellular body and considerable quantity of dendrites which connect them with many other neuronal cells. The human nervous system is actually a network. This reference reminds me of the efforts made by my professor of neuro-psychology to differentiate anatomical and functional aspects while trying to explain “the mind” to the students. “You know the pianoforte?” Professor Ruggeri once said to us “keys, strings, hammers, music-stand, lid, pedals… the music is a function of the pianoforte but it is not the pianoforte itself.” I remember that at the time the explanation seemed fairly clear and effective. People, projects, lines of force, connections between people and between people and projects… all this is Oreste but something else too. Perhaps what is defined as the “field” in psychology is a complex function of the group which has the same relationship with the anatomical part of the group, as professor Ruggeri’s pianoforte has with the music played on it.

The notion of the field is fairly complex and any hasty attempt at a definition would be reductive. So what can we say in a rapid and synthetic way about this concept?

First of all I would say that the field is a concept which creates a bridge between the group and the individual: as C. Neri writes, it is trans-individual3. The persons contribute to the formation of the field but at the same time they are immersed in it. However the field is different from the persons and their relations; to a certain extent it has an autonomous life.

One could also say that it is a common area… the common space where everything being deposited in it can influence every relational situation.

By creating this space the group does not create only a situation, an object in which hopes and expectations are invested or projected, but a collective entity which is capable of thought and elaboration and that has its own characteristics. This entity is however not created spontaneously; it is created when its members begin to have an awareness of themselves as a group or as a “community of brothers” (to use the terminology of S. Freud). But how does the passage from the thoughts and fantasies of the single members lead to the creation of a collective situation?

There are basic levels of mental functioning which we can experience only in collective situations which coexist constantly with more evolved aspects. On these levels of mental life we all respond to collective stimuli with the activation of automatic replies. W. R. Bion4 speaks of the “anonymate,” which is the primitive mentality of the group and is the fruit of anonymous elements which are in some way put into relations. At a proto-mental level the individual is part of a network even when on other levels he has attained a distinct identity.

The basic dimension of the group is a primitive, corporeal, sensorial, affectively broadened dimension which is able to provide containment, 25

affective support and trust for its members, but also it can sometimes be degenerate, automatic, unevolved and unfavorable to evolution and it is difficult to understand what are the factors which cause the functioning of the group to oscillate between one or the other mode.

Oreste seems to have understood the importance of these basic factors of functioning… in this group everything seems to start from the conscious reflection on this primitive level of relation as if to propose a reconditioning of it; a regeneration of the basic levels of the group mentality (see the books Oreste Zero and Oreste Uno and the use that the group makes of the “residency” for artists). One only has to open any page of the diary from the book printed on the occasion of the first residency in Paliano in 1997 to get an idea of this. “… Sunday July 13th. There are lots of people around, many are in the swimming-pool, some are even lying on the grass. Lorenzo (from the Stalker group) has an environmental intuition: what is missing here is, at the bottom of a little slope, the sea. He says that one could think about doing something… In the evening Viviana Gravano arrives with Gea Casolaro, and Pietro Fortuna with Kun, Maurizio and a wonderful monitor kindly lent by Opera Paese. While Pietro helps to get the video set up, Alfredo prepares a record-player to play us some music which is part of his contribution. Mario appears after the afternoon rest, together with Elisabetta, who, as usual brings us something to eat.”

The attention all seems to be towards the emergence of a conscious relatedness, first of all on those levels of mental activity that are usually automatic or already given and often already degenerate; that is why artists with the most different modes of expression can meet and plan together; and this explains the reference to the “atmosphere” of certain moments of gathering, to the collectivization of thought, the circulation of knowledge, and the idea of non-authoriality.

W. R. Bion5 maintains that the apparatus for thinking thoughts is the result of a sort of functional restructuring of the brain. To be more precise he maintains that initially the brain was assigned to different tasks and only later, pushed by new needs, did it adapt itself to the task of hosting thoughts. The transformation of the proto-brain into a mind, does not consist of the acquisition of more advanced technological capacities. It is not a case of being able to perform ever more sophisticated conceptual, algebraic, mathematical or logical operations, but rather of being able to take on the responsibility for one’s thoughts, images, scenarios, effects and the contents of one’s thoughts. The mind, which hosts or keeps one’s thoughts describes them with emotions and dresses them in words, creating the possibility of communicating them, and thus it expands. According to Bion thoughts have the capacity to promote the development of the mind.

From what I have been able to observe of Oreste, there seems to have been a movement from 1) Oreste/network, the metaphor of the group, to 26

2) a symbol of the condition of a part of contemporary art and its intentions and also 3) a collective entity capable of self-consciousness and therefore responsible thought. Oreste enables its members to think about how to set up collective projects around ideas, where the aggregation of various persons can guarantee a space for reflection, as well as a certain consistency and effective validity of proposals together with the possibility of making them operative, while hoping that these projects, set up in this way, can effectively widen the horizons of the individual’s possibilities as well as those of the group in general.

1. Michel Foucault, “Poteri e strategie.” Mimesis, Milan 1994.

2. Hanna Segal, “Dream, Phantasy, and Art.” Routledge & Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London 1991.

3. Claudio Neri, “Group.” Transl. by C. Trollope, Taylor & Francis, Inc., 1998 4. Wilfred R. Bion, “Experiences in Groups and other Papers.” Tavistock Publications Ltd., 1961.

5. Wilfred R. Bion, “Transformations.” William Heinemann Medical Books, Ltd., London 1965.

PIER LUIGI SACCO THE ECONOMICS OF ORESTE In its bare essence, economics is a matter of give and take. Sometimes you give more than you take, and sometimes the other way round. In general, one has fair exchange when the value of what you give equals the value of what you take. So what’s the matter here? Simply this: Oreste is born as a collective endeavor in which everybody is meant to give more than what it takes, that is to say, everybody accepts to give up a bit of its individuality to serve a common process with no authors and no clearly shaped individual goal. The thing works only insofar as this is the main attitude among participants. Thus, economically speaking, one can see Oreste as a kind of artistic-economic experiment having to do with private provisions of a public good for which no individual property rights exist or can even be properly defined. In general, if people are self-interested, private provisions of public goods turn out to be utter failures: people simply free ride on the contributions of others in that nobody can be excluded from consumption of the common resource, but as a consequence nobody who is able to foresee this dynamics will be likely to contribute in the first place.

So what about Oreste? Has the experiment been a success or a failure so far? And what it will be in the future, if anything? I think it is hard to answer. I believe there is ample evidence of extensive personal contribution to the common good in spite of any self-interested calculation, and this is very good news. On the other hand, I think that the future of this complex network of relationships, projects, cooperation among people who are developing individual careers on their own in different although often complementary fields is a delicate one. Oreste is not a group in the 27

usual sense. Nobody really wants to be completely absorbed, and in fact if this was the case, the private provision issue wouldn’t arise at all: the work of closed groups is but a common property of all the members, and this is perfectly satisfying insofar as the group is motivated to exist. So the next challenge is necessarily that of finding out how to be together without really being together: a performative act, maybe a sort of selforganizing work of art, certainly a framework called for any viable future scenario. To manage this would probably be read as a real and clear novelty in the world of contemporary visual arts and more generally in the economics of cultural processes. Will Oreste dare to try further? We’ll see. Good luck to everybody and ad majora.

HARALD SZEEMANN ORESTE ALLA BIENNALE I had heard about Oreste from different sources. Despite the desolate infrastructure of non-commercially oriented institutions, some young Italian artists joined together in order to create free spaces for exhibitions, exchange, meetings, and discussions.

In Rome I visited Cesare Pietroiusti, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Mario Pieroni and Dora Stiefelmeier to inform myself in a more precise way about this adorable initiative. Immediately I was thinking of the space A in the Padiglione Italia, which is oval and not square, has a terrace, and offers all of the possibilities of a depot. It existed as a distribution space and due to its placement within the Biennale, offers the further advantage that visitors to the exhibition must pass by it.

I didn’t decide immediately, but after some reflection I wrote to Cesare Pietroiusti that Oreste represents for me a part of the openness I wanted to obtain with the Biennale.

Oreste kept its word in a fantastic way. The group developed its activities for more than five months with a rich program of events and did not participate as an additional exhibition of single artists. There was a very dense collective energy, which left behind older models of friendship and individual styles.

I hope that Oreste gained supplementary drive from the Biennale. Oreste offered to the Biennale a nucleus of positive agitation. Thanks.

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Four or five thousand free admittance tickets to the Biennale using the password “Oreste.”

Money for the telephone bill in Oreste’s room at the Biennale which has been paid by Oreste and not by the Biennale.

The guards at the Biennale who all wanted to guard Oreste.

Valter, the technician of the Biennale.

Oreste’s house that we used to have and at a certain moment we didn’t have anymore.

The discount that the restaurant gave us when we said that we were with Oreste.

Visitors to the Biennale who bought Oreste’s books.

The fish market party, which cost us an arm and a leg.

Isabella who levitated us one evening.

The quarrel in front of the RaiSat television cameras.

The conference at the Querini Stampalia Foundation.

Children like Oreste.

Swallows.

The vomit on the terrace of Oreste’s House and on the terrace below.

The receipt written on ordinary paper for the hotel expenses refund in Scandinavia.

Heated nocturnal love quarrels on the stairways and at the entrance of Oreste’s house.

Cold temperature caused by air conditioning on too high.

Oreste’s gloryhole contained: Orange tables by Zanotta.

Poufs.

Big envelopes made of cellophane.

A trolley for the television set.

A huge mixer.

Some stylus lamps.

A map of Venice taken from the Belgian pavilion.

A smaller one with Luigi’s Pugliese friends’ restaurant marked on it.

A rose drawn by computer with the words “Don’t forget to water the plants.”

A coffee machine to make Carissimi espresso coffee.

A fridge full of bottles of wine.

Thousands of small books with Oreste’s palimpsest.

Hundred of Oreste one and Oreste zero books.

Acquaself water tanks.

Six boxes with black table-registers.

A plastic-box with some tools.

About ten tapes.

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Lots of batteries size AA. Little green elastic pots used for the plants on the terrace.

Little puppets forgotten by Pinky.

Sheets.

Olive oil made in Visciglito.

Bread made in Matera.

Little books made in Matera.

Small bags to take away the bread.

Catalogues.

Posters.

Videotapes.

Books.

Boxes containing wine made in Puglia.

Wine made in Velletri.

Boxes of rubbish.

A big television-set.

An envelope with some leftover salty.

Dried bread rings.

The aluminum slab together with the petition to support contemporary art.

People bags belonging to Oreste, or to the guests and various passers-by.

A newspaper cutting of Barbie.

Glasses and dishes made of plastic. (sometimes second hand ones) Dirty cutlery.

Questions from the public: “Do you make poufs, furniture and small chairs?”

“Do you have a list of the artists in the Italian pavilion?”

“Haven’t you anything alcoholic?”

“Let’s go and eat at Oreste’s?”

“Are there any young artists belonging to Oreste, for example De Maria?”

“Can I send an e-mail to my boyfriend in Oregon?”

“Oreste, can I have an interview with you?” (the Croatian TV at the opening) “What do you mean? Isn’t it free? Keep it then!” (throwing the Oreste book on the ground) “I’m a journalist of Architettura a Campobasso. May I ask you a question?”

“Are you Oreste? My compliments, those mice are really nice!”

“Can you give me about ten sheets of paper?”

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I quattro o cinquemila ingressi gratuiti alla Biennale usando come password “Oreste”.

I soldi della bolletta telefonica della stanza di Oreste alla Biennale che ha pagato Oreste e non la Biennale.

I custodi della Biennale che volevano tutti custodire Oreste.

Valter, il tecnico della Biennale.

La casa di Oreste, che prima avevamo e a un certo punto non avevamo più.

Lo sconto che ci faceva il ristorante se dicevamo “siamo di Oreste”.

I visitatori della Biennale che hanno comprato i libri di Oreste.

La festa al mercato del pesce che è costata una cifra.

Isabella che una sera ci ha fatto levitare.

Il litigio davanti alle telecamere di RaiSat. La conferenza alla Fondazione Querini Stampalia.

Oreste piace ai bambini.

Le rondini.

La vomitata sul terrazzo di Casa Oreste e sul terrazzo sottostante.

La ricevuta emessa su carta semplice per rimborso spese alberghiere in Scandinavia.

Accesi litigi d’amore notturni per le scale e nell’ingresso di Casa Oreste.

Lo sgabuzzino di Oreste conteneva: I tavoli arancioni di Zanotta.

I puff.

Delle bustone di cellophane.

Un carrello per il televisore.

Un enorme mixer.

Delle lampade a stilo.

Una mappa di Venezia presa dal padiglione belga.

Una mappa più piccola con l’indicazione della trattoria degli amici pugliesi di Luigi.

Una rosa disegnata al computer con scritto di ricordarsi di innaffiare le piante.

Una macchinetta per il caffè espresso Carissimi.

Un frigo pieno di bottiglie di vino.

Migliaia di libricini con il palinsesto di Oreste.

Centinaia di libri Oreste uno e Oreste zero.

I boccioni del distributore Aquaself.

Sei scatole con registratori da tavolo neri.

Una cassetta di plastica con qualche attrezzo da lavoro.

Una decina di audiocassette.

Molte batterie tipo mezza torcia.

Elastichetti verdi per le piante del terrazzo.

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Le bamboline dimenticate da Pinky.

Fogli.

L’olio di Visciglito.

Il pane di Matera.

I librini con la favolette sul pane di Matera.

Le bustine per portarsi via il pane di Matera.

Cataloghi.

Poster.

Videocassette.

Libri.

Scatole di vino pugliese.

Il vino di Velletri.

Scatole di immondizia.

Un grande televisore.

La busta coi taralli avanzati.

La lastra di alluminio con la petizione a favore dell’arte contemporanea.

Le borse degli orestiani, degli ospiti, e di passanti vari.

Un giornaletto di Barbie.

Bicchieri e piatti di plastica (talvolta usati).

Posate sporche.

Il raffreddore e la febbre causati dall’aria condizionata.

Le domande del pubblico: “Producete puff, mobili e sedioline?”

“Avete l’elenco degli artisti del Padiglione Italia?”

“Non avete niente di alcolico?”

“Nnamo a magnà da Oreste?”

“Ma in Oreste ci sono anche artisti giovani, che so, De Maria?”

“Posso mandare un’email al mio ragazzo in Oregon?”

“Oreste, posso farle un’intervista?” (la tv croata all’inaugurazione) “Come non è gratis? E tienitelo, allora! (il libro di Oreste, gettandolo a terra) Sono un giornalista di Architettura a Campobasso. Posso farle una domanda?”

“Lei è Oreste? Complimenti, molto belli i topi”.

“Mi dà una decina di fogli di carta?”

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DOCUMENTATION OF THE EVENTS June 10th–November 6th, 1999

Syndicate, June 10th Laboratorium, June 10th New Spaces for Contemporary Art, June 13th Everyday life, June 14th Connection with Bacinonapoli, June 16th A special issue of the magazine (S)Definizioni, June 16th Construction in Process and The International Artists’ Museum, June 17th Vegetali Ignoti Art against Rat (War), June 19th–20th Elettra. A network of independent art organizations, June 23rd–27th Il pane di Matera Presentation of Out of the blue, June 25th A guided tour through some delicacies from the Puglia Region, June 25th The artist as a researcher / Digital Noise, July 3rd L’urlo dei comuni, July 4th Art vs. Economy, July 9th Multimedia communication of contemporary art, July 10th Contagious Lunch–Live, July 10th–11th Local Access, July 14th Three reflections about the margin, July 15th Stream TV project, July 15th A.N.Y.P., k-bulletin, Starship, July 16th–18th Dein Klub, July 18th Atelier G9, July 17th–19th 35

A meeting on artists’ residencies, July 19th No association-narration. Female oral network, July 21st MoneyNations videoscreenings and Infocafé, July 22nd–25th *Uman Tunnel, July 24th VIA. Art projects for abandoned railway stations in Calabria, July 26th Foreign Investment, July 29th Flaschenpost, July 30th–August 1st San Francisco Video Scene, August 1st Do Venetians love their Biennale?, August 7th Nobody will be there on the 15th of August International Witch Stories, August 22nd–29th Two Way Street, August 22nd–29th Connection with Oreste Due, August 25th–September 16th Orestecinema. Networking as a privileged method, September 3rd–8th Interventions and relations in urban spaces, September 9th Poets and People, September 10th–12th Fasting of the Hearth, September 14th–16th Connection with the conference Piacere, Picasso! / Mr. Picasso, I suppose!, September 17th–19th Le Sourir vertical. A magazine on art and eroticism, September 17th Presentation of the artist magazine NomadenHeft, September 17th The Oreste’s Library Art and Partnership, September 18th The Great Art Swindle, September 23rd Partito del Tubo, September 24th Star Wars. The NATO menace, September 25th

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The social utility of art. San Marino meets Bremen, September 26th How permaculture can enhance your life, September 30th Stories and practices by a globetrotter, October 2nd Urban stickers, October 3rd Indizi urbani, October 3rd Public Art: European experiences and projects, October 3rd Art Steam Ahead, October 9th Independent art spaces, October 9th–10th “How are things?” “Things are”, October 17th Sunday School, October 20th Incroci, October 20th Inner networks, October 23rd You are welcome, October 23rd Presentation of Kéiron magazine, October 29th “Da quelle parti vicino alla spiaggia” Accumulazioni: web sites, artistic and multidisciplinary projects on line, October 30th Fanzines & non-periodical publications, November 6th Last day at the Biennale: the chat e.w.e., exhibition without exhibition

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Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 20:47:22 +0100 To: Oreste <bom1790@iperbole.bologna.it> From: Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@v2.nl> Subject: Syndicate: Venice meeting, June 1999 Dear friends, here is a short reminiscence of the Syndicate meeting that we held in the Oreste space at the Venice Biennial on 10 June 1999. The 'Syndicate' is the (slightly ironic) name of a network of people involved in media culture and media art in Europe. Established in January 1996 as a platform for the exchange of information and the fostering of ties between East and West European cultural practitioners, the Syndicate regularly organises meetings in different European cities and communicates, in between these meetings, through an internet mailing list. At the beginning of 2000, around 430 people from over 30 European and some non-European countries are subscribed to this mailing list, most of them artists, curators, organisers, critics, and theorists. The division between East and West is growing less important as people cooperate in ever-changing constellations, in ad-hoc as well as long-lasting partnerships. The war in Kosovo and Yugoslavia in the spring of â&#x20AC;&#x2122;99 heavily occupied the network.

Therefore it was important that we could organise a meeting in Budapest even during the war. The meeting that happened in April â&#x20AC;&#x2122;99 was originally planned to take place at Cinema Rex in Belgrade where it would have brought together media artists, curators and critics from different European countries, as well as from the Yugoslavia, to initiate public debates and informal discussions about the role of media art and electronic culture in the ongoing transformation processes. The plans for this meeting in Belgrade were over ruled by the war situation that developed in Yugoslavia in the second half of March â&#x20AC;&#x2122;99. Nevertheless, among people from the network, there was a strong feeling that a meeting should be held in order to be able to see each other, to reaffirm old ties and to work together on projects and ideas for responding to the renewed crisis in the Balkans. Thus, the meeting was re-routed to Budapest where a group of 38 people from 12 countries assembled and discussed to question which role artists and cultural producers can play in such a situation.

NATO troops move into Kosovo, 12 June 1999

Date: Mon, 31 May 1999 16:47:48 +0100 From: Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@v2.nl> Subject: Syndicate: meeting in venice?

The opening days of the Biennale di Venezia are a great and crazy meeting place for so many people, that it was an obvious choice to organise an ad hoc gathering of Syndicate members â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not least because it is an easy place to get to from both the North-West, and from the South-East of Europe.

View from a precision missile about to hit a passenger train in Kosovo, May 1999

Data: martedĂŹ 1 giugno 1999 21.01 Da: bom1790 <bom1790@iperbole.bologna.it> Oggetto: oreste says: welcome The kind invitation to the Oreste space in the Italian Pavilion meant that we had a central meeting place in the Giardini that was easily accessible for many people. The date was fixed for 10 June, 16.00 hrs.

Syndicate meeting at Oreste space, June 10, 1999

From: "Roberta Iachini" <robiachi@tin.it> Subject: from Emilio Fantin Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 21:13:24 +0200 The invitation cards to Oreste space in Venice biennale (days 9-10-11 june) for 20 people are available in the Library PATAGONIA, Dorsoduro 3490/b 30123 Venezia tel 041.5285333 In the end, fewer people than those that were expected showed up. The Macedonians, Bulgarians, and Albanians were involved in their Biennale presentation, the Slovenes and the Romanians had their openings that same evening, and there were also the presentation of IRWINâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Transnacionala book and the press conference for the exhibition After the Wall: so many events were happening in parallel that it was impossible to get everybody together in one place at the same time.

Nevertheless, in the two or three hours that we spent on the Oreste terrace, around twenty people showed up, had a coffee, exchanged some news, discussed the situation on the Balkans, and distributed some propaganda materials about new and upcoming projects. Additionally, some Italian colleagues got their introduction to the Syndicate. In the evening, many of us met again at the street party of the Slovenian Pavilion opening. Those of us who before the party went to their apartments or hotels, came back with the news and the first pictures of the end of the bombing in Yugoslavia, and of the first NATO troops moving across the border into Kosovo. That night an uneasy relief dominated the atmosphere.

Syndicate meeting at C3 Budapest on April 24, 1998

Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 15:52:38 +0200 From: Andrej Tisma <aart@eunet.yu> Subject: Syndicate: PEACE HAS FINALLY COME ------Syndicate mailinglist-------------------Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/syndicate

Laboratorium has been an interdisciplinary project in which the scientific laboratory and the artist’s studio were explored on the basis of their various concept within the different disciplines.

Laboratorium has searched the limits and possibilities of the places where knowledge and culture are made. Throughout the summer 1999, within the city of Antwerp, networks, fluctuating between highly specialized work by scientists, artists, dancers, and writers. “Working places” where the participants have communicated their findings.

FRANCISCO J. VARELA IN CONVERSATION WITH HANS ULRICH OBRIST AND BARBARA VANDERLINDEN Francisco J. Varela: In science, the laboratory is the gesture, the stroke, that creates a discipline.

Some of the main physics and biology events happened that way. I’m always interested in this interface between lived experience and the scientific study. What is the interface between body and experience (rather than body and mind), what is it that we can see in that regard? This brings in the laboratory setting.

First of all there is, if I might say, based on the external or third person view of language, the estab-

lishment or the invention of psychology.

In the book “The Invention of the Subject” Danzinger traces the history of psychology, around 185060, to the creation of what we would call the psychology laboratory. What is studied in that setting is the experience of somebody from a third person point of view.

There is a specific shape for the psychology lab, which has a lot to do with the Warburg school and Wilhelm Wundt. That to me would be an interesting topic for your project “Laboratorium”.

Hans Ulrich Obrist: You mentioned that it is kind of a “road not taken” in science, the subjective

laboratory as an unrealized project at large?

Varela: Yes, in the sense that there was a bifurcation. In the later part of the nineteenth century, with the invention of psychoanalysis, with the basic gesture introduced by Freud, the belief was that you could set up a lab to study experience. Then at the same time Wundt introduced the first psychological instruments. A typical example is the tachistoscope. It would be nice to have one working in the exhibition, that people could experiment with; it’s fun to use…

Then, related to the early belief was that you could actually isolate the content of experience as you would describe the content of a microscope observation. That was the spontaneous description of this kind of study in introspection.

If you want to study experience, you use your own experience and you find instruments that allow you to make things quite precise.

The problem was that this created a number of very complicated methodological issues. To make a complex story very short, there was at the time no way to harmonize the observations from different places. Very quickly, just around 1920-25, all this bickering and disputes between labs led them to the conclusion that introspective research on items of experience was absolutely impossible.

Introspectionism waned and psychologists redefined themselves as behaviorists. That’s an interesting bit of history if you want to look at the bifurcation between experience and experimental psychology.

Obrist: Concerning the laboratory of subjectivity, when was the research interrupted? Did it happen in the nineteenth or twentieth century?

Varela: It coincided with the beginning of the war: most of the wartime introspection was coming from Germany, with one notable exception, which was the Titchner School at Cornell University. Until the 1950s, he was completely out of the mainstream of the establishment, and it became known as the “school of experimental psychology” as we know it today. Few people know the links to the introspection school, which is resurfacing today, because of the needs and the very dynamics of research. Since the word “consciousness” is back, and we are inevitably asking “What went wrong at that point?”

It’s a key question: to what extent can it be woven into a third person approach or not, and to have some of the establishment psychology with a temporary injection of introspection in anything that has to do with laboratory experiments.

Barbara Vanderlinden: Subjectivity was excluded from the laboratory practices. Do you want to understand this deviation from subjectivity in order to uncover its possibilities today?

How did this uncovering happen?

Varela: The very dynamics of this reductionistic science has led to the rediscovery of its importance.

Obrist: When did you remark this return, was it in the 1990s?

Varela: In the 1980s, with the Science of Consciousness meetings in Tucson, Arizona. The first one was in 1982, I believe.

Vanderlinden: How would you describe this turn to the discrediting of rational methods within science?

Varela: Maybe some kind of weakening of the arrogance of science…

Obrist: …and the ultimate end of certainty as Ilya Prigogine writes.

Vanderlinden: …and the beginning of a pluralistic science community.

Varela: Right, and I think critics like feminists and sociologists of science and others have made scientists think twice before saying they are closer than others to dealing with these varieties of points of view on consciousness.

Vanderlinden: Are you saying that this uncovering of subjectivity contributed to science’s awareness of its practice, in terms of its possibility to contribute to the contemporary debate about pluralism Varela: It amounts to the same thing, when you question the universality of truth, it amounts to being tolerant. You’re right, that might be the background for dynamics of research itself. What I had in mind were things like this: only in the last fifteen years do we have machines like the ones we use for brain imaging. You can see the whole human brain in action

without touching anybody. When you can do that it’s inevitable that the question of “What is it that you are experiencing?” comes up. When you1re studying atoms, you can skip the question. but when you are dealing with a subject, spontaneously you ask, “What did you experience?”, “What did you see?”, “How did you see it?” It’s interesting that in some specific instances, like mental imaging, the question of the distinction between visual perception and visual imagination is a key scientific puzzle.

Vanderlinden: In order to avoid the issues of complexity involved in subjectivity, science carried on with objectivity as a method, and now that science is able to look at the subject in a more in depth way, we have to deal again with the problems of complexity?

Varela: That’s basically the point.

Obrist: Is embracing complexity in all of your theories?

Varela: Yes, and one is forced to do so because you try to study the whole question of imaging X or thinking about X with third person techniques, you realize that there is such variability that, if you don’t take into account each person’s report, your data are bad.

That what made science change in the end is what’s wrong with an experiment that makes people really frustrated. It’s really pragmatically driven. So, consciousness and introspection are back onto the agenda. Not only introspection, but the whole notion of first person, because then you realize that introspection has a technique

to isolate little patterns of experience, and this is one way of doing.

Contemplative traditions have emphasized a similar orientation for a very long time. I’m particularly thinking of the Buddhist tradition, which I know better and which is the strongest. In other words, Buddhism (sometimes) is a pragmatic of human learning based on introspection. This thrust can also be found in psychoanalysis, and that would be a illustration of another portable laboratory: the couch.

Vanderlinden: I would like to relate this to an other aspect of the laboratory. The notion of inside and outside: its sense of exclusion.

It is a Western practice, which historically excluded a wide range of individuals, from women to the uneducated to the non-Western.

And as you discussed before, the way you talk about the putting aside of subjectivity within the science-practice, also a form of exclusion of certain methods for research.

Varela: Epistemologically, I would suggest that, rather than putting the accent on the subjective or objective, let’s try to step out of that barrier. Because in fact the whole point is in some sense to see that to set the experiential of the subjective in contrast to something where the real knowledge is, which is the objective, is already a gesture, it’s already having decided what you can do. So, the whole point of the first person approach is to say no, consciousness, which is so-called subjective, is indeed accessible through individual introspection.

Vanderlinden: In our preparatory discussions about the Laboratorium project we mentioned several times that we wanted to avoid the dichotomy of the artist being subjective and the scientist being objective. How can we avoid this cliché?

Varela: Instead of not saying this, it has to be shown by action. One cannot have an analyst conducting a session in public, unfortunately.

But there could be somebody engaged in a serious, professional way in meditation practice. He could just sit there; meditation is done sitting.

Instead of talking about the difference between absorption and meditation, the key to communicate these ideas is to really place it in a pragmatic side to transform the meditation cushion into the laboratory, and put it into the exhibition with somebody sitting on it.

Then the public will say, “What are you doing?”; he would respond, and then there could be a moment of dialogue. The public could come and see what is being done, realize that something is being done, although that what is being done is “not doing.”

Vanderlinden: An incitement to participate rather than presenting it as the documentation of some sort of laboratory concept.

Varela: What would be more interesting than working with a yogi would be to call in somebody like yourself. A Belgian guy in blue jeans. The moral of the story is that everyone can be successful at meditating.

My whole point is really that it

would be simple, practical and interesting to introduce this aspect of radical self-deconstruction, which is not introspection, into another context because it’s a form of knowledge, and compare it to a form of introspection. The difference is that in introspection, you focus on a certain content to make it explicit.

Famous example: everybody knows how to tie the shoes, but try explaining how to do it.

Extremely difficult. You just do it.

The idea of introspection is to seek what it is you know how to do…

What we are talking about here is a pragmatic to have access to mental process, to a level of experience that normally is in the prereflective area. So that you have to make a gesture to move what is pre-reflective that “you know, but you don’t know how you know” into the reflective. And that is a specific form of laboratory, you have to do it just as much as in perception research.

a day. What is missing for me, and that is why I don’t feel completely at ease with the whole thing, is that if we just produce meditation as a happening, we are missing the interface with science explicitly, that is, the junction with cognitive science via phenomenology and introspective culture, which are supposed to produce descriptions needed for modern science.

So, the idea for me is clear, what is not clear is how to bring it into a happening.

Vanderlinden: Do you believe there is, at the end of this century, a possibility for meditation, Buddhist or other non-Western practices to be taken seriously by Western science?

Varela: I would say there is a window of opportunity for that, yes. Finding the people to realize the cushion laboratory is not a problem. I’m not so sure that we have enough clarity about how this meditation area fits into the context of the “Laboratorium” exhibition. A lot of meditation is done in retreat. It would be interesting to have someone in retreat in the museum, twenty-four hours

Laboratorium 27 June–3 October 1999 Curators: Hans Ulrich Obrist, Barbara Vanderlinden A co-production between Antwerpen Open and Roomade in collaboration with the Provinciaal Museum voor Fotografie, Antwerp, Belgium http://laboratorium.antwerpenopen.be

NUOVI SPAZI PER L’ARTE. CONTENITORI DI OPERE, PERSONE, IDEE. 13 giugno 1999 Stefano Giovanazzi. Associazione Numero Civico, Rovereto L’idea di questo incontro nasce da un interesse che le istituzioni italiane, sia a livello nazionale con la progettazione del nuovo Centro per le Arti Contemporanee di Roma, sia a livello locale (Rovereto, Bologna, Firenze ecc.) mostrano per la costruzione di nuovi spazi museali per l’arte contemporanea. Bisogna però chiedersi cosa e come fare all’interno di questi spazi. Se si parla di contemporaneità, la ricerca artistica va considerata un processo di continua trasformazione; gli spazi per l’arte contemporanea, i “musei”, non vanno quindi pensati come dati una volta per tutte, ma piuttosto come strutture che cambiano continuamente, non intese soltanto come contenitori di opere, luoghi di esposizioni, agenti di acquisizioni.

Anche per il sistema dell’arte è centrale il problema dell’appartenenza a una comunità, la necessità della costruzione di un “patto sociale”, un “ambiente culturale” cui partecipino istituzioni e gruppi indipendenti, nonché individui dalle diverse professionalità. All’interno di questo “ambiente culturale” si scambiano informazioni e conoscenze, si verificano – e si mettono in discussione – le appartenenze disciplinari, si articolano considerazioni sul valore delle proposte dei vari interlocutori, si creano legami basati sulla fiducia e sulla stima fra i diversi soggetti. Laddove, per esempio, lo spazio di Oreste alla Biennale cerca di costruire uno spazio sociale, le istituzioni in Italia tendono a creare situazioni di esclusione. Ciò rende la comunità più debole, le proposte più frammentarie, i soggetti più isolati.

Anna Daneri. Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como The Advanced Course in Visual Arts first started in 1995, the brainchild of London-based Italian artist Annie Ratti, and curators Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and Angela Vettese. Ever since, the course, free of charge, has maintained exemplary status both in Italy and abroad as an opportunity for intensive, specialized study, each year under a different important international figure. Aware of how far behind training for young artists in public institutions is lagging, the Fondazione Ratti has devised an innovative course which, over the years, has developed to involve young artists from all over the world. The idea is that the course represent an experimental workshop of art and theory, where the experiences of the young participating artists can come into contact with those of the invited artists and theoreticians in the hope that horizons be broadened within a take on art that is as contaminated and contaminating as possible.

Every year a great artist is invited, on the basis of the quality of his own work and for his teaching prowess, to propose to the young participants a specific working program of his own devising. So far, invited artists have included Kosuth, Armleder, Kaprow, Fulton, Steinbach, Kabakov. Each year, the course takes on a different structure, according to the guidelines set by the visiting professor.

Concomitantly with the course, seminars and conferences are held by critics, artists, philosophers, and directors. At the end of three weeks of workshop, the participants are required to hold an end-of-course exhibition, alongside the show presented by the visiting professor himself. All of this is documented in a catalogue showcasing the work resulting from the course.

As for the future, we plan to establish closer relations with other institutions, in Italy and abroad, with the aim to construct a network. Currently, an exhibition of the work from the course is hosted yearly by the non-profit space Viafarini in Milan.

Andrea Sperni. Artista, Bologna Posso riportare la mia esperienza di artista invitato all’interno di una mostra nel cosiddetto “Spazio Aperto” della Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna di Bologna.

Mi sembra che ogni volta che si lavora con un’istituzione pubblica in Italia, si ha la sensazione di un percorso che si ferma a metà strada. La gestione del rapporto con l’artista e il suo lavoro rischia sempre di essere sterile, finalizzato solo ed esclusivamente alla realizzazione di una mostra, senza un approfondimento di conoscenza da parte di alcuno dei soggetti coinvolti, senza alcun seguito. Alla fine dell’esperienza, quando torni a casa col tuo piccolo catalogo, ti viene da chiedere se i soldi spesi sono serviti a qualcuno, all’artista o alla collettività, o se sono stati spesi solo perché “potevano” essere spesi, ma senza alcuna programmazione sensata.

Fabrizio Fiorini. Architetto, Perugia All’interno del mio lavoro per l’Università di Perugia ho elaborato un questionario che verte sui numerosi problemi (architettonici, organizzativi, logistici, ambientali ecc.) posti dalla realizzazione di un museo. Tale questionario è stato sottoposto a diverse decine di artisti italiani (soprattutto quelli che hanno già avuto esperienze internazionali), proprio per capire quali orientamenti gli artisti possono dare ai progettisti di un museo, e per ricevere informazioni sulle reali esigenze degli artisti.

Ulla Arnell, Ulrika Sten. Riksutställningar–Swedish Travelling Exhibitions, Stockholm Since its inception in 1965 Riksutställningar has produced more then 1000 exhibitions. Every year the travelling exhibitions are shown at more than one hundred venues in Sweden as well as in other cities in the Nordic countries and beyond.

This makes Riksutställningar one of the country’s major cultural institutions. Today Riksutställningar is a government authority working with travelling exhibitions and developing the artistic, educational and technical aspects of the exhibition medium. There is a staff of more than 50 people working on the premises in Stockholm, and, every year, a collaboration with at least the same number of freelancers including designers, artists, crafts people and authors.

Mobile exhibition spaces. An important venture – with the aim of reaching smaller places that do not have exhibition premises – has been undertaken in collaboration with the Swedish State Railways. Since 1987, six different exhibition trains have visited 353 places throughout Sweden. Riksutställningar also has an Expomobile, a trailer offering 50 m2 of exhibition space. In the summer of 1999 Riksutställningar went to sea. The exhibition “People and Boats in Northern Europe” was shown on board the specially fitted merchant vessel. A new show with the Swedish group of artists “Swe.de”, will start touring with Riksutställningar in April 2000.

Alessandra Raso, Stefano Testa. Cliostraat, Torino Progetto per una nuova Kunsthalle a Torino (1998). Come progettare un nuovo luogo per l’arte? Deve essere pensato per il XXI secolo: un luogo che integri il sistema globale dell’arte con il contesto locale della città, un luogo trasformabile, adattabile, flessibile… uno spazio innanzitutto funzionale.

Il progetto architettonico è semplice, composto da due elementi: uno spazio esterno – piastra libera e tecnologicamente attrezzata – è lo spazio espositivo, e un edificio come contenitore di tutte le funzioni di supporto alla produzione e all’esposizione dell’arte.

Il museo per il XXI secolo è il museo che non c’è. È un luogo che non esiste fisicamente in modo stabile, ma prende forma e consistenza solo nel momento in cui capita qualcosa, c’è un’esposizione, è programmato un evento.

Gli artisti sono invitati a partecipare in modo nuovo: il loro lavoro non riempie un contenitore che li “aspetta” (e che langue nel frattempo), ma sono chiamati a creare ex-novo un ambiente in cui non c’è distinzione tra opera e spazio espositivo.

Normalmente il museo non c’è: l’esposizione diviene un’eccezione, un evento straordinario su una superficie che altrimenti “riposa” ed è vissuta dalla città.

Eva Persson. Curator, Stockholm As an exhibition manager – at Riksutställningar (1967-1989), and at the Museum of Work in Norrköping (1989-1993) – and as the artistic director of Sommarakademi för utställare / Summer Academy for Exhibition Managers (1997-1999), I have been trying to introduce visual artists in museum work.

Though “my” exhibitions always have been narrative/didactic percourses based on objects from museums (of science and technology, of natural or cultural history, of archaeology, etc.), rather than art shows, I regard every exhibition as a work of art.

I like to confront non-art museum curators with living artists and I am interested in overlapping objects and knowledges from different fields and different museums in the same exhibition.

Most of the exhibitions I have curated are related to work, visualising working conditions today and in the past time, often with a gender perspective.

Zefferina Castoldi, Mario Gorni. Care of, Cusano Milanino Care of, all’inizio gestito da un gruppo di artisti, era nato con lo scopo di cercare di sopperire alla carenza delle istituzioni pubbliche nei riguardi della giovane arte.

Presa la decisione di continuare in questo lavoro, noi abbiamo rinunciato al nostro lavoro di artisti. L’associazione si propone come interfaccia fra l’artista ai suoi esordi e il sistema dell’arte. Dall’inizio delle attività più di mille artisti hanno lasciato il loro materiale a Care of, e moltissimi di loro hanno in seguito fatto mostre in gallerie private o spazi pubblici. L’associazione ha uno spazio espositivo proprio, dove alterna mostre di giovani a mostre di artisti affermati.

Care of, in consorzio con Viafarini e con un finanziamento del Comune di Milano, offre da tre anni una serie di servizi: raccolta di materiali degli artisti e creazione di un archivio liberamente consultabile; smistamento dei materiali raccolti ad altri

soggetti (galleristi, curatori ecc.) ritenuti di volta in volta potenzialmente interessati; organizzazione di 15-20 mostre all’anno nella propria sede espositiva; servizio di biblioteca e schedario bibliografico di cataloghi e pubblicazioni relative agli artisti presenti nell’archivio, creazione di un CD-ROM con dati estrapolati dall’archivio; creazione di una videoteca (che al momento conta circa 600 video, fra videoarte, documentazione di performance, eventi, conferenze); promozione di mostre di videoarte italiana all’estero e scambi con esperienze analoghe internazionali.

Cesare Pietroiusti. Artista, Roma Il progetto “Carta bianca per l’arte a venire” è partito con una pagina bianca su il Manifesto (14 gennaio 1999), come luogo di raccolta di idee su come pensare, progettare, organizzare i nuovi spazi dell’arte contemporanea. L’iniziativa è stata raccolta da UnDo.Net, che sul suo sito web ha aperto uno spazio a disposizione per proposte, suggerimenti, visioni sugli spazi dell’arte.

Si può mettere in discussione la differenza, all’interno di un museo, fra spazio espositivo e spazio di servizio; si può pensare a un museo il cui spazio di azione sia decentrato, multiplo, mutevole; si può pensare a un museo che sia “specchio” di eventi che accadono altrove, anche molto lontano; infine si può pensare al museo come luogo di incontro reale, di scambio di idee e di esperienze, anche a un livello conviviale, fra gli artisti, altri addetti ai lavori e il pubblico.

Cornelia Lauf. Camera Oscura, Siena Il programma di Camera Oscura prevede da sempre il coinvolgimento delle realtà locali, dal negoziante all’artigiano alla casalinga, in un programma che presenta anche videoartisti, designer e compositori, realizzando mostre con prodotti molto diversi e budget ridotti.

Le caratteristiche e le dimensioni dello spazio, nonché le modalità di organizzazione delle mostre, si contrappongono alle grandi organizzazioni museali, e alla loro compartimentazione per settori disciplinari e blocchi cronologici.

Mario Cristiani. Arte Continua, San Gimignano L’associazione Arte Continua di San Gimignano nasce dalla passione di un gruppo di amici, nell’estate del 1990. L’obiettivo era, ed è tuttora, quello di dare “continuità” alla presenza dell’arte nei luoghi della vita quotidiana, a partire da dove ci si trova. Questa una delle ragioni del nostro nome.

Dal 1996 con “Arte All’Arte” abbiamo avviato un percorso alla ricerca di un punto di equilibrio diverso tra le città e le “loro” campagne. Invitiamo, ogni anno e per ogni città, un artista che, a nostro parere, deve essere conosciuto e riconosciuto oggi, proprio come lo sono gli artisti antichi che sono già “ospitati” in queste piccole città d’arte italiane. Gli artisti contemporanei, espressione di una cultura fortemente urbana e metropolitana, vengono chiamati a reinterpretare il loro lavoro “localmente”. Il nostro è un tentativo di far uscire questi territori da un ottica di periferia culturale, e nello stesso tempo far considerare agli artisti il loro lavoro come un segno della storia dell’arte che si sta scrivendo adesso, in relazione diretta con quella già scritta. Inoltre, con la guida che accompagna sempre il catalogo di “Arte All’Arte”, intendiamo evidenziare il rapporto tra ciò che sta dentro lo spazio, completamente umanizzato, della città, e lo spazio che sta in mezzo e fuori: la campagna. Uscire da un ottica di isolamento per creare un contesto, un tessuto territoriale più vasto e “sensibilizzato”; dall’arte all’arte, dunque, verso tutto il resto.

Everyday life Monday, June 14th 1999, a connection with:

OdA* – Organisation des Alltags – Künstlerhaus Dortmund Exhibitions, Lectures, Concerts and Workshops about Everyday life.

Artists working on the structures of daily life, not with the materials of daily life.

Workshop: Foreigners in One’s Own Home

by Paola Di Bello Trying to be like newborns, like strangers, like foreigners in one’s own home. Seeing in a virgin way and trying to find a condition that shows what is extraordinary in what is ordinary.

Often the most difficult thing is to see what is daily under our eyes, the places we have forgotten because we experience them everyday, such as the road we take every morning to go to work or to school.

The aim of this workshop is to follow the road that each participant takes from his/her home to the Künstlerhaus. We’ll do it as a group to try to see each route in a new way, as the familiar and everyday way of looking, and perhaps without seeing, is made to interact with the gaze of the stranger.

Saturday June 12th: a talk on the topic of “Everyday Life” followed by a discussion of the aims of the workshop.

Sunday June 13th: On location, to document the routes with photos, video, audio, etc.

Monday June 14th: Review and installation of the material produced, and connection with Oreste at the Venice Biennale.

Organised by: Ann Seebach, Künstlerhaus Dortmund Jens Brand, MeX Paola Di Bello

BACINONAPOLI Reflections by Matteo Fraterno For three days, twentyfive artists from various regions of Italy were the guests of other artists in Naples.

No public events or meetings, nor an exhibition; just artists “adopting” other artists and spending time together.

A program was set up: visits to sites in the city, special places chosen for their capacity to underline the history, the contradictions, the rythm of Naples. The arrival and departure from the port to the island, the voyage by sea, the suspension of the “non-place”.

The conviviality, the food, the appointments.

The artists pondered over the objective of the project.

That was it: not having a pre-determined objective, three days were offered to experience without any conditioning, the availability of the artists to share their creative thinking.

Sharing synonymous with adopting.

What has remained of such an experience?

–a container for the “differentiated collection” of thoughts, proposals, and projects elaborated by the participating artists.

–a container of criteria, more than of objects, such as those so differently used by contemporary artistic practices.

-a base of relations for a democratic and free outgrowth of ideas and projects that maintain an independency from any manipulation or obligation whatsoever.

-the appealing idea that it is possible to communicate even in the absence of any support, request, demand, objective.

“Fortuna Critica” of Bacinonapoli C.P. “I’d like to understand completely the reason for which Bacinonapoli was a significant experience, at least within the panorama of contemporary artistic research in Italy…

At the moment, I think Bacinonapoli has been important for the same reasons for which one could say it was a total failure.

Twentyfive artists coming together from various cities , plus at least as many who were involved locally, and practically nothing happened - or at least nothing evident… From many points of view, of all the “Oreste” projects, Bacinonapoli was the most radical, as it displaced the attention from the artwork - not only as an object, but also as a concept - to a very experience, being with others, being in a certain place.”

G.N. “In Bacinonapoli any action, even simply taking a bus, even without any value added to the experience (such as an illuminating idea that could come in any circumstance), becomes part of an artwork and becomes significant in an absence of significance.”

R.C. “After Bacinonapoli I went to Naples every month… developing relationships with artists and non-artists… The experience of Bacinonapoli was fascinating and also fun. I was taken around to places like the monumental ancient hospice for paupers (L’Albergo dei Poveri), or on the ferryboat. In Ischia I enjoyed a refreshing swim and I built a castle made out of business-cards washed away by the waves. All this gave me the sensation that I was living a state of drifting along. A project on the silence was born then.”

S.F. “The experience of three days in Naples was intense but it left me wanting to get to know better the people I had met. I remember the cook with his fried foods, an architect with whom I left a conversation unfinished, many voices reading Derrida, everything seemed more a dream than an event.

If anyone can put me up for a week in Naples…”

M.F. “In the absence of concrete objectives, trust has been attributed to the artists and to art.”

Fraterno/Sonnino

ubub@libero.it

Photo: container. Title: “Bacinonapoli”.

Bacinonapoli took place in Naples on the 16th,17th,18th of June, 1999, and 54 people were involved.“Pompeiorama” collaborated to the realization of the project.

I L N U O V O C I N E M A G L O B A L E I P E R R E A L I S TA P R E S E N TA I L P I Ù G R A N D E SPETTACOLO DEL MONDO. MIGLIAIA DI UOMINI/COMPARSE IN AZIONE, GRANDIOSI EFFETTI SPECIALI, TECNOLOGIE SOFISTICATISSIME. E POI DUE PROTAGONISTI ECCEZIONALI: LO SCERIFFO BUONO E IL BOIA SERBO. LA PRODUZIONE HA STANZIATO CENTINAIA DI MILIONI DI DOLLARI PER LA REALIZZAZIONE DEL PROGETTO. TEATRO DELLE OPERAZIONI I BALCANI, SCENA IDEALE PER UN KOLOSSAL DI F I N E M I L L E N N I O . I N TA N T O I T R A I L E R PA S S A N O D I C O N T I N U O NEI TELEGIORNALI. TUTTI I PALINSESTI TELEVISIVI SONO STRAVOLTI. B I S O G N A R A C C O N TA R E O R A P E R O R A L’ E V E N T O . M I L I O N I D I SPETTATORI SONO INCOLLATI DAVANTI ALLA TIVÙ. GUARDANO LE IMMAGINI CHE VIA VIA ARRIVANO DAL SET. ASCOLTANO LE INTERVISTE AGLI ATTORI E I PARERI DELLA CRITICA. CI SONO TUTTI GLI INGREDIENTI PER UN INCASSO DA RECORD. AZIONE, DRAMMA, DISPERAZIONE, ESODO, SANGUE, DISTRUZIONI, VIOLENZA, AEREI INVISIBILI. BUONA VISIONE.

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DEFINIZIONI BRIGATA ES MAGAZINE

ARTE & GUERRA LAURA PALMIERI MARIACRISTINA CREMASCHI MATTEO FRATERNO IRINA SUBOTIC THANITART PAOLA SABATTI BASSINI E.B.HASSELBAKER GIULIO LACCHINI MUSTAFA BABANI MARIO GORNI/CARE OF ROBERTA IACHINI GRUPPO MILLE CHRIS TORCH ALBERTA PELLACANI CESARE PIETROIUSTI C E D O M I R V A S I C L I B E R A M A Z Z O L E N I L O R E D A N A P A R M E S A N I CRISTINA SHOW ALDO SPOLDI GIOVANNI BAI IGOR STEPANCIC ANTONIO AUGUGLIARO GABRIELE PORTA FRANCESCO IMPELLIZZERI STEFANO ZORZANELLO GIANCARLO NORESE EUGENIO GILIBERTI FREE ART C A M PA I G N N E N A D BRACIC ANTEO RADOVAN FABRIZIO BASSO KATARZYNA MATOGA MANUELA CORTI DEJAN GRBA MILETA PRODANOVIC NELLO TEODORI CLAUDIO ANGIONE STEFANO CAGOL GEOFFREY LAWRENCE FERDINANDO MAZZITELLI FEDERICO TANZI MIRA Z O R A N H A M O V I C G I O V A N N A T R E N T O M A G M A T E O T E L L O L I I G O R S T E V A N O V I C

Soup Kitchen/Mensa Gratuita an offering ai Giardini della Biennale a collaboration between Elena Berriolo and Ryszard Wasko for ORESTE to introduce The International Artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Museum & Construction in Process

Under the title POW CAMP SITE an interactive web project was launched from Belgrade in April 1999. Initiated by two Belgrade artists, Igor Stepancic and Cedomir Vasic, the project was realised in studio for design and informational technologies, BluePrint, with the assistance of Goran Jovanovic, an electronic engineer. POW CAMP SITE is an net-art project about Art being imprisoned in war, so every artist as a prisoner of war. Be confined to the isolation of CAMP (WEB) SITE artists create as a reaction to the situation in which they live.

The bottom line is, besides unavoidable association with war and violence, the connection between art and technology, and communication too, for all this is what Internet is made of.

One should constantly have in mind that project was realised under the bombing, permanent power shortage, overloaded telephone lines, so in a very deep isolation and technological “storms”. Those “obstacles” defined its content and were basis for new ways of communicating and technological solutions. About twenty artists from all over the Cyber World answered to the invitation to participate at one of the themes:

Beuys vs. Warhol, Perseus’s shield, Dolly’s Lambs,

Art at the end… or adding others, developing and deepening the concept of site with their own, fresh ideas.The project was presented at the 48.

Venice Biennial at Sala Oreste (ORESTE Space) in the frame of the program “dAPERTutto”. An On-line Chat was organised as a special performance in which took part simultaneously both public on the spot and visitors from the net world. In the “virtual” reality POW Camp Site was present at about forty art sites, projects and forums. The site is open for new art works and each Thursday an on-line Chat takes place on address: www.blueprintit.com/chat.

Shelter room, BluePrint studio, Beograd, April 28th 1999.

Oreste room, Italian pavilion, Venice Biennial, June 19th 1999.

M i g h t y P O W : a question from the public: what do you think about the italian army?

P O W - Z - 6 6 : 3They already arrestedâ&#x20AC;Ś p o w 1 7 1 2 1 9 6 : just a joke, sorry M i g h t y P O W : a guy right here is a professional soldier in italian army: he has to go to Pec in September p o w 1 7 1 2 1 9 6 : I d like to remember then from the movie Mediteraneo s k i p s i l v e r : are they pow too c a r r i e r 4 6 5 : my experience public is reticent cause they haent done it b4 and need guiding P o w 0 1 : WE DON'T KNOW THEM PERSONALLY NOR THEIR ORGANISATION! P O W - Z - 6 6 : 3Wish him good luck M i g h t y P O W : he says: thanks!

P o w 0 1 : GOOD LUCK c a r r i e r 4 6 5 : need terminals people can sit at in some sorta privacy.

P o w 0 1 : WHY HE DECEIDED TO BE A SOLDIER? c a r r i e r 4 6 5 : becaus enet is a personal intimate thing P o w 0 1 : WHAT? M i g h t y P O W : the guy here asks, how do you think the situation in kosovo will finish?

P o w 0 1 : NOT GOOD P o w 0 1 : STILL LOTS OF FIGHTING AHEAD P o w 0 1 : IT'S INCOMPLETE SITUATION, NOT RESOLOVED s k i p s i l v e r: and behind. 1200bce M i g h t y P O W : is there anybody from Pec online now?

P o w 0 1 : WAR, LIKE ANY OTHER JOB, MUST BE FINISHED. YOU CAN'T JUST LEAVE IT ON THE HALFWAY. DON'T YOU AGREE. NO NO ONE FROM PEC. p o w 1 7 1 2 1 9 6 : i think they are busy at the moment M i g h t y P O W : what do you feel about the guy-italian soldier here?

P O W - Z - 6 6 : 3I see one thing:The european countries are more aggresive vith Puting forces in kosovo and tearing apart region...

P O W - Z - 6 6 : I feel simpathy...

M i g h t y P O W : the guy asks, what do you feel about KFOR in general? s k i p s i l v e r : sorry friends. have to go. thunderstorm here and tornado warnings. see you tomorrow.

P o w 0 1 : I WOULD SAY HE'S OK SINCE HE'S CHATING WITH US AND HE SOUNDS WARRIED ABOUT GOING TO KOSOVO. I THINK THATS NORMAL, I LIKE HIS REACTION. p o w 1 7 1 2 1 9 6 : Bye Skip hold tight *** Signoff: skipsilver (QUIT: User exited) P o w 0 1 : BUYE SKIP, TAKE CARE MY FRIEND

ELETTRA, oreste’s sister a network of art organizations An international meeting of independent art organizations was held from the 22 nd to the 27 th of June 1999 in Oreste Space at the Venice Biennale for the constitution of a European network.

Oslo

Bremen London

Münster München Frankfurt

Paris

Wien

Genève Como Trento Nîmes

Graz Trieste

Milano Venezia Bologna Torino Siena Firenze Roma Lecce

Napoli

Matera Catania

a flexible tool for international interaction Independent not-for-profit organizations can be found everywhere in the art world. Born from individual initiatives, or from small groups that share similar interests, and often organized as associations, they are mostly meant as cultural laboratories and have the common intent of nurturing creative research and curatorship. Their basic and distinctive traits are a will to experiment and a keen interest in the area of turmoil and of productive ideas, which generate new expressive trends. Although some associations may become part of mainstream, they usually keep operating in alternative ways, without, however, constituting fringe activities. They reflect and represent lively situations which are the lifelines of both the institutional art system and market. These initiatives suffer from a permanent dearth of funds (a severe limitation, which often lessens the quality of the work, since it hampers longer term approaches) and, at times, from insularity syndromes.

Their lack of visibility prevents them from imprinting their environment and context to which they want to belong. Italy is a case in point: it is a decentralized country that has always been characterized by a widespread distribution/dispersion of energy. Few efforts are devoted to the diffusion of contemporary art and there is no institution to speak of that can be a point of reference for cultural legitimacy and effective support.

Therefore, the parties involved have to assess their opportunities, proposing and organizing new possible actions through contacts that possibly foster further exchanges.

This is the reason why we have a project for an international network, which would let information and knowledge about contemporary artistic and cultural research go around and would suggest an exchange and sharing of events, exhibitions, publications, including various initiatives.

The associations that will choose to join the network will remain indepedent and responsible for their own cultural proposals, and will be able to display their capacity to generate projects.

The network will be presented during a European meeting of non-profit associations and organizations in the framework of Oreste at the Venice Biennale: a perfect opportunity since Oreste and the network Elettra are on the same wave-lenght.

In fact, they both promote the spreading of ideas and contacts, the promotion of projects, and the confluence of exchanges and partnerships in a milieu that might otherwise become splintered and stifling. A web site will provide a common space for debates and opinions, where member structures and associations will be able to show their activities and projects. The network would take off more prominently if it could have access to the funds assigned to cultural activities by the European Union.

Interactions may take different forms. The network is meant as a flexible tool, in order to secure seamless relations among associations, without altering their identities. It should activate energies and synergies, and optimizing the financial exposure required by any cultural enterprise.

Gabi Scardi

uno strumento flessibile per un’interazione internazionale Sono internazionalmente diffuse, nel mondo dell’arte, le strutture di tipo indipendente e non-profit. Nate da iniziative individuali o da interessi comuni di piccoli gruppi, e organizzate spesso in forma associativa, questo strutture si propongono come laboratori culturali e sono normalmente accomunate dall’intento di accompagnare, sostenere e incoraggiare le esperienze di ricerca creativa e curatoriale. Caratteristiche costitutive ne sono il carattere sperimentale e l’interesse per quell’area di fermento e di produzione di idee da cui si generano le nuove tendenze espressive. In molti casi queste esperienze si sviluppano in senso istituzionale, più spesso continuano ad operare secondo modalità alternative. Non per questo la loro attività è da considerarsi marginale. Esse riflettono e rappresentano situazioni estremamente vitali, dalle quali sia il sistema istituzionale dell’arte che le strutture commerciali traggono linfa. L’afasia da carenza cronica di mezzi economici (gravemente limitante, perché si traduce spesso in un abbassamento qualitativo dovuto all’impossibilità di pianificare la programmazione) e una frequente sindrome da isolamento sono due tra le difficoltà cui queste iniziative debbono far fronte. Il fatto di operare in condizioni di scarsa visibilità, d’altra parte, pregiudica la possibilità di imprimere un segno proprio su quel contesto reale a cui esse ambiscono a restare aderenti. Questo è ancora più vero per l’Italia, paese da sempre caratterizzato da un decentramento territoriale e da una distribuzionedispersione delle energie. Pochi sono, in Italia, gli sforzi dedicati alla diffusione dell’arte contemporanea, ed è quasi assente una struttura istituzionale capace di costituire un elemento di legittimazione culturale e di appoggio organizzativo. Tocca quindi ai diretti interessati individuare le potenzialità della situazione per prefigurare e organizzare nuove possibilità di azione, creando circuiti che favoriscano scambi e collaborazioni.

Per questo motivo abbiamo messo a punto il progetto di un network internazionale che costitusca un veicolo per la circolazione di informazioni e per la conoscenza della ricerca artistica e culturale contemporanea, proponendo in particolare lo scambio e la condivisione di eventi, iniziative diverse, attività espositive e editoriali. Le strutture che sceglieranno di aderire al Network manterranno la propria autonomia e responsabilità rispetto alle proposte culturali avanzate e potranno far valere la propria capacità progettuale.

Abbiamo scelto di presentare il progetto del Network con un meeting europeo tra enti e associazioni non-profit organizzato nell’ambito delle attività di Oreste alla Biennale di Venezia perché entrambi sono caratterizzati dall’intenzione di favorire la diffusione di idee, i contatti, la promozione di progetti, di catalizzare la componente dialettica e interlocutoria di un ambiente che rischia altrimenti di scoprirsi parcellizzato e asfittico. Un sito Internet, inteso come spazio comune, costituirà l’area di discussione e di scambio di opinioni all’interno del quale ogni singola struttura o associazione aderente possa documentare la propria attività e presentare i propri progetti. Le modalità dell’interazione possono essere varie.

Il Network vuole essere uno strumento flessibile per favorire la massima fluidità nei rapporti tra associazioni, senza che le singole strutture perdano il proprio carattere.

Si tratta quindi di attivare energie e sinergie, e di ottimizzare l’impegno economico necessario per ogni impresa culturale, attingendo, se possibile, ai fondi elargiti dall’Unione Europea.

Organisers of the meeting/Organizzatori della riunione: Mario Gorni, Zefferina Castoldi, Barbara Fässler, Gabi Scardi, Cesare Viel, and Luca Vitone Photos: Mario Gorni

participants to the meeting/ partecipanti all’incontro ARTErìa, Matera ARTE ALL’ARTE, San Gimignano ARTEaPARTE, Milano ATELIER G9, Oslo A.TITOLO, Torino BASE, Firenze BLOOM, Mezzago C/O Care of, Cusano Milanino CHANGE, Roma C.R.A.C., Montescaglioso ESCA, Milhaud de Nîmes FONDAZIONE RATTI, Como FORUM STADTPARK, Graz GALLERY CHANNEL, London GAM, Torino GENERAZIONE MEDIA, Milano GOLDANKAUF, München GRUPPO 78, Trieste IN VITRO, Genève KÛNSTLERHAUS BREMEN, Bremen

LE FAUBOURG, Paris LINK, Bologna MUSEO TEO, Milano NEON, Bologna NO ADMITTANCE, Milano NUMERO CIVICO, Rovereto NUOVA ICONA, Venezia OFFICINE, Catania OPERA PAESE, Roma ORB.it, Lecce PERCORSO VITA, Bologna PNEUMA, Bologna POMPEIORAMA, Napoli TRANS EUROPE HALLES, Paris TREE ASSOCIATION, Bologna UNDO.NET, Milano VIAFARINI, Milano WOCHENKLAUSUR, Wien ZONE, Bologna ZWEITE ZEIT, Münster

final resolution of the meeting The network will promote the circulation of contemporary cultural and artistic researches and will be particularly dedicated to the acknowledgement and sharing of exhibitions and publishing activities, cultural events, curatorial and art projects.

The freedom of choice and of judgement will be considered as the starting point from which the network will be constituted. Public and private bodies, non-profit associations, artists, curators, and other cultural operators participated and are invited to participate also in the future.

NECESSARY QUALIFICATIONS FOR PARTICIPATION TO THE NETWORK Each participant to the network offers, and receives: projects and ideas and/or information and/or phisical spaces and/or financial resources and technical and professional know-how and/or tools and technologies.

WHAT IS OFFERED BY THE NETWORK A web site with three access levels: a) a public level containing information and datas about participating members and accomplished network projects. b) a forum dedicated to projects being carried out – access to this level shall be restricted to network members. c) a forum dedicated to the discussion of proposals and ideas – access to this level shall be restricted to network members.

risoluzione finale dell’incontro Il network europeo e internazionale ha lo scopo di favorire la circolazione della ricerca artistica e culturale contemporanea, proponendo in particolare la diffusione, la conoscenza e la condivisione di progetti artistici, curatoriali ed editoriali, eventi culturali e attività espositive.

La tutela delle libertà di scelta e di giudizio e la salvaguardia della qualità e della responsabilità delle proposte culturali sono elementi alla base della costituzione di questo network.

Hanno partecipato e sono invitati a partecipare ai lavori di costituzione del network enti (pubblici e privati), associazioni non-profit, artisti, curatori ed altri operatori culturali.

REQUISITI DI BASE Ogni partecipante al network offre ed accoglie, nell’ambito della programmazione delle proprie attività: progetti e idee e/o informazioni e conoscenze e/o spazi fisici e/o risorse economiche e competenze tecniche e professionali e/o strumenti e tecnologie.

COSA OFFRE IL NETWORK Un sito in rete con tre livelli di accesso a) Informativo, contenente dati istituzionali e progetti realizzati b) Forum c) Progettuale

grafica_efrem barrotta bigsur@libero.it traduzione_chiara del prete foto_luigi negro

grafica_efrem barrotta bigsur@libero.it traduzione_chiara del prete foto_luigi negro

June 25th, 1999. A guided tour through some delicacies from the Puglia region.

Courtesy of Cantina Crifo, Asso.Pr.Oli, Consorzio Pasticceri e Artigiani di Puglia, Pasticceria Berardi, Panificio Cascione.

3 luglio 1999

Elena Cologni Le istituzioni in Gran Bretagna: l’artista come ricercatore La giornata è iniziata con un’introduzione di tipo storico sul sistema universitario artistico in Gran Bretagna, dove è consentito ad artisti di condurre la propria ricerca artistica fino al riconoscimento di un Dottorato di Ricerca. Io e Charles abbiamo portato la nostra esperienza in questo senso: entrambi lavoriamo al London Institute, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design a Londra.

Diagrammi Il mio progetto, intitolato L’identità del vero in relazione a concetti di spazio, viene condotto attraverso la pratica artistica supportata da approfondimenti teorici.

Confrontando i metodi di rappresentazione del reale con le nuove tecnologie, cerco di capire come queste stabiliscano una corrispondenza tra il mondo oggettivo e la sua percezione, attraverso la reazione psicologica dell’osservatore. Questa reazione varia ed è condizionata dal contesto in cui avviene e dalla sua identità. Credo che la percezione di un lavoro sia la porta d’accesso al suo significato, così come ritengo che la percezione dell’altro costituisca il primo passo nella comunicazione tra persone.

«Vedo solo da un punto, ma nella mia esistenza sono guardato da tutte le parti». LACAN, J. Per entrare nel vivo della metodologia della ricerca ho coinvolto l’audience che, a quel punto, da estranea all’operazione messa in atto, si è trovata ad esserne protagonista. Questo con l’azione di spostare le sedie nello spazio in modo da rompere lo schema io-audience e nello scambiarci parole. Intenzione: fare in modo che le persone dimenticassero la propria identità sociale e che coinvolte all’interno del contesto arte si riavvicinassero alla propria dimensione personale. «… l’immaginario è un termine usato per descrivere l’identificazione pre-Edipo del bambino con lo stadio dello specchio, fase che inizia con un processo in cui il bimbo acquisirà una coscienza della propria soggettività all’interno dell’ordine simbolico». LACAN, J. Hanno partecipato: Maria Grazia, Simon, Giovanna, Paola, Lara, Massimo, Alessandro, Laura, Manlio, Margherita, Charles, Lino, Mariuccia, Roberto, Cesare, Marzio, Paola, Walter, Roberta, Giorgio, Paolo, Monica, Silvia, Cristina, Francesca Vincenzo, Anna… e tanta gente di passaggio.

Feedback: GIALLO LUCE BLU TRANQUILLITY ATMOSFERA LUNA GIAPPONE ROSSO VERDE ARANCIONE GIARDINO ERBA FIORI POMODORO ROSSO BIANCO PADIGLIONE CINEMA LUCE ACQUA MARE LIGURIA BIANCO CIELO BIMBO AMORE ANGUILLA PESCE CANE NERO CANE GIOCO BAMBINO PADRE IO ANGUILLA PESCE ACQUA.

Charles Kriel Il rumore digitale La ricerca è intitolata Rumore, materialità e evoluzioni estetiche della fotografia nella transazione da immagini ottiche a immagini digitali. L’intervento ha espresso il suo concetto di «rumore digitale» nella fotografia. Gli strumenti digitali nella tavolozza degli artisti hanno riposizionato spettatore, artista e lavoro in relazione alla teoria della comunicazione e al rapporto tra loro. Così come gli artisti lasciano il bell’oggetto per diventare specialisti della comunicazione, usando strumenti digitali, argomenti come la psicologia e l’estetica di comunicazione digitale diventano lo strumento critico per la pratica e la teoria dell’arte contemporanea.

I punti di discussione: • Cosa costituisce rumore in comunicazione digitale? • A che punto il rumore digitale diventa linguaggio digitale? • Dove si trova, se esiste, il rumore digitale dentro l’oggetto artistico o nella percezione dell’osservatore?

L’evento è stato documentato su video.

3 July 1999

Elena Cologni Institutions in Great Britain: Artists as Researcher The day started with an hystorical introduction on the Art Education System in Great Britain, where Artists can conduct their research up to a Ph.D. level. Charles and I have talked about our experience: we both work at The London Institute, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London.

Diagrams The title of this project is The identity of the real in relation to concepts of space and is conducted through art practice in its theoretical context. I try to look for a correspondence between objective world and its perception, through the psychological reaction of viewers while comparing various methods of representing reality. Viewers’ reaction may vary according to the context and the perceiver’s identity. I believe that perception of an artwork is the gateway to its meaning, as much as I think it constitutes the first step in communication between people. «I see from one point, but in my existence I am looked at from all sides.» LACAN, J. The event enabled myself to experiment in the research. By getting people to move the chairs in order to break the dynamic Me-audience and the exchanging of words, they were involved in the action. My intention: people had to forget about their social identity to let the personal one come out through the action of communicating in the artistic new created context. «… the imaginary is a term used to describe the identification pre-Edipean with the mirror stage, a phase which starts with a process in which the child acquire knowledge of his own subjectivity in the symbolic order.» LACAN, J. Were present: Maria Grazia, Simon, Giovanna, Paola, Lara, Massimo, Alessandro, Laura, Manlio, Margherita, Charles, Lino, Mariuccia, Roberto, Cesare, Marzio, Paola, Walter, Roberta, Giorgio, Paolo, Monica, Silvia, Cristina, Francesca, Vincenzo, Anna, and other strangers…

Their feedback: GIALLO LUCE BLU TRANQUILLITY ATMOSFERA LUNA GIAPPONE ROSSO VERDE ARANCIONE GIARDINO ERBA FIORI POMODORO ROSSO BIANCO PADIGLIONE CINEMA LUCE ACQUA MARE LIGURIA BIANCO CIELO BIMBO AMORE ANGUILLA PESCE CANE NERO CANE GIOCO BAMBINO PADRE IO ANGUILLA PESCE ACQUA.

Charles Kriel Digital Noise Charles Kriel is currently conducting research into Noise, materiality, and the evolving aesthetics of the photograph in the transition from optical to digital imaging. The discussion, «Digital Noise», addressed several issues arising from Kriel’s research which are critically relevant to contemporary art practice. The onset of digital tools in artists’ palettes has repositioned the viewer, the artist and the work itself in relation to communication theory, and in their mutual interrelationship. As artists leave the «beautiful object business» to become communication specialists using digital tools (for sound, sculpture, photography, image rendering), issues of the psychology and aesthetics of digital communication become critical to contemporary arts practice and theory.

Questions addressed included: • What constitutes noise in digital communication? • At what point does digital noise become digital language? • Where does this lie in specific forms (visual, 2D, time-based, etc.)? • Does digital noise exist within the art «object», or the viewer’s perception?

A video documentation is avalaible.

Art vs. Economy A Cultural Emergency?

July 9th, 1999

Amy Larkin As we sit on the sidelines, the global culture is being homogenized, simplified, genetically engineered, flattened and dulled. This is an emergency! It calls for no less than a cultural resistance movement.

Greenpeace and Benetton have each, in very different ways, created icons and stimulated discussions/ideas in the cultural landscape more energetically than have all but a handful of artists. Why is this? I propose that each organization “hijacked” a distribution channel by presenting something never before seen in their medium. Artists reclaim urban real estate and seem to chronically transform neighborhoods in cities all over the world, why can’t artists more effectively reclaim the cultural landscape?

If producers/entrepreneurs step up to partner with artists, we can gain influence.

Just as the Warner Bros. helped create “Hollywood” (initially a heaven for artists from all over the world), and the Weinstein Bros./Miramax helped create the current market for independent film, it is time for producers/entrepreneurs to work side by side with artists as co-conspirators again. Together, we can insert provocation, beauty, art, ideas, and most importantly, complexity into more potent distribution channels. In fact, refashioning the very essence of distribution channels may be our first job. Although the Internet would appear to be the most potent tool for this, I believe the power of people gathering in real time, in real space, offers more fertile opportunities. Real time and real space have become novel experiences in western culture.

Just as cybersex will never replace the real thing, streaming video images over the computer will never replace the experience of watching a movie in a theater with a group of strangers. As much as we love a recorded album, a live concert has a power of communion that transcends the recording. There is a “communal” and “spiritual” vacuum left by the fall of the church in the past twentyfive years, and artists have allowed corporations to claim this ground – with virtually no resistance. I maintain that this communal/cultural vacuum still exists and offers an amazing opportunity for artists.

Together, with a little cunning, we can move out of the ghetto we’ve created and hold a place in the broader cultural landscape.

Massimo Chieli When wondering about the relationship between cultural production and the economic world we must ask why it is often so difficult for ‘high’ culture to communicate with a wide audience. It is a matter of fact that projects and events that are disliked by official critics manage to attract a large number of paying visitors or to capture the consensus of the local community, whereas ‘important’ events get a cold reaction and sometimes do not really try to create an effective dialogue with the ‘unlearned’ public.

There are of course striking examples of the contrary (just think of Palazzo Grassi in Venice), but they are indeed very special realities with a peculiar story and with very large monetary endowments, which make it possible to obtain a large media impact for their initiatives.

How do we intend to deal with this state of things?

Pier Luigi Sacco The basic issue is how preferences for cultural consumption build up. Whereas in economic theory one conventionally assumes that people are fully aware of the alternatives among which they choose and of the consequences of such choices, the logic of cultural consumption follows very different routes. It implies necessarily that the evaluation one can make of a given form of consumption cannot but call for a substantial and structured preliminary experience of it. Consequently, we often witness the following paradox: some forms of cultural consumption have a modest diffusion simply because many people are ignorant of the fact that they would like them very much if they only could know about their existence.

This state of things opens wide perspectives for a cultural enterpreneurship that is able to understand the large implicit potential of expansion in these market contexts in which it is possible to find a way to stimulate ‘underwater’ demand toward new experiences of exploration and acknowledgement of the opportunities of sense-making, fun and human development to which so many give up without realising it.

Serhan Ada Today, culture and art are shaped by the exigencies of the market place, proving true Adorno and Horkheimer’s concept, “culture industry.” Art and culture are increasingly produced and evaluated with reference to their similarity to ‘show biz’. While this industry and market forces increasingly turn art and culture into show, the critique of these forces and their products fails to fulfil its task: itself beholden to those forces, it has worn itself out on so-called postmodern vectors of self-reflexive discoursing.

Against this background of redundancy and pessimism, Istanbul Bilgi University presents an alternative vision. It embraces problematic and difficult aspects of culture today. As it attempts to build a positive response, it also undertakes the critique of the extant. This response is neither utopic, nor regressive, nor futuristic. A private university in an economic system recently turned free-market and still bearing the stamp of “development plans”, Bilgi seeks to develop artistic and cultural projects in a country where 0.33% of public funds are devoted annually

to culture and where private funds privilege sports and rock videos. It is an urban university, built in the heart of the oldest squatter neighbourhood of Istanbul. Bilgi faces trenchant paradoxes and antagonisms. Its projects address immediate neighbourhood contingencies which today are in fact universal problems: artistic, anthropological, and architectural projects involving the neighbourhood, and art shows bringing together issues and artists from east and west intend to overcome both segregationist cultural constructs and an antagonistic economy in the immediate urban and national environment.

They seek to transcend national borders to speak a universal critique.

Antonio Macrina Firms sometimes try to interact with cultural production, but results are not always encouraging. The blame is on the poor knowledge of each other, and on a difficulty in finding out the right communication channels. When the experiment is successful, however, very interesting perspectives emerge, both in terms of the promotion of the corporate image and of the motivation and involvement of employees. Another field of great interest where we should find new propositional momentum is that of the relationship between cultural production and local public administration. At the moment, we face a discouraging state of dismal ruled by local cultural and political parochialism.

Beral Madra Since the beginning of the 80's the mega-exhibitions have become an essential product of the culture industry. The artworks are being reviewed and evaluated within the constellation of culture industry; their autonomy is being eliminated by various effects from different directions. The artists being conscious of this elimination are pursuing new ways of running away from this fate. Installations are not only the outcome of the super-technology and abundance of material, but also the consequence of an escape from the system.

The mega-exhibitions with their strong market links have become an ordering factor within the culture industry; they are accepted as standards of value and aesthetic orientation and approval. We, in the non-western countries, feel that, as much as we want the culture industry to be anchored, we will be exposed to a kind of destructionâ&#x20AC;Ś In art success is important. Success is generally defined as money and power. So all artists and curators pursue money and power. There are no non-materialistic premises and the cultural code everywhere is about mastery and dominance. Art cannot ignore its participation in this ideology. Patriarchal capitalism is destructive; it is more destructive in non-western systems; because the unfinished modernism and its prevailing institutions cannot cope up with the heterogeneity of post-modernism. Being aware of the situation that this system is not working for the majority, might be the beginning of recovery. In art "individuals" are still important and we cannot utilise the "wholesale" aspect of capitalism. We must consider that there is a new moral imperative in founding new ground rules for the dialogue between western and non-western systems. The question is: should non-western art scenes trust the western system to construct an equal sort of dialogue, to build a new capacity for understanding each other and to have the consciousness of reciprocal existence? I think this dialogue is an essential part of the new rules between art and economy.

what do we give? – what do we want? –to regard, estimate and to fully discuss “arts and technologies”, –to say hello to new technologies as artists with basic humanity and ecology concerns, –to be oriented in a post-modern and post-utopic way, -to experiment tediously the intracacies of multi media processess, –to create genuine works and new art forms as well as to bind up all necessary new contexts by systematic print-outs and other possible media outlets, -to send regular e-mail to all interested private and public destinations photography, video, web site and multi media communication services, - new jazz and new music to be listened and relistened, – interactive on line surveys and coverings of major art events, – workshops of creative photography, video art, standard and new - computer software programs in collaboration with other artists and new art oriented media-artists in a recently restored flat in a 130 years old apartment building at Tunel-Asmalimesçit district. what is new media kitchen ? –an on line art forum and a multi media communication project, – a survey of recent contemporary art news, – a communication with art oriented people, – an interactive review, reevaluation, recovery under the cyberspace expectancies in Istanbul, in the most paradoxal, heterogeneous, metaphoric, abstruse, charming city of this part of the world. please contact us for the support of this project teoman madra thomas büsch bm ltd sofyali sok 26c/8a tünel 80040 istanbul TURKEY tel. 212 2926744 (website and info@newmediakitchen.com is under construction)

different images at other rhythms and with other discourses <spq@turk.net> teoman madra www.newmediakitchen.com.[<teo14014fcopy.JPG>] 090 212 2926744

situations

multi media communication of contemporary art news as a net art production ...creative artistic ventures with all new technology...less ready made and more multi media alternatives with hard and softwares... retrogressive cyberspace in deconstruction (if this last word is a more in one)… i believe our points of interest are already most widespread, popular and well supported and in expansion for the sake of the near future and for all artless instances… all the same these subject matters will soon be covered at www.newmediakitchen.com where contemporary art and new music and technological facilities will be merged in multi media creativity and on line interactivities... some softwares and hardwares are capable to do more alternative processes rendering a rich variety of counter

Contagious Lunch – Live FA+ (Ingrid Falk – Gustavo Aguerre) Sweden

At 2 p.m. the 10 of July 1999 our Contagious Lunch – Live began. The 20 guests at our table where artists, curators, gallerists and scientists from Sweden U.K., Italy, Turkey and Switzerland.

Over the table two video cameras and four microphones was placed to record everything that happened at the table. All that was reproduced in real time in the next room, Spazio A in the Italian Pavilion. There the people could comfortably sit and look to the projections and listen loud and clear what was happening in the other side of the glass-door, where the lunch was happening live, or as voyeurs look straight throe the glass at the actual people eating.

One of the dishes at the menu was chosen especially considering the documentation FA+ collects, the portraits we want from each of our guests from the meals we are making: Seppia al Nero – a Venetian dish, that is made form squid in its own ink. The leftovers of the squid’s ink became the portraits we kept for the collection.

At 2 p.m. the 11 of July 1999 we continued with a presentation of FA+ work and particularly about project Contagion that started in 1995.

Followed by an open discussion. Two more presentations where held by English artists that has been important in the project, Lennie Lee from London and the Hydra group, represented by Anita Ponton and Gini Simpson from London. FA+ work and the project is presented at our Web page in address www.fa-art.pp.se Our work at the Biennale was supported by IASPIS, Swedish Art Fund.

*do you sometimes happen to stop walking on a pavement ? vous arrive-t-il parfois de vous arrĂŞter de marcher sur un trottoir ? **use the enveloppe as an answering form

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On the 14th of July, in memory of the french revolution,

plaining day about the city.

LOCAL ACCESS organized a com-

Local Access designed the room in its specific way : Tangror® writing tables, seats made out of recycled plastic bags, chinese design furniture, multilangage questionnaries, fireworks slide show, slogan perché fuori non è dentro (why outside is not inside), inaugural address, CD mix (French popular music and demonstration sound), ...

This workshop is offering the audience to think and react about : reception framework, citizenship, closeness relationship, modesty of the means, post-urban utopias, collecting and gathering.

The collected documents (photos, drawings, answers to questions) will be added to a catalogue presenting Local Acces as a services provider towards the local collectivities, helping them to take into account everyone’s ideas and expectations : organisation of adapted worshops, actual propositions such as urban signage systems, public space design, instantaneous membership kiosks, ...

a.titolo

Presentation of the STREAM TV project curated by a.titolo July 15th 1999 panel: a.titolo, Markus Kreiss, Olivier Reneau in collaboration with AFAA (Association Franรงaise Action Artistique, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

Stream TV was founded in France in 1998 by the artist Marcus Kreiss and the art critic Olivier Reneau. Based on the assumption that traditional art spaces (such as galleries or museums) are not suitable for non-narrative video art, the project is devoted to the search of new means of distribution for this very type of videos. The idea is that of finding or creating an environment in which video projections can become an integral part of a social space and of the activities taking place in it. Stream TV is currently working towards the creation of a pay TV channel exclusively dedicated to the broadcasting of video art.

Stream TV posits questions about the production, formalisation and distribution of video art. It also addresses issues related to audience and copyright. At present, it is mainly taking shape in the form of the Stream TV Video Lounge, a video projection accompained by music selected by a DJ. Stream TV Video Lounges have been installed at the Nitsa Club in Barcelona, at the ICA in London, at the Void Bar in New York, at the Local Access Center in Paris, and at the Murazzi del Po in Turin.

Stream TV is now looking for contributions by video artists and individuals or groups interested in sharing the aims of the project.

So far, the following artists have joined the project: Dominique Vezina, Geir Guerde (London); Rosa Barba, Karen Oldenburg, Cornelis Gollhard (Cologne), Jean Claude Rugirello (Paris), Olivier Husain, Michael Klรถvkorn (Frankfurt).

Other artists associated to the project: Tadadsu Takamine (Tokyo), Ange Leccia, Alain Guillaume Poirier, Emmanuel Carlier (Paris), Chantal Michelle (Zurich), Caspar Stracke, Massami Mizogucki, Justine Hariri (New York).

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three artist-run magazines: a.n.y.p. lĂźbbenerstrasse 14, 10997 berlin, +49 30 611 78 44 ; k-bulletin, schĂśnegg

gstrasse 5, 8004 z端rich, +41 1 291 30 40; starship, griebenowstrasse 23, 10435 berlin, hallo@star-ship.org

"Dein Klub" was founded in July 1995 in the former storeroom of the non-commercial artspace "Oberwelt e.V.". It is as well a meeting place as a room for events and hosts people from the art-scene and from different other scenes (as everybody is invited to join).

"Dein Klub" takes place every monday night from 9 pm. There are no holidays.

The spacely very limited situation of "Dein Klub", being only 10 squaremeters large (2.5m x 4.4m), turns out to be the major advantage. Due to the narrowness of the place a much more direct and immidiate communication between the visitors can take place and separation into small groups is avoided. The friendly Klub-personal servs drinks; to prevent the space from simply turning into a bar, a special issue is promoted every monday evening (such as small art-exhibitions, record presentations, slide shows, magazine presentations, etc.) to discreetly give the conversation a direction and to create obligingness.

"Dein Klub" ("Your Club") is to be understood in a very literal: "Your" everyone is encouraged to decide about the program, the drinks served, the decoration, etc. "Club" since it is a gathering of

model of the space in Stuttgart

people with similar interests. A club therefore not to be understood as a "house-club" or any other rather disco-like event, but a nucleus from which other things can develop, a startingpoint for new (art) projects, exhibitions and things alike. And a place to go to and have fun of course.

visitors of the Stuttgart branch chatting with Venice and having fun.

Dein Klub Venedig (Il Tuo Club Venezia / Your Club Venice) From May till the end of July 1999 "Dein Klub" had a second branch in Venice, Italy. The place in the center of Venice, sited near the Rialto bridge, was almost as small (12 square meters) as the original

invitation card for the Venice club

room in Germany. It was connected to the german branch via a webcam and a chatroom so people could interact and play with the cams.

Both rooms were only open on monday nights from 9 pm.

At the Oreste space at the Biennale the lifesize groundplan of the room was taped to the floor. People had to take a seat within the real dimensions to give them a feeling of the room while I had a lecture about the concept and the idea of "Dein Klub". A watermelon shaped like the room served as a refreshing snack since there had already been over three hours of lectures and talk before.

visitors of the Venice branch & me dressed up for the "space night"

Jens Hermann c/o Dein Klub Reinsburgstr. 93 70197 Stuttgart Germany fon & fax (+49) 0711 6150013 jenshermann@mac.com open every monday from 9 pm. No holidays!

"NETWORKING” ATELIER G9 Atelier G9 – background and concept Atelier G9 was founded in August 1996 by six artists from Norway who had studied together in England. The studio was formed primarily to provide a groupworking environment, and a space in which to exhibit. In addition to this Atelier G9 began to invite artists from diverse backgrounds, to co-operate in house exhibitions. From this early concept, G9 evolved into a more ambitious site for artists from all disciplines to communicate. The studio underwent refurbishment in August 1998. The result of this was five self contained studios, and an 80 m2 project room. Since its opening the project room has become an up and coming space for young artists in which to exhibit.

Atelier G9 was established to provide an opportunity for artists of diverse backgrounds to show their work and create a network. It is Atelier G9’s policy to promote all forms of artistic expression. We have encouraged the use of varying exhibitions durations, for example one night events with emphasis on live entertainment, i.e: music, dance, poetry and drama, alongside more traditional longer term exhibitions. Atelier G9 believe that such an approach helps to promote different forms of expression and provides an exciting manner in which to view art. As a result Atelier G9 has begun to generate a growing network of contacts across all forms of art. The studio wishes to extend this network into other countries. We have invited artists to make exhibitions in the project room alongside other artists working on a full time basis in the studios. This period of residence has been an important exercise in co-operation and provides an exciting dynamic within the studio as a whole.

“Networking” In relation to Atelier G9’s invitation to participate in Oreste’s project at the Venice Biennale 1999, we started working with a concept called “Networking.” This was an interactive polaroid project. The aim of the project was to present Atelier G9 at the same time as we invited the public to involve themself in the project.

We started “Networking” in our own project room the 28th-30th of May 1999. Here we invited the visitors to take a polaroid portrait and sign it with name address, e-mail address or equivalent. Afterwards they hung the polaroid in the exhibition room. In this way the exhibition grew as people entered the space and joined in on the project.

When going to Venice, we brought all the polaroid portraits taken in Atelier G9. At the terrace outside the Oreste space, we hung them under the parasolls. From the 17th to the 19th of July, we invited visitors to join the project again. This time, in addition to have their portrait taken and signing it, they could pick one portrait of their own choice to bring with them. In the empty space, they hung their own portrait. Now a network was created with the potencial of people getting in touch on their own initiative.

After returning to Oslo, we showed the project once again at the Norwegian autumn exhibition.

Here the public could exchange polaroids as in Venice. Interestingly enough people who had participated in “Networking” in Atelier G9’s project room, were there. This time they could join again, and get a polaroid potrait of their choice.

Atelier G9 Brennerivn. 9h N-0182 OSLO NORWAY

www.atelier-g9.net e-mail: g9@anart.no tel: +47 98 85 39 39 fax: +47 22 87 04 94

Participants: Hedda Xanthe Clifford Adrian Melliard Anne Mortensen Anna Roos Ragnhild Jennifer Slettner Kjersti Sundland Trond Arne Vangen Marianne Heier (joined Atelier G9 in August 1999)

Francesco Impellizzeri, Residenze per artisti: esperienze italiane e internazionali

Francesco Impellizzeri, Artists’ Residencies: Italian and International Experiences

Lunedì 19 luglio 1999

Monday July 19th, 1999

Alexander Michael: “Silo Man”, Sydney–NY Progetto per la trasformazione di una ex base missilistica americana degli anni ’60 in residenza estiva per artisti.

Questa struttura, situata nello stato di New York ai confini con il Canada e coronata da una zona boschiva, è composta da due corpi sotterranei: il primo di due livelli e il secondo di otto.

Essendo la pianta circolare, i livelli comunicano attraverso una scala centrale. Il progetto di ristrutturazione, eseguito dallo stesso Alexander Michael (che ha acquistato nel 1998 la ex base dopo che l’amministrazione locale di Sydney ha rifiutato un suo piano di conversione di un edificio di cemento in disuso in residenza per artisti) è stato esposto di recente a New York coll’intento di trovare gli sponsor per la sua realizzazione. La proprietà confina con lo studio di Joel Shapiro, la cui casa è stata costruita da F.L. Wright. In occasione della presentazione alla Biennale è stato realizzato un dépliant che illustra graficamente la pianta di tutte le ex basi missilistiche, l’ubicazione di quella in questione, la struttura come si presenta allo stato attuale e il progetto di residenza per artisti.

Alexander Michael: “Silo Man”, Sydney–NY Project for the conversion of an American missile base of the 60’s into a Summer Artists Residency. This structure, surrounded by woods, is located in the State of New York, near the Canadian border. There are two underground bodies: one has two levels (40 feet deep) and the other eight levels (185 feet deep). There is a central staircase linking the floors of the circular structure. The project was made by Alexander Michael (who bought the base in 1998 after Sydney Council rejected his proposal of converting a cement building into an Artists Residency) and exhibited in New York to find fundings for the project.

The property is next to Joel Shapiro’ s house, built by F. L. Wright. For the presentation at the Biennale a brochure was printed. It includes a map of all the ex-missile base, pointing out the site of this specific base, the structure as it is now , and the Artists Residency project.

Eugenio Giliberti: “Terminale Marinella”, Centro di Produzione per l’Arte Contemporanea, Napoli Dall’errore urbanistico un’occasione per l’arte. Nel quartiere Marinella di Napoli, in uno dei nuovi insediamenti residenziali costruiti dopo il terremoto del 1980, il progettista ha voluto la costruzione di una serie di piccoli immobili per esigenze commerciali. Ai due capi di questo percorso vi sono due complessi più grandi.

Gli studi e la foresteria. Degli otto corpi di fabbrica minori, cinque ospiteranno, insieme ai laboratori, nove studi destinati alla costruzione di una situazione di lavoro stabile. Gli altri tre edifici, prevedendo sei studi con annesse unità di residenza, saranno destinati a foresteria per artisti stranieri, grazie al finanziamento dei rispettivi istituti culturali (AFAA, British Council, Goethe Institut ecc.).

I laboratori. Il lavoro degli artisti si esprime, oggi, attraverso linguaggi e materiali molto differenziati, avvalendosi del supporto di competenze artigiane di difficile reperimento: stimolandone la formazione, si può provocare un mercato di servizi ad esso connesso (quindici studi di artisti costituiranno il primo nucleo), e una funzione di raccordo con le scuole del quartiere da svolgersi in attività di laboratorio.

L’archivio-deposito. L’immobile destinato in progetto alla funzione di circolo, diventerà un deposito archivio centralizzato per l’arte contemporanea napoletana per la documentazione del lavoro degli artisti a cui verrà chiesta, per questo servizio, la donazione di opere per costituire un fondo di proprietà del comune.

Altri progetti - iperstudio - galleria.

L’immobile, originariamente destinato all’uso di ristorante, può assumere la funzione di iperstudio, a disposizione di artisti sia interni che esterni che abbiano bisogno di realizzare opere di grandi dimensioni e anche per esposizioni, incontri, dibattiti ecc.

Altri spazi ospiteranno una serie di servizi comuni, una piccola biblioteca e la redazione di una rivista.

Eugenio Giliberti: “Terminale Marinella” Center for Contemporary Art, Naples A chance for art stemming from an urbanistic mistake. In one of the new housing complexes built after the 1980 earthquake, there is a series of small commercial buildings surrounded by two bigger ones.

Studios and guest rooms. In five of the eight smaller buildings there will be nine permanent artists’ studios. The other three buildings will house six live-in studios for foreign guests, financed by foreign cultural institutes (AFAA, British Council, Goethe Institut, etc.).

Workshops. Contemporary artists work with different languages and materials, using not easily traceable specialized craftsmen’s tools and capacities: stimulating them, it may be possible to set up a service-market connected with the artists (fifteen studios will constitute the first group) and a workshop, working together with district schools.

Archive- depot. The building that was meant to be a club, will become a Central Archive for Naples Contemporary Art and will provide a documentation of the artists' work. In return, artists will be asked to donate a work to the City of Naples.

Others projects – Hyperstudio – Gallery.

The building that was originally considered a restaurant can become a hyperstudio to be used by artists who need to build big pieces. Exhibitions, meetings, discussions, etc. could also take place in this space.

Other spaces will house other services, a small library and the editorial office of a magazine.

Alfredo Granata: “Ospiti” (Guests), Cosenza According to a popular belief, Giocchino da Fiore, mystical poet from Calabria (Celico, 1130 – Pietrafitta, 1202) prophesied that S. Domenico di Celico would become a “sea port”.

According to this story, the inhabitants of the village have always been scared of storms and cataclysms that were

Alfredo Granata: “Ospiti”, Cosenza Una credenza popolare attribuisce a Gioacchino da Fiore, mistico e profeta calabrese (Celico, 1130 – Pietrafitta, 1202), la profezia secondo cui la località di S. Domenico di Celico sarebbe diventata “porto di mare”, alimentando così paure di nubifragi e cataclismi che avrebbero dirottato il mare proprio là dove si trova la mia dimora. Nel 1998 ho realizzato la profezia di Gioacchino facendo della mia casa un “porto” in cui incontrare artisti di altre realtà per compiere, insieme, un ideale viaggio attraverso le loro opere. È nata così “Ospiti”: una rassegna concepita per lo spazio della mia abitazione-studio, in cui si sono realizzati sei incontri con altrettanti artisti, protagonisti della scena italiana.

Nel tardo inverno del 2000 inaugurerò in uno spazio di mia proprietà una residenza permanente per artisti che avrà il nome di “Porto di mare”.

L'unica cosa che chiederò agli artisti ospitati è di tenere un contatto didattico con le scuole elementari del posto, per fare in modo che le nuovissime generazioni abbiano una visione eterogenea dell’arte visiva contemporanea.

Gordon Knox & Cecilia Galiena: “Civitella Ranieri Foundation”, New York–Umbertide Una forza caotica per il bene. Il movimento delle idee attraverso il mondo costituisce una rete. Il flusso di idee che attraversa gente creativa, comunicativa e coinvolta rappresenta il Chi dell’essere umano storico collettivo. La creatività consiste nel vedere le cose da una nuova angolazione.

Nell’assemblare gente creativa di differenti prospettive, discipline e parti del

mondo si sfidano identità individuali, al di là delle leggi dell’organizzazione e dei confini professionali. Questi incontri sono un generatore del flusso di idee; una forza caotica per il bene.

supposed to bring the rough sea to my house. In 1998, Giocchino's prophecy came true, turning my house into a “port”, where to meet other artists and travel together through their works.

This is how “Guest” was born: a series of six meetings with interesting Italian Artists that took place in my live-in studio. At the end of Winter 2000 I will open a permanent guest-artists space called “Sea Port”. The only think I will ask the artists is to interact with the local primary schools, in order to help the new generations to have a heterogeneous view of contemporary visual arts.

Gordon Knox & Cecilia Galiena: “Civitella Ranieri Foundation”, New York–Umbertide A chaotic force for good. The movement of ideas through the world constitutes a network. The flow of ideas passing through creative, communicative, and involved people is the Who of the historical human collective being.

Creativity is looking at things from a new angle. Bringing together creative people of different perspectives, disciplines and parts of the world challenges also individual identities, beyond the laws of organization and the professional borders. Such meetings are a generator, a charger, and an enhancer of the flow of ideas; a chaotic force for good.

July 21st 1999 NO ASSOCIATION-NARRATION. FEMALE ORAL NETWORK Marija Grazio, Kristina Leko, Ana Peraica, Neli Ruzic, Sabina Salamon, Giovanna Trento Neli and I met in March 1996 in the US, near San Francisco, where we both spent a few months as “Artists in Residence”. I was already at the Headlands when she came. Because of the recent war in former Yugoslavia, there was a certain expectation about her arrival from Croatia.

As soon as she arrived we both had a common feeling of affinity and kinship and we immediately became friends (this is what may happen when you have to spend some Neli, Eric, Giovanna. San Francisco, April 1996 time in a lonely place, with a few people around you). We shared a house, worked together, had a very good time, and then left.

During the last 4 years, Neli went through a lot of changes in her life, but I am always able to recognize her. She is constantly on the move to build and rebuild her life, without ever loosing herself. It’s a matter of identity, I think. Probably, such an attitude has to do with the fact that the part of the world she comes from is frequently in transition, so that also the individuals have to fit in it.

Once I knew that Oreste was going to be at the Biennale, I soon decided to call Neli to be part of Oreste project in Venice, in 1999. I really wanted to see her again and I also thought she was the right person to call, since in Croatia she took an active part in artists run spaces and associations.

In the evening on July 19th, I got together with Neli, Marija, Ana, Sabina, and Kristina in Venice, at the railway station (but no! Maybe Kristina wasn’t there that night, I don’t remember exactly). Then we went to Oreste apartment, not far from there.

Due to the long trip, they were tired and wanted to rest. We ate together some food they had brought with them from Croatia and partly eaten during the travel. We didn’t know each other yet and that night in the kitchen the conversation was poor. Neli and I slept in the same small room and before falling asleep I asked her: “What are we going to do the day after tomorrow at the Biennale?” In fact, there was only a general idea about our “event” in Oreste space and I didn’t know what it was actually going to happen there. A couple of months before then, Ana had submitted a short and interesting statement with the title, but nothing else had happened afterwards (once we tried a chat-line, but it didn’t work).

The morning after we had a long breakfast together in the kitchen, talking, eating, and taking pictures. After breakfast, we went out and stopped at a cafe-shop not far from home. Here is where we finally talked about “No Association-Narration.

Female Oral Network” in Oreste space. I do not exactly remind what we said, but I do remember that, like an epiphany, we suddenly realized that for all of us the relevant issues, questions, points, and problems were very similar. Something came out clearly: in order to build an autobiography, it is essential (even if difficult) to question and strengthen the relationship between life and work and between what is private and what is public. On the 21st our network took a temporary form in Oreste space. We started talking about general, historical, and geographical issues, such as societies in transition from communism to post-communism. Then some of the girls touched relevant collective aspects as the role of women in former Yugoslavia, the continuity with the past, and the activity of some Croatian art association. We also went into more personal topics: friendship, love, pregnancy, departure, separation… Some of us showed some videos, there was an exchange of ideas with other people in the room, and at the end everybody

ate the cakes made by Kristina, meant as happy ending of an unhappy (partly virtual) love story. Once our group-conversation-event in Oreste space was over, Maria Grazia came to me from the “public”. She was wearing sunglasses to hide the tears that were coming out from her eyes. She told me: “women shouldn’t be so self-destructive. We shouldn’t go so deep into human feelings, emotions, and love because it hurts. These girls went through the experience of a war and it shows. But they shouldn’t keep tossing and turning into it like this”. And then, I don’t remember how, she came to touch an issue that to me sounded both autobiographical and collective. She told me: “… and then men force us to have an abortion”. But I’m asking myself: isn’t it true that in some cases we put ourselves into the foolish and self-destructive position of getting pregnant, so that afterwards we are forced to face the tragic experience of abortion?

We felt at home in Oreste apartment, near the railway station; we always cooked and had dinner there. In the evening, after coming back from the Biennale, Neli said: “I don’t need to go out, I want to stay at home: I feel full inside”. Some of the girls tried to leave the day after, but couldn’t because they didn’t find the car. So they all left together the following morning. I spent a few more days in Venice: the feeling of our Giovanna friendship and collaboration stayed with me and permeated the house.

When I read the names of the persons that were going to be at the Headlands Center for the Arts in March and April 1996, I knew that Giovanna from Italy and Eric from Mexico were going to be important human beings for me. Just like that. And like that it happened. Giovanna was staying in the same house where I was accommodated. I liked the way she moves her hands when she talks, like she is making Having breakfast. Venice, July 20th 1999 an emotional sculpture. Obviously, at that time I didn’t know that four years later Eric was going to be my husband. Time of wind, movements of the grass and sound of the waves. Inside as outside. After having exchanged some parts of our life, our lives went on. Then Giovanna invited me to Oreste project. Then, I talked to Ana with whom I spent a lot of time in my kitchen, talking about art and life while yellow plop on the paint behind her head was floating. During a single phone conversation we decided whom else to call. We followed the first names that appeared, intuitively. We spoke with Sanja and Sabina; Ana spoke with Kristina and I also called Marija because of a work of hers I had seen few years before: a work that shoots me right in the stomach every time I remember it. Afterwards we understood that all the persons that we had mentioned were women. We didn’t even know each other well. I had met Marija and Kristina only twice before. And we understood that we were going to carry just ourselves to Venice and a feeling of the possible space that could have happened in our contact. A net of our intimate spaces. Marija and I left the port of Split at sunset, we slept on the deck and she woke me up to see the rising of the sun with her.

Sanja decided to stay in Split, because someone had to stay: that’s one of the ways to move. Kristina traveled by train with her cakes from Zagreb to Venice. Marija and I met Sabina and Ana in Trieste and then we drove till Venice in Sabina’s Renault 4. With the same car, on our way back a strange story happened. On the highway we stopped by at a restaurant named “Buona Fortuna” (Good Luck), I think. At the casher, you could purchase some lottery tickets, but we didn’t buy any. Right after we had some problems with our car and an ex-pilot helped us a lot. He said that he was going to go to the Casino that night and that he would have taken a marzipan apple for “la fortuna” (we gave him the one we had bought for Sanja because we realized that the apple was not for her: it was meant for him!).

I slept in the same room with Giovanna and we talked until late lying on our beds. She was sleeping completely covered with a white sheet: she looked like some tender cocoon. All of us felt the importance of every moment we spent together. In Oreste room we just continued to talk and feel as we did during all those three days we spent together.

Actually those three days stayed in my memory as a much longer period or as another proof Neli that time doesn’t exist, at least according to the usual way of measuring it.

In “Oreste” space I presented the part of my work (video tape) “Measure for Intimacy”. But that was not the most important thing that happened there. At the same time, I was searching for my intimacy through a relationship between the other girls and me. It was interesting to recognize the most subtle moments and different levels of feelings happening between us. Touching someone without touching, speaking without Marija speaking, just observing and feeling. The net was made.

ROWS-CURVES-KNOTS, FEMALE ORAL NETWORK, OR, A METATHEORY OF ORGANICITY OF THE LIVING This text is the product of Ana’s and my interwoven pondering on the existing relation between row, curve, and knot. Given our dislocation, that is to say, our living in different cities, Zagreb and Ljubljana, this interweaving of thoughts occurred some time before, through our e-mail correspondence. Our mutual exchange of texts has played a decisive role in further analysis of the theme; the curves and knots of our communication have prompted further development of the discourse.

At the same time, this text is an unconscious condensation of our four days’ stay in the informal group “No association”, as part of the project Oreste at the Venice Biennial, to which we were invited in July last year. The network concept spontaneously came into being, after the Italian artist Giovanna Trento had invited the Croatian artist Neli Ruzic to participate in the project Oreste. A somewhat hasty official title of the project, “female oral network”, formed according to the principle “(women)friends’ friends”, has been invented by a group of Croatian women artists n Marija Grazio, Sanja Jona, Kristina Leko, Neli Ruzic and women art historians Ana Peraica and Sabina Salamon. Our actual meeting was preceded by a chat on the Internet and a few phone calls only, and this, together with the fact that we did not know each other and that the network concept’s subject was quite vague, denoted our meeting as aimlessly informal. What sort of symptom are we talking about?

SYMPTOM AND STRATEGY The theme of our half-accidental intention to do something together has to be approached by questioning the problem of strategy. While the praxes of high modernity exist side by side the theories that have incessantly been reflected and legitimised these praxes, contemporary art, on the other hand, is legitimised by itself; it is manifested at the same time in both theory and practice. Thus, there is a blend of conceptualisation and performance in a unitary praxis and there is a selfsufficient organism, freed from reference like a simulacrum. In spite of that, contemporary art still retains an umbilical connection to reality: the fictitious life has been fused with real life, which conditions the possibility for autobiographical artistic narration within the fine art practice, a practice that is always productive through the inseparable symbiosis between art and life.

MERGING: COMMUNICATION + KNITTING The matrix of every discussion is a thematic circle round which a net of new, unpredictable narrated themes is knit.

Analogously, women’s knitting takes shape thanks to the well-known, usual principle of weaving the yarns with standard accessories (needles, hooks), to which an endless number of patterns and laces is then connected. These patterns-laces defy any sort of predictable location or scheme. Their very quality granted them, in course of time, the standing of a pattern. They are matrixes of some future thread weavings, which have, in a certain virtual world of laces, created no matter what, and no matter whose, stories.

Lace is a certain kind of sign, made of a recognisable pattern that is repeated in every

following lace. The same may be said of all the forms of narration, where the following recurrent patterns can be detected: a formation of the discourse around a theme that is relevant for the majority; a creation of contrary points of view, changing the subject; the loss of the thread of one’s discourse, getting mixed up, curves, the attempts to disentangle them; a possible disentanglement of a curve into a row, or the strengthening of curves in knots. Each open or unsolved question can be considered as a knot waiting for its solution/disentanglement and any communication can be regarded as a network situation. The similarity between discourse and knitting derives from their network-structure. As they develop, both discourse and knitting tend to surpass predefined frameworks. Not only is knitting a personal story, even science can be regarded as a subjective network story, an author’s work that comes into being through a consistent filing in Oreste space \ Venice, July 21st 1999 of partial scientific studies, whose creation has been guided by an individual (subjective!) intuition and more or less a general methodology. “Row-curve-knot” thus represents a concept of narration where women’s evening meetings may be singled out as a phenomenon, which can be connected to the activity of knitting. Within the context of incidental activity of needlework, women try to make their (unalienably personal) stories objective through a semi-public narration and, that is to say, by weaving the threads in their own personal way. The connection between the discourse and female creativity is thus determined primarily by the network “row-curve-knot”. The term “performance of action” should be avoided here, because needlework involves but a bare activity, guided by the logic of obtaining results without, in any way, defining the activity’s aim. Such an activity can easily be regarded incidental and without concept, but it really represents a female activity which is here trying to be “conceptualised” and used as a possible strategy in contemporary fine art. This is a point of merging between art and life.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND NETWORK Moreover, the recounting of intimate stories through one’s own artistic practice (Neli Ruzic, Marija Grazio, Kristina Leko…) revealed some points shared by all of us, but it also filtered a few universal curves of contemporary art, that have stimulated the auditorium, and the network spread through the unknown curves of laces. Within the context of our common experiences of “virtual” transnational loves occurred a curve concerning the relation between artist and curator, i. e. the question of usurpation of position, and their respective roles. The disentanglement of this curve ended up in a knot that could not be broken during our discussion at Oreste. It means that institutionalisation and ideology do not exist in (politicians’) promotional speeches and in writing out the legal regulations only. Slavoj Zizek has perspicaciously proved that, by pointing to the example of the WC typology, the type of the water closets sewer tube speaks volumes about a certain society and its ideology. It is useless to wonder how it may be possible that everybody goes to bed with an ideology.

ANTHROPOLOGY AND NETWORK The Croatian participants in the net-group “No Association” brought their own intimate story from a static Slavic culture (that is nevertheless a society in perennial transition), a story narrating experiences gained in activities in other associations (Art Workshop Lazareti, Dubrovnik; Gripe Art Project and Lift, Split; URA, Rijeka), galleries (Galery Marino Cettina, Umag) and projects (New Film Festival; 21st Spring, Adria Art Annual, Split) which had often actually functioned before their official naming, but lost sense afterwards. We may ask ourselves at this point, what meaning is, and whether it is possible to explain it with notions such as row, curve, and knot. Is there such a thing as a knot that is exclusively a stand in the row of meanings? Can a knot be a source of new meanings? Fact: instability of oral network,

though it is developed in unpredictable rows (meanings) and occasional knots, is more stabile than a formal meeting because of its flexibility and a vaccine against fissures in communication. Because the discourse tends to be unpredictable and turn suddenly into curves, it has been proved unnecessary to try to control it; thus, a possible end of the discourse follows immediately its culmination, without conclusions and summaries, as in Kristina Leko’s love story.

PARALLELISMS: A LIFE THAT IS ALIVE The strategy of female activity both follows and resists the pattern, and that is why it represents an ideal of open discourse and of not-institutionalised network situations; this, in turn, confirms the theoretical findings that between the strings of signifiers there is a leak of meaning that we have been unable to register. This “floating” rest is a “manna” that refuses to be inscribed in the structure (paraphrase of C. Levi-Strauss). Oral exposition exists on two levels: as “history” and “herstory” (the term has been coined by Ana Peraica, after Deborah Tannen), that is to say, as public and private and the position of exclusiveness has proved too untrue to be accepted. We witness the parallelisms of different rows, such as the ideology of reviving the past and of losing one’s identity in the global; anarchy on the one hand, and bureaucratisation on the other; the freezing of idolatries in the age whose tendency is toward “melting”, and vice versa; the digital system of binary solutions “yes” n “no” failed the examination of experience, which has led us to attempt to verify the organicity of the living. Personal stories about e-mail attempts of seduction, is represented as a difference between written (down) and spoken word. In written communication we are denied the liveliness of oral discourse, which is supported by facial expression, or body language, and not only by the exactness of statement. This, however, does not mean that it is impossible to achieve the bureaucratization of oral discourse. The danger lies in the possibility of repetition (as used in ideologies), that is to say, in the possibility of re-interpretation of the original, even when the discourse itself has already ended, or we ceased to be its witnesses. In short, the problematic aspect of oral discourse lies in the fact that it can be used as a prescription (demagogy, political agitation).

PARALLELISMS The quicker are the changes, the more transient the time seems, and a desire to slow down grows stronger. Parallelisms are manifested as proportionally rising variables: the filing and documentation is very strongly present at the time of the most dynamic changes = parallelism: progress in regression. The clones are not interesting to the archives because they are repetitive — the collections are more valuable if they contain uniques or, at least, rarities.

NET Accumulated knowledge (libraries, archives) becomes ballast if it is so voluminous that it becomes unreadable. Unread books = ballast. An archive is an (entropy) chaos unless it is governed by a mechanism that facilitates the transfer of knowledge.

The greatest freedom of transfer implies the greatest possibility for control = a digital panoptic view is the most efficient form of control: it functions like a lever that is able to move the giants with very feeble strength. We have proclaimed that the purest physics, which we cannot see, but only intuitively feel, are virtual, in which case the netphilia and net-mania are but the two sides of the religion of fear of the invisible.

Knowing that every notion is inherently divided in two, it is possible to announce the end of absolute notions and the beginning of unstable identities, which have, perhaps, always been here, unrecognised: a row is not necessarily a meaning, a curve is not a nonsense; by resolving the parallelism of the rows, the curve becomes the sense. In the virtual worlds of mathematics and logic it is possible to create a system without errors, but not so in real life. Similarly, we cannot determine freedom, or give it by decree, because these very acts usurp it; it exists, if at all, only outside the discourse about it. By mystifying women and men worlds we create the lobbied worlds which contain their presumable specificity. Individuals run counter the rules by weaving non-predefined patterns that are breaking the model n matrix. Accordingly, a natural right is not and cannot be either natural or a right if it implies only a right to live, but not a right to die.

Discourse on art allows the application of arbitrary strategy, since it is only a sign of what it refers to. Nobody knows who Oreste is, he is imagined as an empty space, as a frame waiting to be filled. He might be just a trick or a miscount, but despite all, what he reveals is the weariness of identity and “full” meanings on the one hand, and a desire for missed shots, on the other.. Such an attempt of de-institutionalisation may be regarded as a flop, but even if it is… who cares?! Seen from this perspective every praxis becomes a play with patterns, whose meaning depends on how much it contributes to the solving, and deconstructing, of rows and curves. Does the quantity of the energy consumed exceed by far the profit?

Sabina Retelling a chain, if we are going to believe that the disappearance of the story-maker (action character, hero…) might immediately imply the vanishing of the storyteller, this in turn does not have to negate the telling (or the making) or the documenting as worthy forms. The number of members in this scenario, until the story is balanced with its ground, is growing for hosting another action. Each one’s representation or documentation of the other as a social act continues the movement, but retains a random rhythm and direction. Here it might still preserve the vivacity and the immediacy (liveness) of an act, of a change, of life. However on the contrary, printed documentation projects the movement onto a terminable flat surface. It proceeds in the rhythm of sameness, flattening and spreading vertically, and only this way.

A body recording another body is a timed description. Left alone, another body or time remains not established. So action exists if there is another activity of perception. For those reasons Achilles was moving relatively, only in the eyes of Tortoise and Zeno. After the question “what had he said to her?”, Lewis Carroll in turn replied “what Tortoise has said to Achilles”. A movement doesn’t exist without a memory, starting with the place of the departure. Basically, we met to focus one another on a parallax of viewpoint and on the relative paralysis of our movements. We sustained each other’s actions and exposed ourselves literary. Then we stood up and went away. Neli is in Mexico, Marija in Dubrovnik, Sabina in Ljubljana, Giovanna in Rome, Kristina in Ana Zagreb, I am in The Netherlands. The body of recordings is a document.

Giovanna invited Neli, Neli invited Sabina, Marija and Ana, Ana invited me.

Our aim was to have an intimate conversation in a public occasion. It happened so. The issues ranged from political to very personal ones, presenting our social/Croatian background but also ourselves. I hope that some of the girls are going to write down to which important conclusions on political, gender and artistic identity we came up there. I forgot the words, but I can explain the feeling. When you do not have a clue about the real reason why and how you got together with somebody but you enjoy your time very much… Somehow, there, in the room of the conversation, two young American girls appeared.* They liked a lot the cake that I offered and my recipe for “and she lived happily ever after”. When you have the impression that something important has happened and actually nothing happened.

Giovanna invited Neli, Neli invited Sabina, Marija and Ana, Ana invited me. I invited Valerie* and Marina* to visit me in Zagreb. going back to Croatia. Trieste, July 23rd 1999 Kristina

February 2000 RETELLING A CHAIN Giovanna Trento, Neli Ruzic, Marija Grazio, Sabina Salamon, Ana Peraica, Kristina Leko

TV 1

kunsthalle exner

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Television w w w. m o n e y n a t i o n s . c h

rgasse wien Eurovision 2000

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Webprojects Exhibition Workshops Congress Theory Networking...

ph Giancarlo Norese

Da: marco biraghi <biraghi@cdc8g5.cdc.polimi.it> A: fabrizio bonomo <fbnews@tin.it> Oggetto: Uman Tunnel Data: Lun, 21 giu 1999 22:13 Dear Fabrizio Bonomo, I work as a researcher at the Faculty of Architecture at the Polytechnic in Milan.

Together with a group of young Italian and foreign artists, I’ve organized a symposium about the project called “Uman Tunnel”, related to Oreste’s Project and scheduled to happen at the at the time of the Venice Biennial.

It’s about the project of a tunnel, beneath the Adriatic Sea, which connects Italy and Albania from Valona to Otranto. As you can easily understand this is a fully utopian-fantastic project.

Nevertheless, we think that this may be an interesting overture, and obviously stimulating, to question Italy’s relationship to Albania, which becomes increasingly important with regard to the war in Kosovo. Such an idea, if you want to have an adequate outcome (that could be only in a parallel Universe, in a virtual word), needs to be supported in the most honest way possible, seriously estimating practicability and technical aspects. I’ve seen in the magazine Kineo the issue concerning tunneling. It seems to me that the subject has been dealt precisely in the way in which we are considering it.

I would like to ask you, therefore, whether you, or someone else you know to be skilled in this subject, could be interested in taking part in the meeting on the following subject: “Uman Tunnel” in Hall A of Venice Biennial, the 22nd of July 1999. I’m taking the liberty of pointing out to you that a suitable person for participation in a project such as this should have both reliability and capacity together with a suitable disposition, having seen the informal nature and precisely “artistic nature” of the context in which it has to occur. If someone is interested in further information or an explanation, please contact me at my e-mail address.

I thank you in advance for your kindness and availability.

Best regards, Marco Biraghi.

The Uman Tunnel Project was intitated with a trip to Albania by representatives of activists’ organizations and a group of artists. The trip started on Dec. 1998 and commemorated the anniversary of the massacre which occurred when an Italian military vessel rammed and sunk a refugees’ ferry in the Otranto Channel. This voyage was made four months before NATO intervention and the subsequent war, its purpose being to bring “interests” closer; to elude frontiers, and to promote a more sensitive attitude towards the immigration issue which truly moved public opinion in that particular moment. This project allows for the unification of these shores, facilitating once and for all, communication between our two countries; it also works as a direct intervention among the refugee population… an actual point of mutual human contact: the Tunnel.

The Uman Tunnel, with Alessandra Pioselli, Alfred Kedhi, Arben Iljazi, Arte A Parte, Barbara Fässler, Chiyoko Miura, Dritan Peqini, Francesca Alessandrini, Giancarlo Norese, Giovanna Di Costa, Marco Biraghi, Marion Baruch, Marion von Osten, Nessuno, Paola Di Bello, Peter Spillmann. Thanks to Dean Daderko and Sislej Xhafa.

Mbledhja e grupit te punes. Milano, 5 mai 1999.

Francesca Alessandrini, Arte a Parte, Marion Baruch, Marco Biraghi, Paola Di Bello, Giovanna Di Costa, Chiyoko Miura, Ness1, Giancarlo Norese, Alessandra Pioselli Jemi duke diskutuar. Propozimin ië Giovanës për regjistrimin e biletave ku u prit me entuziazëm.

Në kete objekt konkret për tu fabrikuar, për një date dhe një rast të saktë, më qershor, në rastin e hapjes inaugurimin e “Biennale di Venezia” per shtypin është një goditje positive. Massimo (Arte a Parte) është i gatshëm të beje bileta për kalimin e parë. Këto bileta do të shpërndahen në oborret e “Biennale” dhe në sallën e projektit Oreste. Falas?

Jo, asgjë nuk jepet falas.

Duhet një këmbin i dyanshëm. Emrin dhe adrësen e blërsit, në gjysmën tjetër të biletave, eshte nje cmim me i ulet, thjesht simbolik. Shpërthejnë propozimetpër “gadget”: Giancarlo nje viazatim te madhe, një Tunnel të kthyer m’brapa, për bluze. Chiyoko vizaton një stilograf brenda i mbushur me lëng, lëng është një taxi që shkon poshtë e përpjetë sipas pjerrësise së stilografit ja pra njdhe (njeri prej taxistit,eshte edhe Masssimo!) kaksistin, është Massimo!

Marco do të flasë mendonjë profesor per diskutim politike për të studijuar projektin teknik. ?Deri Toni kemi vetën vizatimet e Tunelit të Manikës që Nessuno gjreti në librari Paola shprehet?: të përdomeve; e parbasneshe! Ndodhet elhe një i 1803, ëndërra e Bonapartit, imazhi i parë i një Tuneli të ardhshëm: “Historie d’un rêve. Le tunnel s’impose”.

Ja enderra jone shkone ne Ballkan. Nuk është një ëndërr pushtimi si ajo e Bonapartit. Àshtë një ënderr për qarkullimin paqësor midis një vendi Schengen dhe Balkanit. Të lidhet Shigipëria dhe fqinjetë e saj, me çizmen, ma atë pikë tokësore që lundron midis Adriatikut dhe Joint. Dy blloqet, lindje dhe perëndim ekzistojnë akoma. Urat e ndërtuara midis tyre në terrenin e privilegjuar të gjushësimit?, nga figurat legjendare të artit, në literaturë dhe Kinema, nuk mendoje të shkaterrohen nga bombat. Si ka thëne Arbeni disa ditë

më parë: toka, parvarësisht nga rrethanat është gjithnjë e vetemja tokë.

Arben Iljazi. Tiranë, 7 mai 1999.

Diskutim me Profesor Dritan Peqini.

Profesor Dritan Peqiri: Problemi sipas meje lidhja midis Italisë dhe Shqipërisë është shumë i vjetër; për arsye gjeografike kanë filluar edhe lidhjet në nivelin shoqëror. Àshtë normale që atjë ka lidhje ekonomike ka edhe shpirtërore dhe pse jo kulturore. Rezultati ështe ku, e vetmja arsye që më shqetëson kohët e fundit është prospektiva e të dyja palëve, duhet të bëjmë shumë për të mos trajtuar njëri/tjetrin si të huaj, sepse të konsiderosh tjetrin si të huaj do të thotë që ai është armik dhe i panjohur. Për mendimin tim i huaji është ai që nuk i përshtatet traditave me njetet dhe arsyet që mund të duken të çuditëshme. Ky është një monent që duhet kaluar unga të dyja palët, jo vetëm nga ana e perëndimit or edhe nga ana jonë, Shqipëtare.

Natyrisht ndryshim kemi: deri tami ne kemi qënë të ndryshën për arsye historike. Megjithatë, më mendoj që rrugët kanë filluar të hapen, para këtij bashkimi? Pesëdhjet vjeçar funksionale! Kjo mënyrë organike mund të thellohet në shumë duke zvogëluar hapësirën njërëzore “të huajve”, midis njëri tjetrit. Nuk është nevoja të prekim idenë e njeriut si qytetar i botës. Pavarësisht nga të njeriut shqiptar, italian, gjerman apo japonez, kemi më në fund, të njëjtat interese; të njohim botën, të shtrëngojmë fort problemet e botës, tëkemi lidhje të thjeshta, normale. Këto gjëra shërbejnë për të lidhur njërin ne tjetrin.

Arben Iljazi: Pavarësisht nga të gjitha këto, lufta e Kosovës ka ngjallur një interes të madh. Unë do të thoja që: duke qënë nga ana tjetër e detit Adriatik, siç shprehet Nessi; n.q. se midis këtyre dy vëndeve nuk do të ndodhte deti. Si do të silleshin italianët n.q. se një gjë e tillë të është realitet.

Prof. D. Peqini: Në radhë të parë, n.q. se nuk do të ishte deti, Italia do të ishte luftë direkte, duke

Date: Sun, 04 Jul 1999 12:15:15 +0200 Subject: R: Uman Tunnel From: "Fabrizio Bonomo" <fbnews@tin.it> To: marco biraghi <biraghi@cdc8g5.cdc.polimi.it> A tunnel beneath the Adriatic Sea would be twice long as those beneath the English Channel and it would cost more; moreover it would have a little economical productivity.

The railway tunnel between the European continent and England, and those for the crossing of Alps illustrated on Kineo #15, link economical realities of very high international levels. It supplies a very well paid need, both concerning passengers, traffic, and goods that doesn’t have, and has not had in the past, a corresponding response in the ferry-boats system, or regarding Alps in the present roadway passes and railways passes (which are heading towards a collapse). On the other hand, a connection between Italy and Albania has no demand, except

by Albanians or immigrants or emigrants coming to or from the third world to Italy. It makes no sense even as a possible passage for goods between Europe and the Middle East, because Albania is a “cul de sac” from which it’s impossible to escape, unless you build a new tunnel beneath the mountains that divided it from Greece (the present corridors existing or in project go through ex-Yugoslavia and alongside Adriatic Italian coasts up to Brindisi and from here by sea to Greece.)

Kind regards, Fabrizio Bonomo.

U qenë kaq afër problemit, prezenca e detit vetëm e vonon atë. Si rrethanë ky det i mallkuar është simbol “i tensionit”, “e vonesës”. Me mjetet e sotme, në vend që të arrijmë me një hap, na duhet nga katër deri në tetë orë, pak a shumë sa një ditë pune n.q. se gjithçka shkon mirë. Në këtë dimemsion fizik duhet të ndërtojmë atë? Shpirtërore. Jemi shumë afër me njeri tjetrin, dhe pikerisht për këtë duhet të punojmë më shumë dhe gjithjë në ngjitje, n.q. se gabon njëri gabon edhe tjetri. Duhet të fillojme nga ana kulturore dhe inteligjente, dhe, gjithë kjo nëpërmjet ndihmave ekonomike. Nga ana jonë, duhet të punojmë shumë për të realizuar detyrat që kemi për para, dalë nga dalë të arrijmë në nivelin e duhur.

Unë mendoj, se Shqipëria i ka të gjitha mundësitë që deri dje nuk i kishte. Italianët që meren me politikë dhe historianet, e dinë shumë mirë, duke qënë vetë ata që kanë firmosur në Londër dhe Berlin në vitin 1913, por t’i lëmë këto!

From: "Alessandro Ferri" <afferri@tin.it> To: <biraghi@cdc8g5.cdc.polimi.it> Subject: Richiesta di informazioni Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 20:51:15 +0200 Subject: ask for invitation.

Dear Marco Biraghi.

I work as a journalist for the Italian magazine “Automobilismo”, a magazine specializing in the field of cars and engines. I mostly deal with roadways, traffic and road conditions in general.

Through Engineer Porcu working on the CTS in Milan I heard and contacted you about your Project “Uman Tunnel”. I really would like to have further information about it. I could talk about it in the column “Road conditions”, edited by myself for the above-mentioned magazine.

Thank you for your attention.

Kind wishes, Alessandro Ferri

“You might not need to cut your ear off to get a message across – sometimes it might be even more effective to refrain from the desire to do so… and rather eat a piece of cake – or play poker for some more or less dubious stake…”

POKER is one of foreign investments famous ventures. It attempts to seduces the world by gambling.

POKER is a dangerous game. A gambler would risk the world for nothing – or almost nothing.

In foreign investment’s POKER, cigarettes are at stake. Ten cigarettes count as the starting capital for a game. And, since cigarettes are barely more than ash and smoke, there is hardly anything – almost nothing – at stake. (“Smoking causes fatal diseases.” Your government.)

A passer-by who expresses the interest to join the game and become a gambler may either use his/her own cigarettes as investment or purchase a stake directly from f.i. members. In case the joining gambler is a non-smoker, f.i. commits itself to reimburse his/her stakes when he/she wishes to leave the games. As is well known, bluffing is half of the game. The rest, and most of it, must remain unknown…

CULTURAL CAPITAL

foreign investment london * new york * liverpool * berlin * istanbul * zurich * kyoto * singapore

This auspicious and select group has been driven together by destiny, the melting of the poles, the urgent imperatives of a world in which art has been staled by property and commodification, and in which shared authenticity is rare.

For your free shareholders, membership and investment information please write to our headquaters in London.

OUTRAGE AND EXCHANGE

Posta in bottiglia curato da M + M Da venerdì 30 luglio a domenica 1 agosto nello spazio di “Oreste” / Padiglione italiano, Spazio A, 48ª Biennale di Venezia.

Flaschenpost è il tentativo di organizzare, con l’aiuto di esperti (il Museo di Posta di Norimberga, un ingegnere di canalizzazione, un postino veneziano…), un ufficio postale via bottiglia. L’opinione degli esperti viene richiesta e discussa su un Forum Internet. Secondo le proposte accettate, la Posta in Bottiglia viene realizzata a Venezia per un breve periodo.

Per il visitatore della Biennale la Posta in Bottiglia rende possibile inviare delle lettere attraverso delle bottiglie preparate appositamente. Usufruendo della posizione naturale della città di Venezia, le bottiglie chiuse con tappi si lasciano trasportare dalle vie d’acqua verso il mare.

Message in a Bottle curated by M + M Friday, 30 July, through Sunday, 1 August, at the “Oreste” site / Italian Pavilion, Space A, 48th Venice Biennial Flaschenpost is an attempt, supported by various experts (Nuremberg Museum of Post and Communication, a canal engineer, a Venetian postman, etc.), to establish a post office with bottled messages. The experts’ opinion will be discussed at a forum via Internet. According to the proposals obtained and accepted the bottled mail program will be realized in Venice for a short stretch of time. It will provide visitors of the Venice Biennial with the opportunity to send letters in specially prepared and collected bottles.

In keeping with the natural location of Venice the bottles sealed by the bottled mail office will be sent to the sea via waterways or entrusted as messengers to the sea and waterways, respectively.

DANIELA SALVIONI SAN FRANCISCO VIDEO SCENE San Francisco Video Scene was originally made for the Kunsthalle Basel, screened in 1998 and again in 1999. It traveled to the Biennale di Venezia (1999) as part of Oreste, and to Huis a/d Werf Beeldende Kunst, Utrecht.

This compilation is meant as an overview of what I think are the most exciting developments in the San Francisco video scene today. To a certain extent, my decisions were also guided by a desire to pinpoint what is somehow specific to San Francisco, and not derivative of the trends associated with the worlds major art centers. This wasn’t difficult. San Francisco abounds with video and it has a strong, unbroken tradition of video art from the early 1970s (with Howard Fried, Terry Fox, Tom Marioni, Paul Kos) through the late 70s and 80s (with Tony Labat, Lynn Herschman, Doug Hall, Linda Montano), to the present. Artists continued to make videos and to push its boundaries even when it wasn’t in vogue elsewhere.

Therefore, San Francisco’s video culture is very rich – replete with layers, references and exhibiting a high comfort level with the medium. For this reason, San Francisco artists can stick their necks out, play with videos possibilities and, in doing so, extend its parameters.

There is no over-arching theme to this compilation – a fact that I sought to underscore by arranging the order of the videos alphabetically by the artists name.

Having said as much, there are clearly strong foci that recur throughout most of the videos: particularly sex and violence. In one way or another, all the videos reflect on American culture and, therefore, this dual focus should come as no surprise. What is interesting, however, is the combination of subtlety and punch with which they treat this explosive set of issues.

D-L Alvarez, Oh/El Campo, 1997, 30 min., black and white, silent This video is based on an extensive series of drawings that, taken together, explore the platitudes and sugary emotions which frame our causal exchanges with others. However, Alvarez hints at a darker substratum to facile representations of happiness through his use of Germanic script. The video is mesmerizing in its repetitiveness and in the granular and flickering quality of the image.

Christopher Anderson, Hell for Actors 1999 A filmmaker who maintains a foothold in art, Anderson here uses out-takes from one of his films to show how a violent scene is constructed. But, rather than analytical, the result is itself surprisingly violent.

Mark Boswell, KultKino, 1998, 5 min., black and white Boswell borrows film footage from various historical sources and mixes them with his own video to generate what is both and ode to early Soviet cinema and a foreboding portrait of the contemporary landscape conceived of in the widest sense.

Nao Bustamante, Fantasy, 1998, 5 min.

Known mainly for her gender-inscribed and body-oriented performances, in Fantasy Bustamante casts her attention on the male libido. In it, we hear a catalogue of sex fantasies culled from psychology texts, as we observe a man in drag pose. Like Alvarez, Bustamante’s video creates a pulsating visual effect that enhances what amounts to a physical reception of the work.

Kota Ezawa, Wagner and Ross, 1998 Ezawas ersatz American television cop dramas are increasingly deadpan and uninflected, to the point of shedding all irony. Rather, the suture between his copy and the mass media genre lies in his decidedly "poor" scenes and "bad" actors.

Lynn Herschman, Seduction of a Cyborg, 1997 The grand dame of San Francisco video and known to a wider audience for her early focus on the constructedness of identity, here Herschman pursues this interest in relation to virtual reality â&#x20AC;&#x201C; exploring both the lure and pitfalls of a virtual self.

Tony Labat, Hooters, 1998 Working since the 70s in what might be described as a punk-conceptual mode, Labat is the "father" of the young San Francisco video scene. In this complex video he explores the same faux event (a fight) from four different perspectives using three different cameras (the incidental viewer with the handycam, the reporter with the TV camera and the artist with quality video camera) and an audience within the video. The setting is the parking lot of a restaurant chain called Hooters, known for its buxom waitresses.

Jennifer Locke, Bali HaL, 1998 Both an artist and a dominatrix, Locke explores the issue of power as it traverses the fields of art and sex. She strengthens this unlikely connection through a performative gesture: in this case, a sex toy becomes a Duchampian object. The music adds a sultry and nostalgic tone which heightens the farcical element.

Ann McGuire, I am Crazy and You Are Not Wrong, 1997, 11 min.

McGuire uses an out-dated video camera to achieve a grainy, yesteryear look. The protagonists of her videos are female characters who are typically in love, oblivious to their subaltern position vis a vis men, and slightly crazy. She improvises the text as she performs for the video.

Guy Overfelt, Burnout #1,2,3, 1998, 4 min.

Overfelt often skirts the law to provoke a clash and a collapse of the boundaries â&#x20AC;&#x201C; between art and life. He was arrested for the action in this video series (which, ironically, he did not intend in this case!); subsequently, he incorporated his trial into the piece with drawings and other support material. Burn Out features the quintessential Trans Am car a specifically laden symbol of American road-inspired notion of freedom and, notably, the first commercial product for whose promotion a Hollywood film was made.

People Hater, Car Hunt, 1998 People Hater is a group of artists and technicians that are an off-shoot of Survival Research Laboratory. For this video they built a remote-controlled 1970s station wagon carrying dummies that symbolize the archetypal media-generated image of an American family. They set the car loose in the desert and then hunted it down with real firearms bearing live ammunition. Part simple anarchic pleasure over blowing up a representation of oppressive conformity, Car Hunt also reflects back to us how mainstream visions of life themselves hide deep seated violent impulses.

COME I VENEZIANI VEDONO LA BIENNALE Do Venetians love their “Biennale”?

A cura di / A survey by Franco Fiorillo

L’incontro fa parte di una serie di interventi tesi a sondare i rapporti tra il sistema dell’arte e il contesto “territoriale” nel quale essa opera, esaminando gli eventuali vantaggi di una felice convivenza. Senza cadere nel demagogico, l’intervento ha voluto semplicemente rappresentare un punto di relazione tra veneziani e Biennale, non ponendosi come polemico o provocatorio, né ufficiale ed istituzionale.

Ho annotato pareri eterogenei dei residenti, dal commerciante al passante, al politico, al gondoliere ecc.

L’operazione artistica si è articolata in più fasi: 1) La documentazione, acquisita via fax e Internet, è servita per accedere agli indirizzari delle strutture ricettive, agenzie stampa, associazioni ecc.; 2) I contatti per coinvolgere i rappresentanti delle suddette strutture sono stati presi telefonicamente e tramite e-mail; 3) Le interviste – punto focale dell’incontro – sono state effettuate “on the road” nei giorni precedenti l’operazione (munito di penna, registratore e t-shirt tematica); 4) L’incontro alla Biennale, annunciato dagli altoparlanti dei giardini e presentato in Italiano, Veneziano e Inglese, si è svolto tra pochi ma interessanti interventi ed è stato per lo più impegnato nella trascrizione e traduzione delle interviste; 5) L’esito è stato piuttosto interessante: i contatti hanno mostrato un diffuso interesse dei locali per la manifestazione, a volte tradito dal carattere (a loro detta) “distaccato” dell’ente organizzatore. Tra i giudizi delle interviste (qui “miniaturizzate” per mancanza di spazio): “positiva”, “distante”, “ermetica”, “strana”, “bella”, “subita”, “scioccante”, “costosa”, “dinamica”.

This meeting was meant to survey the relationships between the art system and its “territorial” context, examining possible advantages of a happy cohabitation.

The meeting, without appearing demagogic, simply intended to represent a point of relationship between the Venetians and the Biennial and wasn’t polemic or provocative, neither official or institutional.

I wrote down heterogeneous opinions of some resident citizens, (salesmen, passers-by, politicians, gondoliers, and so on).

The artistic operation has been articulated in more phases: 1) Documentation, acquired by fax and Internet, has been useful to enter the directories of housing-units, press agencies, associations, and so on; 2) Contacts, that allowed me to get the units agents involved, were taken by e-mail and telephone; 3) Interviews, key-points of the meeting, were conducted “on the road” a few days before (I had a pen, a recorder, and a thematic t-shirt with me); 4) The meeting at the “Biennale”, announced by the loudspeakers of the Gardens and presented in Italian, Venetian, and English, took advantage of a few, but interesting, contributions. Most part of the available time was spent in transcribing and translating of the interviews; 5) The final result was quite interesting: the contacts showed a diffused interest among residents for the exhibition, sometimes betrayed by a sort of detached attitude (as they say) of the organization. Comments taken from the interviews (here miniaturized for lack of space): “positive”, “distant”, “hermetic”, “beautiful”, “strange”, “suffered”, “shocking”, “expensive”, “dynamic”.

Biennale di Venezia, summer 1999

Il 15 agosto non verrà nessuno Gianluca Lombardo Stefania Perna Durante l’azione il pubblico è stato invitato a staccare un biglietto, con una numerazione da 0 a 99, da un elimina code posto sulla soglia d’ingresso alla sala. Nel corso della giornata Paola Rosati di Grafio scriveva il diario della giornata e presentava l’attività del gruppo insieme ad alcune letture dei laboratori di scrittura. I biglietti staccati sono stati oltre 3.000. L’intervento è stato documentato in video.

During the event the public was requested to take a numbered ticket from a counter placed at the entrance. Paola Rosati wrote a diary of the day, and explained with some readings the activities of “Grafio”, the group she belongs to. The tickets taken off were, at the end, more than 3,000. The whole event has been recorded on video.

TESTA 355 : tirare: rstpla56a67b507d: occhi: verde puntato di giallo: peso: 56 chili: altezza: un metro e sessantaquattro: capelli: castano chiaro oréal: abito: pantalone lino color vinaccia: (di Francesca): camicia ricamata stile orientale: comprata alla festa dell’Unità nel 1993: ai piedi: ciabatte in cuoio: (di Rita): è il mio turno: entrare: stato assente: il leone non c’è più: leonelui è in cielo: splendente oggi sul mare (di Venezia): documentare: leggere?: ricorderemo: io all’ingresso: io che chiedo: Gruppo Mille: problemi tecnici per il Grafio: nella lista manca: ma dopo un po’ si aggiusta: ecco che sento la ghiaia: oltrepasso il cancello: la valigia: (di Vanessa): porta i nostri libri per la visione di rappresentazioni scritte: siamo un gruppo di scrittori ambulanti: oggi deambulo con Sara: sorella accompagnatrice e ascoltatrice: vedremo: anfore d’oro:

HEAD 355 : pull: rstpla56a67b507d: eyes: green dotted with yellow: weight: 56 kilos: height: one meter sixty-four: hair: oréal light brown: clothing: wine-color linen pants: (Francesca’s): oriental-style embroidered shirt: bought at the festa dell’Unità in 1993: on my feet: leather slippers: (Rita’s): it’s my turn: to enter: been absent: the lion isn’t there anymore: lionhim is in the sky: shining today on the sea (Venice’s): document: read?: we’ll remember: me at the entrance: me asking: Gruppo Mille: technical problems for Grafio: missing from the list: but after awhile that’s all set: here I feel the pebbles: I go through the gate: the suitcase: (Vanessa’s): carries our books to show the written representations: we are a group of travelling writers: today I walk round with Sara: sister companion and listener: we’ll see: amphorae of gold: giant

Nobody will be there on the 15th of August GRAFIO Associazione Culturale Prato

topi giganti come veri: segno di canali e metropoli: segno di un futuro prossimo o di un presente nascosto?: la stanza che ci accoglie è telecamerata: arredata come il dentro di una nave finta: quelle vera l’abbiamo vista ormeggiata all’Arsenale: dice la Sara: una nave così alta non l’avevo mai vista!: e i panni stesi?: dico io: guardiamo con la meraviglia negli occhi questa scena che stiamo camminando: due donne che girano in qua e in là la testa: nave e panni: panni e nave: scorriamo come in un discorso: leste: i nostri piedi devono arrivare in orario: documentare: scrivere?: ricorderemo: la gente che si ferma sulla soglia della stanza approntata e associata: vede un numero da prendere: e pensa cosa?: alla spesa?: a un sorteggio?: ma tira e via: ricorderà: una ragazza vestita di rosso: sorridente ma con gli occhi pescati: le gote scavate: libri blu e lego in copertina: un grafio non graffio: e noi dal buco del tubo avremo annotato il peso totale di carne: circa centottantamila chili di umanità pari a tremila persone numerate: io sono il numero 355: ricorderò:

mice as if real: sign of canals and metropoli: sign of a present future or of a hidden present?: the room that welcomes us is videod: furnished like the inside of a fake ship: the real one we’ve seen already anchored at the Arsenal: says Sara: I had never seen such a tall ship!: and the laundry hung out?: I say: let’s look with wonder in our eyes at this scene that we are walking: two women who turn their heads this way and that: ship and laundry: laundry and ship: we flow as if in a discourse: swift: our feet must arrive on time: document: write?: we’ll remember: the people who stop on the threshold of the room ready and associated: they see a number to be taken: and think what?: of food shopping?: of a lottery?: but they pull and are off: they’ll remember: a girl dressed in red: smiling but with circles under her eyes: hollow cheeks: blue books with lego on the cover: a grafio not graffio/scratched: and we from the hole in the tube will have taken note of the total weight of flesh: about one hundred-eight thousand kilos of humanity equal to three thousand numbered people: I am number 355: I’ll remember:

INTERNATIONAL WITCH STORIES

by SHELLEY F. MARLOW

I am a fiction writer, visual and performance artist and palmreader who found a way to synthesize these skills with the International Witch Stories, which is an interactive project that I first conceived for the Oreste site in the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennial. I offered audience members a chance to exchange a story about witches, which I recorded on audiotape, for a palmreading. This was one way to take the pulse of the audience in regards to their personally retained myths, attitudes, and images about witches and consequently, women.

Witch is often a derogatory term in popular culture/media, though witches have been considered healers, or strong, independent women who communicate with nature and cultivate “supernatural” or “magic” powers. The persecution of witches throughout history has its parallels in the subjugation of political prisoners today.

One of the audience members named Giuliana told of being a member of a community of female and male witches. One member of her community named Joyce had died last spring. Joyce was a poet, a member of the Italian Resistance, and someone described as “in favor of life”. Giuliana’s grandmother was a peasant who would cure people.

The “mad people” of the village would come over to her courtyard in the morning and hang out all day. Now Giuliana is a psychotherapist who successfully works with anorexic and bulimic clients.

Of the 18 stories collected, one was about a male witch. This story was emailed to an audience member who was traveling from Argentina on her way to opera school. When she retrieved her email at the Oreste site, there was a news item about a male witch in Africa who first appeared as a vulture. Someone threw rocks at the vulture, then the vulture changed into an elderly man. This man was assaulted by a crowd that tried to kill him, until police came by and took him away.

The elderly man told the authorities that yes, in fact he is a witch.

Another story told of a friend who had been a witch in a past life and when the two friends went to visit a church near Siena, the ex-witch became suddenly extremely hot and had a flash of terrible recognition that a field nearby was where she had been burnt to death as a witch.

These two quotes from the Oxford Dictionary show a new credibility for palmistry: «Palmist, a person who claims to be able to interpret a person’s character… by looking at the lines on the palm…» —Oxford Dictionary, 1995.

«Palmist, a specialist who can interpret to a certain extent a person’s character… by looking at the dermal pattern of the palm and also…» —Oxford Dictionary, 2000.

TWO WAY STREET & INTERNATIONAL WITCH STORIES are two projects which I organized for Oreste at the Italian Pavilion of the 48th Venice Biennale, at the invitation of Emilio Fantin, who I thank for the opportunity.

TWO WAY STREET is a postcard exchange project. It established connections between visitors to the Biennial and the New York arts community. In multiple sites in New York pre-stamped and preaddressed tourist postcards were provided at small stations in galleries, bookstores and cafes. Similar tourist postcards were provided in the Italian Pavilion. Each one was stamped with the words “what are you thinking?” in Italian and English. Participants were encouraged to write a card and post it overseas. When postcards arrived at these destinations, they were displayed in books for browsing. In each place then, postcards could be written and read. Participants could have an idea of who was on the “other side,” via sent postcards, and could share their own observations by writing.

INTERNATIONAL WITCH STORIES is a project by Shelley F. Marlow. Her own description of the interaction she presented is included in this publication. She gave visitors a one-on-one interactive situation: a palm reading in exchange for their story about witches, which were collected via audio tape.

These two projects were designed to be complementary. In their respective ways, both requested active participation from their audiences to establish a dialogue about communication; reading a postcard or reading a palm. Two Way Street gave its participants a general idea of who was on the “other side, involving them via reading and writing.” The interaction between Shelley and the participants of International Witch Stories was a more intimate, spoken dialogue.

Both projects focused on issues of how we communicate and share information.

I am interested in the ways in which these approaches, the rational and the non-rational, inform each other and my own practice.

Dean Daderko, 25 January 2000

SA AI PEN T S A S CO

NDO?

G? THINKIN RE YOU W H AT A

TWO WAY STREET AUGUST 22-29, 1999

Unidentified participants writing postcards.

THINKING? W H AT A R E Y O U

NSANDO? C O S A S TA I P E

POST TO:

New York, New York / USA

Please direct any questions about this project to the address on this card.

Thank you, in advance, for your interest.

-Dean Daderko

Dean Daderko 214 Devoe St., Apt. 1 Brooklyn, NY 11211 USA

Orestecinema: Networking as a privileged method September 3rd.8th, 1999 Diffusion, Organization, Independent Production, Hackering, Dissent within the contemporary experience of Art. Common and distinct questions within different disciplines and different fields of cultural productions.

By Enrico Corte and Andrea Nurcis Venues: meetings with the authors, screenings - Italian Pavilion, room A; Concerts – Chiostro dei Tolentini and Aula Magna of Facoltà di Architettura, Venice.

Our starting assumption has been to invite, from 3 to 8 September 1999, associations, groups and networks of cultural operators in film, theater, music, counter-information, whose structures were similar to the one that Oreste has been carrying out for the past years in the visual arts. This is the first attempt to let the flowing cultural thought, while it’s being moulded and while it meets with other media such as music and – most of all – film, in a structure that more than others represent the official system of western art: the Venice Biennale. So, to coincide with the 56th Film Festival, a particular event takes place within Oreste at the Biennale, an opportunity to meet and discuss that has been named Orestecinema.

Nurcis & Corte: ”No Light”

PROGRAMME Friday September 3rd Meeting with artists and organizers of Orestecinema: Mike Cooper, Enrico Corte, Ester Curcio, Elio Martusciello, Andrea Nurcis, Chiara Passa, W.J. Thompson Agency, Alessandro Valeri, Vladimiro Vinciguerra.

Presentation of the web project “Orestecinema at Civitella S. Paolo, art/cinema festival”, by Andrea Nurcis & Enrico Corte.

Video-miscellaneous in heavy rotation.

In the evening at the Chiostro dei Tolentini, Facoltà di Architettura: Orestecinema in Concert – performance by Setola di Maiale Unit (Pordenone, Italy).

Sunday September 5th Meeting and discussion about self-production. Participants: Teatro della Polvere (Bologna, Italy), presentation of videos and soundtracks: their multi-disciplinar experience flowing into the language of film; Luciano Barcaroli, Carlo Hintermann, Daniele Villa (Cervello a Sonagli, Rome, Italy), presentation of the book “Ioseliani secondo Ioseliani. Addio Terraferma”, Ubulibri; presentation of the review “Torazine” #3; organizers of “CinemaOFF”, indipendent film festival in Rome; representative of centro sociale Forte Prenestino (Rome, Italy); representative of Accademia di Belle Arti (Venice, Italy); projection of Nurcis & Corte’s videos: “No Light”, “Homevideo”, “Pino Piercing”.

Nurcis & Corte: ”No Light”

Saturday September 4th Meeting with theater/video/cinema makers.

Projection of Roberta Torre’s videos selected by herself: “Angelesse”; “Zia Enza è in partenza”; “Tragediatrice”; “Ecuba”; “Il cielo sotto Palermo”; “Palermo Bandita”.

Projection of “Nella prospettiva della chiusura lampo”, film by Paolo Pisanelli, coop. Big Sur. Projection of “Tic Tac Man” and “The Retreat”, films by Michele Mellara, Teatro della Polvere.

Musical performances by Setola di Maiale, Metaxù, Quatermass Plunder Space Machine (Italy).

Corte & Nurcis: “Homevideo”

Monday September 6th Art in Movie. Projection of : “Sebastiano”, by Giovanni Andreotta; “Ciro Norte”, by Eric Breuer; “Necropolis”, by Franco Brocani; “No Light”, “Homevideo”, by Enrico Corte and Andrea Nurcis; “Giro di Lune tra Terra e Mare”, by Beppe Gaudino; “Trasformazioni”, by Marco Moreggia; videos by Bresciani/Pomardi, Marcos Jorge, Chiara Passa. Meeting with the authors.

In the evening at the Aula Magna, Facoltà di Architettura: Orestecinema in Concert - performance by John Duncan (U.S.A.).

Tuesday September 7th Domestic meditation about Nurcis and Corte’s work.

In the evening at the Chiostro dei Tolentini, Facoltà di Architettura: Orestecinema in Concert - performance by Schismophonia (Italy - U.K.).

Wednesday September 8th Special event. Meeting and discussion with a delegation of artists and filmmakers belonging to two channels of the counter-information against Milosevic, namely the Radio B92 (now Radio Studio B2-92) and Cultural Centre Cinema Rex from Belgrade: Dragan Ambrozic, Radivoje Andric and Jovana Krstanovic.

Presentation of several video works from ten years of independent productions: from conceptual video art to documentary denouncing war, from the description of the artistic life through the urban life in Belgrade during the peace time to the cry of pain and dissent of the most important collective of artists and intellectuals in Yugoslavia. A unique chance for the Italian public to meet some key figures of such a particular historical moment.

With representatives of the Comitato per la Pace (Belluno, Italy).

Intervention by film critic Francesco Alò and guests from 56th Venice Film Festival.

In the evening at the Aula Magna, Facoltà di Architettura: Orestecinema in Concert - performance by Zar and Branislav Petric’ (Novi Sad, ex-Yugoslavia).

12.00 p.m. : Orestecinema’s Closing Ceremony.

Corte & Nurcis: ”Homevideo”

Orestecinema has been sponsored by : Walter J. Thompson Agency, Milano; Studio Random, Roma.

Thanks to Luigi Ricciardi, of the Biennale’s visual arts office; Meri Gorni and Isabella Puliafito, “flank-guards” for Orestecinema; Alessandro Valeri and Wladimiro Vinciguerra, Orestecinema co-organizers; Beppe Drago, for his very generous hospitality of several people from Orestecinema; Massimo Ongaro from Circ.a, for his timely organizational intervention of Orestecinema’s concerts at the Facoltà di Architettura; Lucio Annunziata, for his nice helpful hand.

Special thanks to Dott. Daniele Rampazzo, the Italian Ambassador in Belgrade, whose mediation with the Milosevic government has been crucial in order to obtain the visas that made possible the partecipation of the representatives of Radio Studio B2-92 and CyberRex Project.

Venezia, Settembre 1999 …sono all’ultimo anno dell’Accademia di Belle Arti diviso, in questo periodo tra esami, che riesco a superare con una serietà inquietante, e la deliziosa vita mondana che la città magica offre vista la concomitanza della mostra del cinema e della Biennale d'Arte arrivata alla sua quarantottesima edizione… e Oreste?! L’ho conosciuto qualche tempo prima proprio qui a Venezia e subito abbiamo stretto un’ottima amicizia visto i numerosi interessi in comune, io immerso nelle mie ricerche creative, lui incrocio di storie magicamente concretizzate nei giorni in cui è stato ospitato nel padiglione “Italia” e nelle strutture che hanno permesso lo svolgersi degli eventi serali. Una miscela di arte, video, cinema, musica, comunicazione, il tutto tenuto insieme dal rapporto creato tra i numerosi artisti che hanno partecipato, una iniziativa che è riuscita a rompere degli schemi, a portare avanti tante storie… ma in fondo una sola.

Beppe Drago

con una grossa visibilità quindi, ma al tempo stesso non riscontrando una grossa letteratura su di lui. Questo libro vuol essere l’esempio di un crocevia, perché fa parte di un progetto collettivo che vuole ampliare l’attenzione, entrando nel mondo di Ioseliani anche come documentazione visiva, affiancandolo a un documentario su di lui e anche lasciando che si svolga come un progetto in divenire, aperto, per cui la retrospettiva e l’incontro saranno indirizzi su cui cercheremo di muoverci coinvolgendo anche altri autori. Siamo partiti da un contatto diretto, senza mediazioni, cercando di fare un libro che risentisse della formazione di ognuno di noi tre e su cui non pesasse un impianto critico “forte” ma soprattutto testimoniasse il desiderio di accostarsi a questo cinema. Abbiamo usato una forma dialogica, coi nostri nomi scritti prima dei rispettivi interventi durante la conversazione, una intervista-chiaccherata continua durata due giorni in cui c’era la possibilità di instaurare un dialogo vero, sincero e diretto.

Questa occasione veneziana in realtà è anche l’opportunità di riempire un vuoto, per l’assenza di Ioseliani stesso e del suo ultimo film che egli avrebDomenica 5 settembre 1999 be voluto presentare al Festival del Cinema, ecco Conferenza sull’auto-produzione perché noi su di lui portiamo la nostra testimoDa Carlo Hintermann a Daniele Villa, da Luciano nianza.

Barcaroli al Cervello a Sonagli, senza soluzione di Cervello a Sonagli / Citrullo Int. La lavorazione del libro è durata più o meno due in conference. continuità… anni, dal momento in cui l’abbiamo contattato. Come autore ci ha colpito da tutti i punti di vista, linguiIl nostro intervento è abbastanza trasversale: veniamo stico, contenutistico, di capacità espressiva, rigore formaper rappresentare l’associazione culturale Cervello a le, “convinzioni”. Il suo confrontarsi continuamente con il Sonagli di Roma, la quale è collegata a un circuito, il Circ.a, Potere, il suo mostrare allo spettatore la propria disponibilità. che lavora per creare una rete in Italia per la diffusione delle Paradossalmente ancora non c’era nessuna monografia su di lui musiche “eterodosse”. Oltre a questo, siamo qui per presentare e noi senza saperlo abbiamo riempito una lacuna. Abbiamo cerun libro sul cinema, “Ioseliani secondo Ioseliani. Addio cato di dare al nostro lavoro un respiro più ampio possibile: Terraferma”, dedicato a questo regista georgiano adesso attivo oltre all’intervista nella prima parte del libro, ci sono anche i in Francia, non come esule (ha sempre posseduto il passapor- materiali di un seminario tenuto da lui a Bologna due anni fa, to). Toccare tangenzialmente delle variabili è ciò che abbiamo che noi abbiamo seguito, materiali più tecnici e specifici sul fatto in questi anni, tra di noi c’è chi ha studiato cinema e “mezzo” cinema. Lui è venuto a Roma per due giorni solo per regia, chi si occupa di musica, chi lavora col video: il Cervello fare la nostra intervista, a casa di una sua amica che poi è a Sonagli ha spesso cercato di sviluppare questo “rimescolare”, divenuta una nostra collaboratrice preziosa aiutandoci nei questo spazio di continuità tra due mondi, quell’avanguardia momenti di difficoltà. Poi noi abbiamo raccolto, tutto da soli, i musicale che spesso si affaccia al cinema. vari materiali, fotografie e documenti a Parigi, ospiti da lui. La Il mio contributo nell’associazione è stato quello di organizzare conversazione è spontanea, anche con parti dialogiche difficili da incontri: con Michel Chion, un teorico francese che ha studiato accettare per l'editore perché sono riportate le cose più miniil rapporto tra cinema e suono in particolare; oppure organizme come il versarsi un bicchiere da bere… zare performance come con Metamkine, un gruppo di artisti, Domanda dal pubblico: è un po’ una scrittura che è il corrigestori anche di una etichetta discografica, che fondono perfet- spettivo del cinema-verità… tamente cinema e musica. Anche il progetto di questo libro su Risposta: infatti già il libro “è” il cinema di Ioseliani. L’altra Ioseliani ha un proseguimento con la realizzazione di una sua sezione riguarda il seminario di Bologna, organizzata da noi per retrospettiva al Palazzo delle Esposizioni di Roma, che coinvol- sezioni tematiche tra le quali ci sono dei rimandi con la prege ancora il Cervello a Sonagli. Se si parla di auto-produzione cedente conversazione. A questo segue la filmografia completa e e della capacità di organizzarsi per far uscire sul mercato dei sinossi dei vari film. Il materiale fotografico è stato scelto con prodotti partendo da idee che non hanno una veste istituzio- lui, con story-board originali da noi presi e portati via. Un lavonale che ne garantisca la vita, la storia della genesi di questo ro faticoso, senza la certezza che il libro si facesse… infatti libro è abbastanza emblematica. Partendo da zero: avendo una dopo sono iniziate le “disavventure” per realizzarlo effettivamente. passione comune per Ioseliani, vederlo premiato ai vari festival, Da anni ci chiedevamo come “renderci utili”, come trasformare

questa passione per il cinema in un contributo culturale. cercando a fatica un dialogo con le istituzioni che è necessario All’inizio avevamo grandi idee, aprire un cineclub in periferia, in per ottenere la maggiore visibilità possibile. Questo è difficilissiuna situazione disastrata, il Cine-Trullo, diventato poi per con- mo perché quando in Italia c’è qualcosa di consolidato, un’uffitrazione Ci-trullo, che ormai è un’entità fantomatica che ci cialità, una zona di potere, c’è la tendenza a creare un recinto appartiene e ci permette di essere a Venezia con questi accre- intorno, a fermare le cose e le persone, le proposte alternative, diti a nome “Citrullo International” (risate). Poi si è aperta una per quanto interessanti. Credere fortemente nel nostro progetto possibilità con un piccolo editore, per inaugurare una collana di ci ha portato a non avere complessi o paura di “sporcarsi le studi cinematografici, di libri-intervista. Noi c’eravamo resi conto mani” con le Istituzioni: quello che conta è creare una che tramite l’intervista emergeva qualcosa dell’autore che resta- visibilità e risonanza seria a qualcosa che consideriamo va significativo negli anni; con questa idea abbiamo fatto anche buono e giusto. un’intervista a Kaurismaki. Quando tutto il nostro lavoro ormai di mesi su Ioseliani era pronto, intervista, filmografia, bibliografia, documenti, fotografie, siamo andati dall’editore il quale ha Ciò che non siamo, ciò che non vogliamo “pesato” il tutto e ha detto: “no, guarda, mi dispiace…” È ini- a cura della redazione di Torazine ziata la ricerca di altre situazioni; qualcuno ha detto subito di no, altri usavano perifrasi come “i libri migliori sono quelli che Torazine, dietro cui si cela un collettivo di idioti travestiti da non si pubblicano…” poi è iniziato il contatto con Franco illuminati dissidenti, nasconde ahimè sotto il suo vuoto un preQuadri della Ubulibri, che è il rapporto più naturale avendo lui cetto, ma dal momento che non vogliamo insegnare niente ma pubblicato molti libri di cinema. Lui ha fatto tantissime corre- limitarci a portare avanti un processo il nostro punto di parzioni ma non ci faceva capire se si poteva stampare o no. tenza è il vuoto originario di queste pagine, muovendoci negli Quando infine siamo stati ricontattati da una sua collaboratri- scarti e nelle interiora come forme vicarie e rappresentative delce lei dava per scontato che si facesse, e solo allora l’abbiamo l’interezza. Al corpo senza organi di moda tra i fichetti radicalcapito! Siamo stati due mesi a Milano per realizzarlo, occupan- rivoluzionari contrapponiamo il corpo multi-organico da esplodo case di amici, con la tecnica della compassione, cambiando rare bucherellare succhiare stimolare titillare mutilare, aspiriamo a un corpo con mille occhi, mille orecchie, mille genitali, mille casa ogni due giorni per risparmiare. piedi e chilometri di intestino.

Poi c’è stato il problema della promozione, che a livello univerAttanagliato alle mammelle, braccia cosce e grasso delle gambe, sitario ha scatenato un vero e proprio boicottaggio che continua la mano destra, tenente in essa il coltello con cui ha commesancora oggi, perché non ci siamo voluti appoggiare a professori so il detto parricidio, bruciata con fuoco di zolfo e sui posti di Storia del Cinema per realizzare il libro, e dunque durante dove sarà attanagliato sarà gettato piombo fuso, olio boltutte le presentazioni che abbiamo fatto in ambito unilente, pece bollente, cera e zolfo fusi insieme e in seguiversitario non è mai venuto nessun docente, assistente to il suo corpo tirato e smembrato da quattro cavalli ecc. di quell’ambito. Meglio così. Si sono creati dei e le sue membra e il suo corpo consumati dal fuoco nemici, come se stessimo facendo chissà cosa… ridotti in cenere e le sue ceneri gettate dal vento Abbiamo trovato anche degli alleati, comunque, su questo corpo del desiderio abbiamo applicato per per esempio Enrico Ghezzi che ci ha fatto l’inconservarne la plasticità genetica un cervello in troduzione e che come noi ama Ioseliani. Tra l’algrado di articolare esclusivamente il pensiero pritro avevamo chiesto allo stesso regista chi avrebmitivo e rozzo, quello che sgorga libero prima di be preferito presentasse il libro, e lui ha fatto ogni sofisticazione scolare e che si muove unicatre nomi tra cui Ghezzi, che è stato prescelto. La mente attraverso schemi connessi a bisogni, e il pensua introduzione è stata travagliata, con “minacQuatermass / Metaxù siero laterale che modifica gli ambienti dove è solice” da parte nostra di non pubblicarla se non l’a- performing at Orestecinema to operare il primo, alterando così i suoi schemi convesse consegnata in tempo, ma alla fine solidati creandovi nuovi bisogni che generano a loro funziona proprio come testimonianza di una volta nuove frustrazioni. gestazione difficile.

Signori! Con la mia macchina le teste schizzeranno via e i Nel lavoro di promozione è rientrata anche una proiecondannati non soffriranno nemmeno per un istante! zione organizzata da noi di un film di Ioseliani a Piazza S. Maria in Trastevere a Roma, a cui ha partecipato tantissima Combiniamo illogicamente i segni da voi stessi immaginati per gente con entusiasmo, non solo addetti ai lavori; questo testi- restituirveli morbosamente deturpati e, dal momento che vogliamonia che esiste un pubblico, una esigenza enorme da soddi- mo inoltre occupare una nicchia di mercato vergine, ci strasbattiamo i coglioni del pensiero logico e di quello matematico sfare, per lavori non esclusivamente commerciali.

Come Cervello a Sonagli c’è anche l’orgoglio di aver fatto acca- lasciando la creazione di algoritmi cultural politico economici ai dere delle cose altrimenti non possibili, contando sulla buona nerds dei movimenti studenteschi e ai loro avvoltoi free volontà e energia dei singoli, ognuno dei quali ha magari anche climbers sociali. un altro lavoro, senza un ufficio stampa fisso o finanziamenti e Ricordò che ogni frammento rivela la rosa da un diverso punto

di vista ma il sonno delta lo sommerse prima che riuscisse a nazione, con l’avvelenamento e la narcosi di una certa area del chiedersi cosa potesse significare l’esplosione a raggiera dei cervello rendono l’individuo sottomesso alla volontà di quelli che significati, le sfaccettate manifestazioni del reale le esplorazioni desiderano governarlo. del vissuto, e qui, la parte in ombra… noi non abbiamo rispo- Il teschio si riequilibra da solo non costruendo materiale osseo ste non abbiamo niente da aggiungere se non che questo è un ma rigenerando la materia cartilaginea. Il fatto che il viaggio nella natura umana. teschio non si richiuda ermeticamente con la materia A questo punto si impone il metodo ghevarista filo paraossea consente al cervello di rimanere in un ambiennoico huber hegelismo extra terrestre più azione dirette aerato e non ermeticamente chiuso e sottovuoto, ta esoterica, che prevede il passaggio dagli psicofarcome è solitamente per la scatola cranica dei sogmaci alla spada e dalla spada alla P38, per approgetti adulti. L’infiltrazione di aria e ossigeno nella dare ai missili di Pifano. Nasce così l’esperienza scatola cranica è esattamente lo scopo che si Torazine, pazienti psichiatrici autorganizzati che forvuole ottenere praticando la trapanazione. mano il primo circolo del neoproletariato deviante Questa rivista metterà in forma la tua mente. con cognizione che piacere e morte fanno parte Ho avuto una reazione a catena autoinflitta. dello stesso gioco, il gioco della rivolta il gioco della trasmutazione dei metalli, oro dal piombo, lotta di John Duncan speaks. classe di elementi.

PUNTI DEBOLI DEL CARRO CORAZZATO: An interview by Daniela Cascella.

Duncan at the Aula Magna 1) Feritoie di raffreddamento del motore. John(IUAV), before his concert.

DC: I think we may start off with your perforDanneggiabili con mezzi incendiari.

2) Feritoie della vista. Danneggiabili con mezzi incenmance in Venice, how it went and how you felt it diari. was connected (or not) to the rest of the Biennale.

3) Il posto per l’equipaggio, aperto verso l’alto: dannegJD: The Aula Magna at the Facoltà di Architettura was giabile con lanci di bombe a mano e con armi da fuoco. fun to perform in. The high ceiling, marble floors and 4) Pneumatici. Danneggiabili con mezzi incendiari e con armi bare walls all made the acoustics similar to playing in a small da fuoco. cathedral, and really enhanced the work I performed there.

Il discorso non verte su una prassi di liberazione elaborata su Enrico Corte e Andrea Nurcis were both generous with their time base critica quanto sull’inestimabile e scatenato piacere di and energy. They each told me that the Biennale organizers were calpestare distruggere irridere. Se la società politica è morta solo largely ignoring all Oreste events. The audience seemed to i necrofili che si ripropongono di esprimere la propria mainly be students from the school, and they were quite responsessualità tramite un lavoro in rete di cessione del fisico sive. It was a pleasure to perform there. post-mortem ne possono godere ed è per questo che Torazine DC: It seems that here in Italy it is quite hard to have coninneggia alla necrofilia come strumento politico di espressione certs and music in such a structured institution as the Biennale and other museum spaces in general. I think this depends both dei propri desideri.

Torazine bomba a tempo sciencefiction liberal fascista fusione on the people who work in these structures – who are most pornografica di igiene sociale e decadenza reale, nata nel deli- of the time not updated/interested about music – and on the rio di rivoluzione e cristalli di metossianfetamina, viva nella public itself who is not used to certain projects. On the other foschia dell’eroina e nello stupore delle proprie certezze, soste- hand, there have been several attempts to introduce music in nuta da soldi rubati e da fuochi di marijuana e dall’eccitaziomuseum spaces abroad. You have taken part in a number of ne del sacrilegio, droga sesso passioni primarie dallo spazio inte- shows that included sound within museum spaces, could you tell riore come un fantasma ghiacciato che brucia solo per un me something more about them, what was the attitude of the momento, adesso le sue severe firme elettro magnetiche risuo- people who organized them and called you to participate, how nano con l’eco di shock sfidandoti a comprendere. did it work?

La direttiva più importante e creativa di Torazine è entrare nella JD: So far, what you say is still true in Italy; for the rest of cultura mainstream come un parassita che succhia tutto il san- Europe and Japan I’m convinced that’s changing. A growing numgue cattivo che ristagna tra il mainstream e il margine. ber of curators are aware of the general field of electroacouSucchiando il capezzolo contaminato della cultura mainstream, stic music, their willingness to sponsor these events encourages others to look into this area and take it seriously. Organizers Torazine si trasforma in falsificatori mutanti.

Il suo veleno è la gran medicina. Presto consuma il suo veleno are realizing that many artists’ approaches to sound have a perché si divora la coda velenosa. E questo si compie sul suo visual bias, more in common with installations or sculpture and stesso corpo, da cui fluisce un balsamo glorioso con ogni mira- a physical or psychoacoustic presence, that they deal with audio in a way that often has little or nothing to do with traditiocolosa virtù.

Ripetute dosi di quantità infinitesimali di fluoro possono ridur- nal musical instruments or structures. re nel tempo ogni capacità individuale di resistenza alla domi- Organizers are also realizing that this work has a history.

It’s rich, it’s complex, and it’s developing. A few especially savvy organizers are seeing through the empty hype of “digital media” and are becoming interested in work that somehow gets past the current limitations of affordable computers, particularly the samples, loops, fake effects and beats that artists who use these machines to perform with so often rely on. A key to making this happen is making this music widely available to audiences, especially over radio or the Net. There are several cases local to Italy where people are aware of this music because they've heard it over experimental music programs from limited-range stations. One such example is Onde Furlane in Udine: they've been hosting programs that have played experimental music for over ten years, created an audience, and Nail Records (also in Udine) is one of the few shops in all of Italy that carries the CDs. Making audio-files accessible via Internet is also effective: anyone with a fast enough modem and information on where to point their browser can hear them when they want.

Younger people in Italy are very aware of all these developments and are already making efforts to realize them all over the country; it’s inevitable that they’ll also eventually be directly involved in making them happen at the Biennale and elsewhere. I expect it’ll happen sooner than later.

DC: Your work has always been on the border of different aspects and sensibilities and you have always used different media: how do you feel about the way that works such as yours have been hosted in exhibition spaces, and the way that they can be read in such spaces?

JD: In one sense it’s exciting and encouraging to see – I never thought I’d see Cosey’s (1) porn-magazine images framed and hanging in a museum until it happened, for example – because it means the work is being honored, shown in a place where it’ll be respected and documented, as I think it should be.

Some say that this sort of hosting means that the work itself is dead, relegated to the past. I don’t agree. For one thing, if that were true there wouldn’t be any controversy over it. But the controversy continues, as Cosey and many other artists can verify. For another, the value and relevance of the work depends on what it stimulates in the person who sees or hears it, wherever and however and whenever the work is made public. An institution exhibiting it means that more people will be exposed to it, in a context that automatically lends it credibility.

Standing nude in front of an audience, pulling a text out of your vagina and reading it aloud – if I saw someone do that now, anywhere, I’d probably find it inspiring. Think of me as you will.

The most serious danger I see in being repeatedly hosted by these institutions – and the danger is very real – is when an artist gets so addicted to their support that she or he deliberately creates work that’s insincere, or mimics another artists’ work, in order to fit a trend that the institution is supporting.

The most cynical way I’ve heard this referred to so far is 'reinventing oneself’. Whatever guise is used, this is self-betrayal.

When an artist does this, ultimately the work itself reflects the falseness of such a gesture and everyone suffers. People who

know about this from experience say the temptation can be overwhelming.

DC: Most of your projects are site-specific, a dimension that you seem to privilege. In particular, you set your works and performances in places that have a strong connotation and a big stratification of memory, of pathology and disease (the disease being not only on physical level but also mental). These spaces are also closed and breathless, such as cells and rooms, conveying a claustrophobic atmosphere that reached its extreme limit in the space used in “The Crackling”. Could you say something about your choices of spaces and how you relate to these spaces?

JD: I tend to prefer spaces that encourage you (me, anyone) to concentrate inward. So far they tend to be small – they can also be vast. At the same moment.

DC: Your works always seem to seek a way of putting oneself into a dangerous condition: from the early experiments of the 70’s (“Every Woman”, “Scare”) that would involve the body and some perverse (in the sense that Edgar Allan Poe would give to this word, that is to push some boundaries and do things because they are forbidden) mechanisms linked to it – to the more recent works such as “Maze”, “The Dream Room” or “Stress Chamber”, in which you are “locked in with your mind without any distractions” (as you wrote about “Maze”).

JD: My work is more about facing fear. Realizing that fear is something each person creates, that causes misunderstanding and spurs actions that make a situation more difficult to deal with. And about encouraging each participant, myself especially, to see something about her or his own character.

DC: You’ve spent some time in Japan. Which aspects of the Eastern culture appeal to you?

JD: Mainly the encouragement to develop a sense of oneself within oneself, an awareness of who you are that doesn’t need to be shown with fashion or public gestures, or demonstrated to anyone else. Also, a sense that my existence is in one sense essential and at the same moment utterly insignificant.

DC: Could you tell me something more about your experiments between sound and color? How do you relate your sound work to other forms of expression?

JD: Sound and color can both be interpreted as forms of energy that have different frequencies. We perceive these frequencies and respond to them, physically and psychically. When I first started making art, I was fascinated by the relations between color as a frequency of light and our emotional responses to it.

After awhile, I started thinking about sound in the same way, choosing sounds according to the psychological responses they invoked in me when I listened. That’s basically the way I work now.

DC: When I read about your work of 1980 entitled “Black Room”, and about the writings you used in it, “We hate you little boy”, it reminded me of “We hate you little girls” of Throbbing Gristle. Is there any connection between your work and theirs in the broadest sense? When did you first hear about them?

JD: There’s no connection between the “Black Room” installation

no possibile sempre più quell’oltrepassamento del “soggetto individuale”, quel transito verso una nuova entità che Mario Costa chiama “iper-soggetto estetico”(1).

Questo “corpo unico” (multiforme e differente), fusione di “schismogenesi”(2) tecno-logica del suono e “schizophonia”(3), predilige i processi non-lineari, i vettori di fuga, le collisioni e le strutture caotiche come campo di sperimentazione.

Apertura al caso, all’incontro-scontro, alla differenza, dunque Oreste, Venezia, “eventi paralleli”. La struttura, o per meglio dire, le tracce di questo nostro lavoro, sono di volta in volta reperibili nelle circostanze che ne caratterizzano la fisionomia, la forma. Ad esempio il Chiostro dei Tolentini a Venezia da un lato e le tecnologie di diffusione disponibili dall’altro, hanno reso la possibilità di distribuire nello spazio quadrifonico il suono (4).

Una diffusione di ottima qualità che spesso ha consentito una immersione profonda nel “corpo unico” di Schismophonia, ma che in altri momenti ha permesso la diffusione e di conseguenza l’ascolto “parallelo” delle sorgenti sonore (5), le quali hanno così evidenziato la differenza operante all’interno di Schismophonia, la sua natura “schismo”… Vite parallele che in alcune circostanze sembrava non dovessero incontrarsi mai, “eventi paralleli” che operano sul piano spaziale, sul piano esistenziale… ma altri parallelismi ancora si danno.

Memoria tecnologica e amnesia biologica Stratificazione, plagio, decontestualizzazione, deriva… una foresta fatta di suoni, di voci, dirottate e moltiplicate nei “non luoghi” della radio, della televisione, della rete, vengono qui catturate e rimesse ulteriormente in ciclo, riciclate. L’estetica della “macchina” instaura un nuovo spazio antropologico che deterritorializza gli eventi, i corpi, le voci, la memoria. Una memoria “macchinica” che non è pura estensione di quella umana, ma piuttosto una sua aberrazione. Liscia, inorganica, infallibile, vuota, digitale, diviene un oggetto spaziale, materia solida, non più “ripetizione differente”, oggetto temporale, ma identità fissa, mortalmente (1) Cosey Fanny Tutti, ex porn model in the early identica a se stessa. Ma a ben guardare questa Seventies and, from 1975 to 1981, member of the inedita situazione è anche un’opportunità, British industrial-noise art group “Throbbing Gristle.”

Schismophonia’s concert at Chiostro dei Tolentini She formed in the Eighties, with her boyfriend Chris Schismophonia può infatti praticare una salutare (IUAV).

Carter, the electronic duo “Chris and Cosey.” “amnesia”, i suoi lavori sono costruiti a partire da strutture complesse, ed articolate, che destinate alle macchine consentono ai nostri processi mentali una presa diretta e libera con il tempo. Dunque nessuna Schismophonia: Parallel events. necessità di arginare il caos del mondo, una sensibilità libeElio Martusciello e Mike Cooper. ra di spodestare per alcuni intensi momenti l’osservazione e la L’interattività, la connessione tecnologica tra i nostri diversi stru- riflessione. menti, la coimplementazione dei dispositivi disponibili, ci consentono in qualche modo di superare la consueta “relazione tra (1) “L’«interattività», in tutte le sue modalità e declinazioni, va intesa soggetti” presente nei processi comunicativi tradizionali, come ad come una prima forma di realizzazione di quell’iper-soggetto estetico che matura nella «condivisibilità dei progetti», in quanto mentali per essenesempio nella pratica della musica improvvisata. La mutua mani- za, e giunge a compimento tramite i «dispositivi di contatto a distanpolazione dei materiali, il conseguente e costante deperimento za» e le «reti»”. Mario Costa: Il sublime tecnologico, Castelvecchi 1998, dei meccanismi di cui la tradizione disponeva per la genesi, il vedi anche, dello stesso autore, Estetica della comunicazione, Castelvecchi riconoscimento e lo sviluppo di eventi di natura sonora, rendo- 1999, e Rivista di ricerca estetica e tecnologica, Epipháneia.

and the Throbbing Gristle song – in fact when I heard it I thought that song was disappointing and silly. But Throbbing Gristle’s first two LP records changed the way I thought about what music is, and Cosey’s early events – especially her work with porn-photo collage, putting herself in front of the camera in order to use her own image as source material – directly inspired me to use sex as a learning tool. Her insistence on developing her own way to get sound out of a guitar without “learning to play” it (to make audio gestures similar to what others were doing with the same instrument) – exploring it, really, in a sense making a private act public, similar to the ways John Tilbury treats a piano, and the band’s early tendency to focus on the cold horror of developments in technology – all encouraged me to get deeper into making my own noise.

DC: In the sleeve notes to “The Crackling” you wrote: “You exist in a world of gravity and sound. You are like light, like a sea of air. You are history, and make all of history something else.

Every sound generated continues to vibrate to infinity. Each sound you make then: every mutter, every scream, every prayer; added to the reverberations that never end. Some sounds can change everything.” It seems that we are part of an ongoing process whose rules we don’t know, yet we are in it and contribute to it nonetheless. Sound is one of the aspects of this process that lasts longer and that is most able to give us access to a wider perception.

JD: Very true.

DC: I’ve read that you once said that the Wiener Aktionismus has played a strong influence on your work. The body is a very important factor in your works and it is often connected to sound (“Voice Contact”) and to loss of control. Is it some sort of cathartic experience that you are seeking, another way of becoming “empty again and receive more”, as you write in “The Error?”

JD: Yes. Exactly.

(2) “Lavorando con la tribù Iatmul presso il fiume Sepik nella Nuova Guinea, avevo scoperto che varie relazioni tra i gruppi e tra vari tipi di parenti erano caratterizzate da interscambi di comportamento tali che quanto più A manifestava un dato comportamento, tanto più era probabile che B manifestasse lo stesso comportamento. Questi scambi li chiamai simmetrici. Viceversa vi erano anche scambi stilizzati in cui il comportamento di B era diverso da quello di A, ma ad esso complementare. In entrambi i casi le relazioni erano potenzialmente suscettibili di una divergenza progressiva che chiamai schismogenesi”. Gregory Bateson, Mente e Natura, Adelphi 1984.

(3) “Termine derivante dal greco schizo, separazione e phoné, voce, suono. Ho utilizzato per la prima volta questo termine in The New Soundscape, per indicare la frattura esistente tra un suono originale e la sua riproduzione elettroacustica. I suoni originali sono legati al meccanismo che li ha prodotti. I suoni elettroacustici sono invece delle copie e possono essere riprodotti in un altro momento o in un altro luogo. Mi servo di questo vocabolo, mediato dalla terminologia clinica, per sottolineare l’effetto aberrante di questo sviluppo, proprio del nostro secolo”. R. Murray Schafer, Il Paesaggio Sonoro, Unicopli 1985.

(4) In questo caso i segnali inviati ai diffusori erano solo due (destro/sinistro – cioè la fusione dei segnali di Mike ed Elio) mentre il controllo avveniva su quattro diffusori e grazie alle differenti regolazioni di volume e di equalizzazione disponibili indipendentemente per ogni diffusore, il risultato è stato una continua ridefinizione dello spazio acustico, una sua continua reinvenzione.

(5) Ad esempio i diffusori destro/sinistro posti alle spalle del pubblico diffondevano unicamente i suoni generati da Mike e quelli posti di fronte i suoni prodotti da Elio; in altre circostanze la divisione avveniva tra la coppia di diffusori posti a destra del pubblico e quella di sinistra; in altri casi ancora a Mike venivano riservati la coppia anteriore/destro e posteriore/sinistro, mentre ad Elio la coppia anteriore/sinistro e posteriore/destro.

support individuals’ development. We have worked on music projects, art, video and cinema, working mainly with young people, always trying to continue our “normal life.”

What we are presenting today is a part of our film and video production. On April 2 1999 Radio B92 was closed and all its audio and video material impounded; this is what we have managed to keep. We are currently involved in legal action and we continue to fight to set Radio B92 free and to make these materials available again; here is a petition that you can sign for this, after the lecture.

Last month we managed to obtain a radio frequency from another station and now we can broadcast 12 hours of transmission (with a new name: Radio Studio B2-92 – translator’s note). We continue to organize our concerts and circulate our material, such as gadgets and merchandising displayed here. Radio B92 is not only a radio but a larger context, a structure that fosters human rights in Yugoslavia.

Question from the audience: what was your position before the war? Could you express yourselves freely?

Answer: there were no particular restrictions before the war (there have been a number of wars, not only one), even though attempts at going off the track were obstructed. As soon as we developed ourselves a little, we were shut and reorganized: this is the third time that something like this has happened and this time they have succeeded completely. Independent media in Yugoslavia are extremely dependent on the economical system, there’s a strong pressure on it which keeps it under control.

Question: where do you get funding to keep working? Is there anyone who supports you?

Answer: during the war we have been supported by other radio stations, such as Studio B (that let us use their frequencies and Mercoledì 8 settembre 1999, equipment). We had no kind of economical support during the Orestecinema alla 48ma Biennale di Venezia; war. At some point we kept working whilst hiding in private incontro-stampa con tre rappresentanti di Radio B92 e del houses, working at home through a computer or with makeshift Centro Culturale Cinema Rex: equipment. Our website is completely self-supported and it was Dragan Ambrozic, Jovana Krstanovic e Radivoje Andric, made by a boy, a friend involved in our project, who conregisti e operatori culturali di Belgrado. tinually works on it with his girlfriend to keep it updated. The current media law can impose a fine as Radio B92 began 10 years ago as a small much as 500,000 German Marks for any kind of independent radio station in Belgrade and is thing they consider offensive or “leg-pull”: such a the only station that has followed all the fine is too high for us to pay, so we could be transformations in Yugoslavia, trying to liable to prosecution. The economic structure, offer a variety of viewpoints as the which doesn’t appear too aggressive, actually country has evolved. We have no political can control all the small radio stations. relationship either with the Milosevic regiThe videos that we are going to show are lowme or with the political opposition and budget works that have been made over the people are aware of us as a source of last 8 years during the different phases of the information, not linked to any party. Do war. Although most times we didn’t have any not trust anyone, not even ourselves! sort of help, at the end there’s a short docuLeft from right: (Laughter). Always use your head!

Andric, Ambrozic, Bresciani, Krstanovic mentary which has been funded by the European at Orestecinema.

Over the years we have set up an indepenCommunity: we were invited to take part in some dent network of connections which has helped conferences for this and we were given technical

support, not economic, to make the documentary.

Answer: it keeps changing and changing. The economical situaBefore, we used to have 5 post-production sets, very expensive tv tion is awful, lots of people are unemployed. At the same time cameras, now everything is impounded and we work with compu- the government makes people believe that everything can be ters and makeshift equipment. rebuilt and that the economic situation can be improved. People Question: what was exactly Cinema Rex? however are still very shocked by what has happened in the Answer: Cinema Rex, used to be the only place where we could past few months and they haven’t come to terms with it yet. show our works. This cultural center was situated in the Economy is at a point where it is hard to predict how ancient part of Belgrade. Every year in May we used much energy for change still remains. We would like to organize an important festival of experimental to offer the people inspiration and the strength music there, called Ring Ring Festival. Obviously to make change possible, by creating cultural this year the festival couldn’t take place, theevents in Belgrade and all over Europe.

Question: what are your impressions on this refore we organized this new situation, caltrip to Venice? led Ring Ring Around the World: on the day Answer: any time we go abroad we meet of the festival all the bands from Europe, people who have followed our situawho weren’t allowed to come to Belgrade, tion and this is very important. We do performed in their own cities in order to not seek financial support but people to support us and draw attention to the talk to and with whom to develop a Festival. 3 or 4 Italian cities have also relationship with, even through the participated, Rome and Bologna among Internet. We were looking for you. them.

Question: Could you talk about the bureauDuring the war the only way of keeping Dragan Ambrozic during B92’s lecture. cratic difficulties that you’ve come across while the world informed about ourselves has organizing this journey to Venice? been the Internet, a major opportunity to Answer: bureaucracy has given us problems, avoid economic restrictions. So, there was this both in Italy and in Yugoslavia, but the two got sort of tam-tam, rumour was spread, and through on really well together! (Laughter). We needed spethis, through concerts, friends and the web, we cial visas to leave Yugoslavia and we needed to find managed to keep our activities going, even during the war. On 15 May, the anniversary of the foundation of Radio B92, money for the trip (Soros Foundation funded the journey – we invited musicians and DJs from all over the world to take translator’s note). The Italian Ambassador helped us a lot with part in a 24-hours music event on the Web. Since then, an orga- the visas, however it is really difficult to get out of Yugoslavia nization called Net Aid was born: it keeps arranging this on-line and when you are stuck in one place it is hard to develop cross music event periodically. The message that lies underneath has cultural dialogues.

Question: I’ve heard that it is impossible to get a visa… to do with avoiding military solutions for political problems.

Question: is your public made of young people or also older Answer: if is not possible for us to go abroad, there’s no compeople? munication any longer, so what we have been and what we’ve Answer: different sorts of people are interested in our acti- been trying to do so far slowly loses strength: that’s why it is vity. Music is mainly followed by a younger public, while infor- important that not only us and our works and information are mation draws a public made up of journalists etc. Among the shown abroad. Since the frontiers have been closed, people from musicians that have helped us through Net Aid are Sonic Yugoslavia have been finding themselves isolated and they have Youth, R.E.M., a number of DJs: it is the same “sound” that become more and more easy to manipulate. we used to broadcast in our radio programs before, with Question: what helped you get the visas? which we became identified as time went by, like a sort of Answer: lots of help has come from the Ambassador and from your trade-mark. We have a good relationship with MTV that, in invitation to the Biennale. It also depended on the impression that August, broadcasted music and a number of films in order to authorities have of us, believing that we are to get back. support and promote our projects. The way in which Milosevic Question: however you keep being controversial characters to the and his group are controlling the situation is through the eyes of the authorities… media, therefore we chose to use pop culture and the media Answer: authority doesn’t care much about these situations, they itself to generate a different kind of information, freer choi- have economical control and if a little information slips away is ces, a possibility to choose other identities, models, points of nothing compared to that. They are interested in the great circulation of money, in controlling TV and the police. It appears reference.

Question: could you tell us something about that you have a reasonable freedom to do what you wish, but since they keep control on these three bigger structures they the social situation in Belgrade? What can easily manipulate you; the media being such an important have your observations been powerful center that they can kick a war off that. The governover the last few months?

ment is scared of losing power, therefore it won’t let us use the tà stereofonica? radio station. We can now broadcast on another frequency only Una composizione di musica e immagini dal vivo di Branislav for 12 hours a day while we used to have 24 hours to our- Petric' e Aleksandar Caric'. selves. But things changes quickly, and we are planning on doing Una delle dimensioni che Petric’ e Caric’ usano nel loro lavoro various counter-information programs in the future.

Question: is your information completely anti-Milosevic? è l’ironia. Ironia che non deriva da una loro chiara decisione, Answer: we would like to underline that we are complema è una conseguenza della situazione generale che tely detached both from the government and the oppohanno vissuto nell'ultimo decennio. Si scusano, non sition. We have always tried to show all points of vorrebbero. Ma è inevitabile. Se dovessero scegliere view. The opposition has got in touch with us but una parola, un simbolo, che esprime tutta quest'iwe have tried to keep our distance. Our main aim ronia, sceglierebbero la parola “telefono”. is to fight the restrictions of the laws on media, Lo spettacolo è una sequenza composta di una in order to get free and democratic information, decina di brani, dove per ogni brano, volta per keeping away both from the government and the volta, si ristabilisce un nuovo rapporto tra le opposition and trying to offer a further viewpoint. immagini, le musiche e le azioni. Questa sequenQuestion: is it possible that interest in your situaza non si sviluppa in un modo lineare, ma struttion has decreased, due to the laws of the infor- Zar with B. Petric performing turale, dove ogni parte può funzionare indipendenat the Aula Magna (IUAV). mation market? temente e in qualsiasi successione. Non esiste una Answer: even though interest toward what has happelinea narrativa generale, però la narrazione riemerge ned is decreasing we manage to keep it alive through in ogni brano, sempre in maniera diversa. Quello che li different initiatives, concerts, etc. What really makes the news is interessa e che li diverte di più è proprio la ricerca della “misuwhat happens in Belgrade, not what is happening today at the ra giusta” nella costruzione di ogni brano.

Biennale. We are here to speak to people rather than journa- L’organizzazione del tempo totale dello spettacolo è sempre forlists, who are interested in what happens in Belgrade. We are temente soggetta al momento, all’ambiente e all’occasione. interested in making contact with people and with our country- È sempre presente una comunicazione viva tra gli autori/attori, men, refugees in any part of Europe; any chance to get out is tra le musiche e le immagini, con una grande dose di improvalso an opportunity that we have to keep this net of contacts, visazione e prontezza nel cogliere gli imprevisti. Questa manieto connect with normal people without any external mediation. ra di comunicare non rientra nella logica del classico “concerto” e tantomeno nella logica del video o del cinema.

Le immagini non sono l'illustrazione delle musiche e le musiche non sono colonne sonore. Le immagini sono dei “campioni” Riflessioni del dopo-Biennale. estratti da situazioni di vita quotidiana, un tentativo di sonGiuliano Tremea, Coordinamento Per la Pace daggio in profondità, che si traduce con una probabile facile lettura, a volte divertente, creando un mosaico “multiuso”: le diaL’opposizione a una guerra non è solo divulgare controinforma- positive sono tratte dalle copertine di vecchi dischi anni ’70 con zione o profondersi in aiuti, ma è anche la capacità di ricono- i relativi ritratti dei cantanti folk dell’epoca, o dalle figurine di scere – nello sviluppo e attuazione delle proprie capacità un album su una serie di western tedeschi filmati in Yugoslavia, espressive e comunicative – la qualità pratica della creazione oppure sono diapositive educative, autentiche degli anni ’50, utidi queste situazioni che è necessariamente opposizione alla guerlizzate negli asili nido. ra. Cercare di promulgare questa presa di coscienza crea un con- Il percorso musicale è caratterizzato dalle differenze e salti senso collettivo di rifiuto e un’analisi critica su come agire con- improvvisi tra i singoli brani: dal sacrale al rock, dal comico e tro chi si pone contro. Così la nostra adesione allo sfrattato rumorista ai temi popolari balcanici rivisitati. Gli strumenti trafestival musicale Ring-Ring di Belgrado non è stata solo una dizionali (chitarre acustiche ed elettriche, mandolino, flauto, voce) forma di solidarietà, ma la sua amplificata espansione tendente sono associati ad oggetti di uso quotidiano amplificati (bicicleta dimostrare che la guerra è contro la nostra capacità di espres- ta, bacinella con l’acqua, pompa d’aria, targhe con numeri civisione, contro la nostra naturale esistenza. ci, buste, piatti).

I turisti della Biennale comparivano e scomparivano nello e dallo spazio relazionale di Orestecinema, mentre Dragan e Jovana parlavano di Radio B92, di Belgrado, dei bombardamenti; nel chiacchiericcio culturalmente giustificato i visitatori proseguivano come drogati dalla lirica della loro visita guidata. L’informazione sembrava una delirante simulazione artistica tanto spettacolarizzata da far parte dell’idioma culturale generato dal contesto. Bene.

Puoi sconfiggere la guerra con la tua capaci-

THE END

trans-action Motive 1/4: - City - Travel - Copy - City Postcards; Vierfarbdruck hochglanz 147 x 104 mm (global standard) Aufl. 10 000 9.9.1999

COME CI SI INCONTRA CON I POETI / POETS AND PEOPLE Incontri di poesia internazionale / International poetry meeting 10 / 11 / 12 settembre 1999 a cura di / curators: Emilio Fantin, Meri Gorni e / and John Gian con / with: Giorgio Bertelli, Mauro Bianchi, Claude Beausoleil (Canada), Julien Blaine (Francia), Nicole Brossard (Canada), David Caviola, Mara Cini, Gianni Curreli, Antonio D’Alfonso (Canada), Caterina Davinio, Rita Degli Esposti, Digitalismus (Lucas Berchtold, Emile Ellberger, Pierre Thoma, Svizzera), Francesco Giusti, Coco Gordon (U.S.A.), Riccardo Held, James Koller (U.S.A), Louise Landes Levi (U.S.A.), Anna Lombardo, Fabrizio Lombardo, Patrice Luchet (Francia), Clare Ann Matz (U.S.A.), Giuliano Mesa, Enzo Minarelli, Armando Pajalich, Marco Piamonte, Alessandro Seu, Tina Stolz (Svizzera), Pasquale Verdicchio (Canada).

Nei tre giorni oltre ai momenti di incontro e di lettura sono stati anche mostrati video di poesia e ascoltate registrazioni, tra gli altri, di Jörge Burkhard (Germania) e Endre Szkárosi (Ungheria).

*** Quel giorno sul terrazzo dello spazio Oreste il rombo dei motoscafi s’incrociava con le parole dei poeti. Ad un tratto il microfono emette un sibilo. Un ronzio costante proviene dalla sala interna dove una moltitudine di persone si attarda tra i tavoli. Come ebbi a dire in quell’occasione, a John Cage non sarebbe dispiaciuto tutto questo: la poesia non ne era disturbata. Perché i poeti hanno orecchio e sanno anche improvvisare, perché la parola supera tutto e, quando vuole, annulla qualsiasi rumore per poi tornare a duettare con esso. Quel pomeriggio fin tanto che alcuni dicevano i loro versi sul terrazzo, nel banco, all’interno della sala, i visitatori compravano libri di poesia.

Quale dei due eventi era più sensazionale? Vendere poesia mi sembra un fatto anche più estremo che dirla. Comprare poesia è una grazia di Dio. Non è detto che tutte le poesie siano buone e comunque è già poesia il pensare che qualcuno le compra.

I poeti non s’incontrano mai con la gente, almeno quando dicono le loro poesie, perché queste sono inafferrabili, tu puoi correre loro dietro, e non è jogging, sono sempre più veloci. Già una parola fa schizzare un neurone mentre un altro ritorna su se stesso. Nulla da fare, conviene lasciarsi perdere, affidarsi a Dio. I poeti li incontri dopo, al bar, nelle case degli amici, per strada: ce ne sono di belli, brutti, antipatici, cordiali, odiosi, buoni, grassi e magri. Come tutti.

Emilio Fantin That day at the Oreste space terrace, the rumble of motor–boats crossed the words of poets. Suddenly the microphone emits a terrible noise. A

constant humming comes out of the room where people is staying among the tables. As I said in that occasion, John Cage would have appreciated all that: poetry was not disturbed at all. It is because poets have an ear and they know how to improvise, because the word goes over everything and vanishes every noise and then it begins to play with it again.That afternoon, meanwhile some poet was saying his own verses on the terrace, inside the room, visitors were buying poetry books. Which one of the two events is more sensational? To sell poetry looks even more extreme than to say it. To buy poetry is a grace of God. It is not said that all poems are good but anyway it is poetic to think that somebody wants to buy it.

Poets never meet people when they say a poem, because it is impossible to catch it, you can run after it, it is not jogging, and they are faster than you. A word is already squirting out a neurone while another one is coming back on itself. Nothing to do, it is better to loose yourself and place your trust in God. You can meet poets later at the bar, at friend’s places, in the street: some are ugly, beautiful, good, bad, fat and skinny. Like everybody else.

Emilio Fantin

*** “Come ci si incontra con i poeti” risponde a un mio grande desiderio: conoscere chi sono i poeti.

Mi vengono in mente le parole di Montale quando diceva: “Quando leggo un libro e mi accorgo che vorrei essere amico del suo autore (morto o vivo che sia), quello è per me il maggior frutto della lettura. E gli autori di cui vorrei essere amico sono quelli in cui l'arte è illuminata da una severa comprensione umana”.

Ecco: il senso della lettua e dell'ascolto è la consapevolezza di essere vivi nell'esperienza, è la sensazione di tenere il mondo.

Penso che la poesia abbia il grande compito di risvegliare dentro di noi il desiderio di libertà e di ascoltare quella voce che altrimenti rimarrebbe muta.

Forse proprio da questo desiderio ho inziato a fotografare i poeti che man mano incontravo, spinta anche dal tentativo di ridurre la distanza tra poesia, poeta e lettore.

In fondo anche la poesia, con i suoi molti poeti presenti e tutti gli altri incontri, altro non è che il tentativo di seguire i propri passi e avvicinarsi a quelli degli altri in una possibile comune passeggiata.

Ecco che allora in questo incontro la poesia ci ha restituito la figura del poeta dandoci il modo di conoscerlo dal vivo e da vicino.

L’idea che ha accompagnato non solo questi incontri ma anche i precedenti, da me organizzati in altri ambiti, è idea affine a quella di Oreste, cioè considerare l’arte non come un campo a sé e di conseguenza concepire la stanza al Padiglione Italia come possibile osservatorio-laboratorio capace di mettere a fuoco, nelle diverse conoscenze, gli intenti comuni.

Come dice Seamus Heaney, “la poesia, e aggiungerei anche l’arte, ha la

forza di persuadere la parte vulnerabile della nostra coscienza di essere nel giusto, a dispetto di tutte le ingiustizie che le sono intorno; la forza di ricordarci che siamo cacciatori di valori, e che le nostre stesse solitudini e angosce sono degne di credito, nel senso che esse, pure, sono un pegno della nostra autentica umanità”.

Ringrazio Emilio Fantin e John Gian che hanno reso possibile questo mio desiderio.

Meri Gorni How you get to meet poets’ answers one of my fondest desires: to know who the poets are.

The words of Montale spring to mind when he said: “When I read a book and I realise that I would like to make friends with its author (whether dead or alive), that for me is the greatest fruit of literature. And the authors whose friends I would like to be are those where art is illuminated by an exacting human comprehension.”

So: the sense of the reading and of the listening is the awareness of being alive in the experience, it’s the sensation of holding the world. I think that poetry has the great task of awakening in us the desire for freedom and for listening to that voice which otherwise remains mute.

Perhaps it was from just this desire that I began photographing the poets who, little by little, I came into contact with spurred on also by trying to reduce the distance between poetry, poet and reader.

In the end poetry, with its many poets present and all the other encounters, is none other than the attempt to follow one’s own footsteps and draw nearer to those of the others in a possible communal walk. So that in this encounter poetry has given back to us the figure of the poet, giving us the way of getting to know it live and from close up.

The idea that has gone along not just with these encounters but also the preceding ones organised by me in various circles is, in the end, Oreste’s one, that is considering art not as a field per se and consequently conceiving the room in the Italian Pavilion as possible observatory-laboratory able to put into focus, in the different knowledges, the common intents.

As Seamus Heaney says, “Poetry, and I’d also add art, has the power to persuade that vulnerable part of our conscience to be just, in spite of all the injustices around it; the power to remind us that we are hunters of values, and that our own solitudes and anguishes are worthy of credit, in the sense that they are really a token of our authentic humanity.”

Special thanks to Emilio Fantin and John Gian who have made this wish of mine possible.

Meri Gorni

*** Quando Emilio Fantin mi ha proposto di organizzare un evento di poesia

nello spazio Oreste alla Biennale ho pensato che finalmente, dopo tanti anni, avrei potuto realizzare un sogno e cioè proporre un incontro tra poeti in uno spazio prestigioso senza dover pensare al pubblico e soprattutto al denaro.

Un momento in cui poter scambiare le esperienze e fare il punto sulla propria ricerca.

L’idea era quella di mettere a confronto realtà diverse con un unico denominatore comune: la poesia. Poeti, performer, editori e organizzatori di eventi poetici. Realtà anche molto lontane tra loro per esperienze, percorsi di ricerca, e cultura di origine: dai poeti “classici” ai performer più sperimentali.

Ho deciso di escludere i più anziani, e noti, sia perché mi sembrava più interessante e giusto dare spazio a voci che, pur occupando già un posto preciso nella storia della poesia contemporanea, hanno meno possibilità di farsi conoscere sia, onestamente, per la totale mancanza di fondi.

Le prime due giornate sono state suddivise in due momenti: uno di incontro e riflessione e un secondo di letture e performance. Nella terza giornata si sono conclusi i lavori con letture e performance di tutti i presenti.

Ringrazio tutti i partecipanti per l’entusiasmo e la professionalità dimostrati, in modo particolare Emilio Fantin e Meri Gorni che sono stati partner perfetti in questa piccola avventura.

Per il resto… la poesia parla da sola…

John Gian When Emilio Fantin asked me to organize a poetry event in the Oreste space inside the Biennale I thought that finally, after so many years, I had a chance to realize a dream, I mean to purpose a poetry meeting in a prestigious place without having to worry about audience and, most of all, about money. A moment where we could be able to share experiences and “make the point” about each other’s research. The idea was to compare different situations with one and only common denominator: poetry. Poets, performers, editors and organizers of poetry events. Even situations very distant one from another in terms of experience, research, courses, and cultural origins: from “classical” to extremely experimental poets.

I decided not to invite elderly and well known poets, first because I thought it was more interesting and right to give some space to voices that, even occupying a very precise position inside history of contemporary poetry, have less chances to get to be known, and then, honestly, because I absolutely had no money.

The first two days have been divided in two: first, meeting and considerations, then reading and performances. Reading and performances given by all participants ended also the third and last day.

I really wish to thank everybody for their enthusiastic and professional participation, and particularly Emilio Fantin and Meri Gorni who were perfect partners during this little adventure.

For the rest… poetry speaks by itself…

John Gian

Le immagini di “Come ci si incontra con i poeti” provengono dall’archivio di Porto Dei Santi

ORCHESTRA STOLPNIK DIGIUNO DEL CUORE. FASTING OF THE HEART Martedì 14 settembre 1999 10.00 Installati tre microfoni sulla veranda, dentro i tubi del pontile che costeggia il canale. Filtro il suono attraverso queste casse di risonanza e lo propongo miscelato al rumore non filtrato che entra dalla porta aperta. Una cosa molto sottile, una presenza impercettibile.

Three microphones are placed on the balcony inside wharf’s tubes. I’m filtering the sound with these resonators, transmitting it into the room mixed with the non-filtered soundscape coming from the open door. A light modification, an imperceptible presence.

12.45 Un grosso signore tedesco batte sui microfoni facendo sobbalzare i presenti.

A big German man beats on the microphones making the people inside jump for the noise 15.38 Una signora molto distinta arriva e ci regala la sua biancheria intima come contributo.

A distinguished lady arrives and gives us her lingerie as her personal contribution.

19.00 Chiudiamo la porta con il fil di ferro.

We close the door with iron-wire.

Mercoledì 15 12.13 Mi fa male la caviglia. Siedo dietro il tavolo con il computer e guardo la gente che entra, si ferma, passa ancora. Quando mettiamo il video si fermano di più.

My ankle-bone hurts. I’m sitting behind the table, the one with the computer, and I’m watching at the people entering, stopping and passing-by. When we turn the video on, they stay a little more.

14.15 La gente ci chiede cosa facciamo e cosa sono questi progetti che presentiamo.

Gli spieghiamo tutto, uno per uno. La curiosità paga.

People ask us what are we doing and what are the projects we are presenting.

We try to explain everything to each of them. Curiosity counts.

17.45 Ho mangiato ieri il cioccolatino e ho messo il… nella tasca. Mi ricordo questo adesso mentre sto cercando l’accendino.

Yesterday I ate a chocolate and I put the… in my pocket. I recall it now while I’m searching for a lighter.

18.35 La ragazza guardiascultura poco prima della chiusura osserva la sua custodita scultura, ne segue le trame, le linee, comincia a canticchiare una canzoncina sempre seguendo lo snodarsi dei fili metallici, gira a naso in su e canta e danza… È ora di andare a casa.

The “sculpturekeeper” girl, just before the end of the day, looks at “her” sculpture, following its lines, its plots. She starts singing, following the paths of the metal wires; she walks with her nose up and sings, and dances… It’s time to go home.

Giovedì 16 10.45 Un gruppo di persone entra, guarda i tavolini e le poltrone vuote, sguardo veloce anche sulla terrazza e poi spariscono nella sala successiva.

A group of people gets into the room; they watch at tables & empty chairs, give a quick glance to the balcony and suddenly, eaten by the next room, they disappear.

11.37 Un uomo scavalca il parapetto della veranda, attraversa senza dire una parola e prosegue lungo il pontile, sale sulla sua barca e sparisce in una nuvoletta di gasolio.

A man jumps over the fence, walks through the balcony without saying a word and goes on the wharf to his boat disappearing into a gasoline cloud.

12.00 Entro nello spazio di Oreste alla Biennale. Una ragazza in viola e blu sprofonda nell’unica poltrona arancio dello spazio. Tutto il resto è bianco, saturo della luce che entra dalla finestra della veranda.

I enter the oreste space at the Biennale. A girl dressed in violet & blue sinks into the only orange armchair of the place. All the rest is white, saturated by the light coming from the balcony door.

12.05 Due visitatori americani sono seduti sotto un ombrellone bianco in terrazza. Lui guarda la laguna, lei chiude gli occhi verso il cielo. Si sente il motore di una barca.

Lei volge lo sguardo verso di lui. Tira fuori dalla borsa un panino e lo mangia.

Two American visitors are sitting under the white sunshade in the balcony. He is watching at the canal, she closes her eyes to the sky. The noise from a boat engine can be heard. She looks at him, takes a sandwich from the bag and eats.

14.10 Laura mi racconta un po’ della sua vita.

Laura tells me something of her life.

16.00 La guardasala è seduta su una sedia contro il muro. Un suo collega di fronte a lei, ma distante, agita le braccia pronunciando parole senza suono. Lei dorme.

Qualcuno si ferma a riprendere fiato. Si scrivono cartoline di Venezia mascherata da altre città. Come sarebbe Venezia se fosse in montagna. Come sarebbe Venezia se fosse in Alaska. Come sarebbe Venezia se fosse in Patagonia. Ci sarebbero gli stessi turisti? Gli italiani l’andrebbero a vedere?

The roomkeeper is sitting on a chair close to the wall. Another one in front of her is moving his hands saying words without sounds. She is sleeping. Somebody stops taking a breath. Postcards are written from Venice masked as another city.

How would Venice be if it lied on the mountains, or in Alaska, or in Patagonia?

Would it have the same people visiting it? Would Italians go to visit it?

18.59 Trovato un piccolo ciondolo d’argento con dentro una foto.

A small silver pendant with a photo inside is found

(Digiuno del Cuore di Boris Bakal, Pina Siotto e Fabrizio Rota) (Fasting of the Heart by Boris, Pina & Abi)

answer

a.titolo

LA BIBLIOTECA DI ORESTE/ORESTE’S LIBRARY a cura di a.titolo, in collaborazione con il Gruppo Mille curated by a.titolo in collaboration with Gruppo Mille Libreria Patagonia, Venezia, 9 giugno - 7 novembre 1999 Patagonia Bookstore, Venice, June 9th - November 7th, 1999 La particolarità del progetto Oreste è quella di aver avviato un sistema reticolare di relazioni, di scambi, di confronto. Il suo valore oppositivo rispetto alle dinamiche individualiste e concorrenziali, proprie non solo dell’ambiente artistico, costituisce il suo contenuto più rilevante.

Per evidenziare questa «messa in comune» di riflessioni, esperienze e ricerche artistiche aperte alla collaborazione e al dibattito, abbiamo desiderato l’esistenza di un luogo in cui, durante i mesi di apertura della 48a Biennale di Venezia, si potessero raccogliere in permanenza le testimonianze relative alla molteplicità delle presenze destinate ad avvicendarsi nella sala di Oreste, favorendone anche la divulgazione in un sito esterno al recinto espositivo. È nata così, coordinata dal Gruppo Mille, la Biblioteca di Oreste, grazie all’ospitalità e alla disponibilità di Vittorio Marchiori e Luigi D’Anna della Libreria Patagonia, nel sestiere di Dorsoduro. Strutturata come un work in progress, al suo interno sono state ordinate tutte le pubblicazioni pervenute da parte di organizzatori e partecipanti (vecchi e nuovi): cataloghi, libri dossier aperti alla pubblica consultazione. Oltre duecento pubblicazioni che sono andate a costituire il primo contributo al fondo bibliografico-documentario di Oreste.

The peculiarity of the Oreste project is that of having started off a network of relations based on communication and exchange. Oreste’s stance of resistance towards the art world’s individualistic and competitive dimension appears as its most relevant contribution. In order to highlight this pooling of artistic theories and practicies open to collaboration and debate, we have looked for a place in which the plurality of voices following one another within the Oreste space in the Italian Pavilion would be permanently documented during the whole time span of the 48th Venice Biennale. A site external to the Biennale, in which the work of the artists presented and the themes discussed in the space of the exhibition could find its way out. This is how and why the project of a library for Oreste has originated. Oreste’s Library has been coordinated by Gruppo Mille and hosted by Vittorio Marchiori and Luigi D’Anna, owners of the Patagonia Bookstore in Venice. Structured as a work in progress and open to the public, the library has received books, exhibition catalogues, magazines, slides, artists’ portfolios etc., documenting the work of those who have participated to Oreste. All materials have been put on reference shelves as they arrived. More that two hundred items had been collected which could constitute a first small contribution towards the creation of a permanent Oreste center of documentation.

a.titolo

Lettera di invito spedita giorni prima

Invitation letter sent in advance

Alla c.a. di: La partecipazione di Oreste alla Biennale di Venezia prevede una programmazione di incontri e di attività che si svolgono nel Padiglione Italia presso i Giardini.

To the attention of: Oreste’s contribution to the Venice Biennale consists of a programme of meetings and different activities which will take place in the Italian Pavilion at the Giardini.

Saremmo molto lieti della Vs. partecipazione a: L’ARTE E I SUOI PARTNER che vuole essere un’occasione per incontrare il mondo dell’industria, delle istituzioni amministrative e le realtà economiche per uno scambio di esperienze e di proposte con il mondo dell’arte.

Vi partecipano: Arch. G. Borgesi, Zanotta SpA, partner ufficiale di Oreste alla Biennale P. Rasulo, artista e designer B. Finessi, giornalista e critico A. Chiandò, ag. Nuova Comunicazione H. Kegler, Bauhaus Dessau G. Belli, economista informatico M.Trimarchi, economista M. Cresci, dir. Accademia di BB.AA. di Bergamo S. Falci, artista L’incontro si terrà sabato 18 settembre 1999 con inizio alle ore 11 presso il Padiglione Italia, Spazio A Ringraziandovi per la disponibilità,Vi preghiamo di confermare la Vs. partecipazione entro il 15 settembre al fine di organizzare l’accredito per l’ingresso: Salvatore Falci, 035 225009, 0339 3913989, salvafalci@tin.it Monica Mazzoleni, 035 575716, 0338 8448713, momonica@tin.it

Sabato mattina, ore 11. Si comincia l’incontro con un caffè Carissimi…

Ore 14. Buffet in terrazzo con pizzette e vino (si ringraziano per la collaborazione Maria Verderio, Cristina Ravasio e Paolo).

Il buffet si prolunga. I partecipanti continuano a dialogare; l’Arch. Borgesi si intrattiene con Mario Cresci, nascono delle intese per nuovi incontri e collaborazioni.

Valeria Camerini, sorseggiando un ottimo vino

We would like to invite you to take part in the meeting: ART AND PARTNERSHIP which will be an opportunity for the world of industry, administration and economics to confront with the contemporary art for an exchange of experiences and proposals.

Partcicipants: Arch. G. Borgesi, Zanotta SpA, partner of Oreste at the Venice Biennale P. Rasulo, artist and designer B. Finessi, writer and critic A. Chiandò, ag. Nuova Comunicazione H. Kegler, Bauhaus Dessau G. Belli, informatics economist M.Trimarchi, economista M. Cresci, dir. Academy of Fine Arts in Bergamo S. Falci, artist The meeting will take place on Saturday, Sept. 18th 1999 at 11 AM, Italian Pavilion, Space A RSVP before Sept. 15th in order to arrange a free access: Salvatore Falci, 035 225009 or 0339 3913989, salvafalci@tin.it Monica Mazzoleni, 035 575716 or 0338 8448713, momonica@tin.it

Saturday morning, 11 AM The meeting starts with a coffee offered by Carissimi…

Buffet on the terrace with snacks and wine (thanks to Maria Verderio, Cristina Ravasio, and Paolo for their help).

During the buffet people go on talking; Mr. Borgesi is making arrangements with Mario Cresci to meet again and possibly realise new projects.Valeria Camerini, sipping

bianco, scambia le proprie opinioni con Michele Trimarchi.

Maria Grazia Sebastianelli racconta la sua attività di ricerca di fondi per l’arte contemporanea.

Paola Tognon si incontra con Guido Belli.

Giovani artisti di Padova, tra cui Alessandro Saccocci, sono seduti in terrazza e si intrattengono con Salvatore e Monica per mettere a punto un progetto che verrà realizzato in primavera.

Beppe Caturegli si confronta con Rasulo, Chiandò e Borgesi sulla possibilità di altre occasioni di incontro con il mondo dell’arte.

Michele Brunelli trasmette il suo piacere di giovane collezionista ad alcuni sconosciuti.

some good wine, is exchanging opinions with Michele Trimarchi.

Maria Grazia Sebastianelli is explaining her business as fundraiser for contemporary art. Paola Tognon bumps into Guido Belli.

Some young artists from Padua, including Alessandro Saccocci, are sitting on the terrace, talking to Salvatore and Monica about a project to be started in Spring 2000.

Beppe Caturegli is discussing the possibility of finding other occasions to meet the art people with Rasulo, Chiandò and Borgesi.

Michele Brunelli is sharing his enthusiasm as a young collector, with some people nobody knows yet.

Gianluca Borgesi

È da qualche mese che stiamo vivendo questa collaborazione e adesso riusciamo a capire meglio cosa significa “Oreste”.

Siamo molto contenti di questa esperienza che è sicuramente un modo per sentirsi “partner dell’arte”. L’occasione di questo incontro mi invita a fare alcune considerazioni attorno al “fenomeno” del design italiano che può essere citato come un felice esempio di partnership: quella tra designer e imprenditore.

Il design italiano, nato negli anni ’50 – ’60, si è sviluppato attraverso una forma del tutto particolare rispetto ad altri paesi europei. In Italia, a differenza di quanto avveniva nei paesi di lingua tedesca od anglosassone, gli oggetti non nascono dalla sola cultura interna alla fabbrica che si rivolgeva prevalentemente alla razionalizzazione dei prodotti, alla semplificazione dei processi produttivi, alla riduzione dei costi.

In Italia invece gli oggetti nascono dalla sintesi

Gianluca Borgesi We’ve been collaborating for several months now and have a much better understanding of what “Oreste” means.

We are very pleased to have been involved in a partnership with art.This meeting gives me the opportunity of sharing a few short considerations on the story of the Italian design, an example of a positive partnership between businessmen and designers.

Italian design really took off in the 50’s and 60’s and developed a peculiar form in comparison to other European countries.

Differently than in Anglo-saxon countries, here objects do not come out from a very factory culture, which tends to rationalize products, simplify production processes and reduce costs. Instead, in Italy, objects grow out of a good relationship between designers and businessmen and because of this they are conceived through the values

del rapporto designer e imprenditore e sono concepiti con l’apporto di una cultura esterna alla fabbrica, più umanistica e meno condizionata dalla produttività.

Un ruolo importante nella nascita del design italiano è stato sicuramente svolto da quegli imprenditori che, come Zanotta, hanno condiviso un progetto con l’intenzione di immettere sul mercato prodotti innovativi capaci non solo di generare profitto ma anche di diffondere cultura. Figura simbolo tra gli imprenditori del design italiano, e tra i primi a sperimentare i benefici della partnership con i designer, è stato Adriano Olivetti.

Oggi l’aumento della complessità dei fenomeni produttivi e di mercato modifica le regole, le modalità e gli spazi di collaborazione tra azienda e designer.

Prospero Rasulo Siamo quello che facciamo o che desideriamo di essere: io sono diventato designer un po’ per caso, preso in prestito dall’arte. Nei primi anni ’70 ho studiato all’Accademia di Belle Arti con Alik Cavaliere, e nel cercare di definirmi artista attraverso il mio lavoro, pur non riuscendo ad immaginare una vita diversa, ho vissuto momenti di panico. Non condividevo il conformismo di quel periodo, quando essere artisti voleva dire necessariamente essere in politica, o addirittura annullare la propria creatività. Al 1978 risale il mio incontro con Alessandro Guerriero e Alessandro Mendini, fondatori dello studio Alchimia. Fu subito amore, ero attratto dall’idea di lavorare in gruppo, dal continuo scambio di idee, senza troppe regole stabilite, un po’ come Oreste…

Intuivo la possibilità di un modo diverso di fare arte, partecipando a una dolce rivoluzione parlando d’arte attraverso gli oggetti e gli spazi del quotidiano.

Verso la metà degli anni ’80, con Gianni Veneziano, ho fondato lo spazio Oxido, il nome di una alleanza creativa, un luogo dove esporre ed esplorare il rapporto tra arte e design, giocando sull’emozione estetica.

Avevo sete di consensi e i primi rinforzi a proseguire su questa mia nuova ricerca sono arrivati da aziende che hanno offerto l’opportunità di produrre oggetti per il mercato, come Aurelio Zanotta, uomo pieno di intuizioni e sensibile all’arte. Anche con i suoi eredi sono riuscito a realizzare lavori che rispettano appieno le mie motivazioni progettuali.

of a more humanistic culture, less influenced by production issues.

An important role in the birth of Italian design has been taken by those businesses which, like Zanotta, have intendeds to contribute innovative products to the market, with both economic and cultural potential.

A symbolic figure in Italian design, and among the first to experiment the benefits of a partnership with design, was Adriano Olivetti.

Today, the increased complexity of production and of the market have changed the rules, the methods and the spaces of collaboration between business and design.

Prospero Rasulo We are what we do or what we want to be. I became a designer by accident, borrowed from the art field. At the beginning of the 70’s I studied at the Academy of Fine Arts with Alik Cavaliere, and, trying to define myself as an artist through my work and my commitment, I panicked. Infact I didn’t share the mood of those years, when being an artist necessarily meant being involved in politics, or even giving up with one’s own creativity.

In 1978, I met Alessandro Guerriero and Alessandro Mendini, founders of the Alchimia studio. I immediately fell in love, being attracted by working in a group, continuously exchanging ideas, without too many established rules, a little like Oreste…

I felt there might be different ways of making art, taking part in a sweet revolution, and talking about art through the objects and the spaces of daily life.

Towards the mid of the 80’s, with Gianni Veneziano, I founded the space Oxido, the name of a creative alliance, a place where we could exhibit and explore the relationship between art and design, playing on aesthetic emotions.

I was looking forward some consensus and the first support came from businessmen who gave me the chance to produce objects for the market, person such as Aurelio Zanotta, a very intuitive and sensitive to art man.

More recently, with Poltronova, that has the history of design in its DNA, I intended

Con Poltronova, che ha nel proprio DNA la storia del design, la comune volontà è stata di realizzare oggetti caldi, oggetti “protagonisti”.

Un ulteriore positivo esempio è quello di Fabio Biancucci, titolare della ditta BRF che mi coinvolgeva in un’avventura pionieristica.

to create warmer objects.

Another positive example is Fabio Biancucci’s (the owner of BRF) desire to experiment. In 1993 his business that was at its beginning involved me in a pioneering venture.

Michele Trimarchi Il dibattito sulla sponsorizzazione dell’arte, e più in generale sui rapporti tra finanziatori privati e istituzioni culturali, sembra basarsi in Italia su presupposti teorici astratti e sull’esperienza di alcuni paesi stranieri (in particolare, di quelli anglosassoni); anche in Italia esiste qualche esempio virtuoso di sostegno a iniziative artistiche e culturali da parte di imprese del settore privato.

Tuttavia, una certa cautela appare necessaria se si ritiene di poter trarre delle generalizzazioni da pochi singoli casi. In effetti, a fronte dell’intuizione – manifestata da qualche imprenditore – sul potenziale strategico dell’arte e della cultura anche ai fini della crescita delle attività economiche, va sottolineata la sporadicità e l’occasionalità del rapporto tra impresa e cultura, del quale ancora non sono chiari i parametri di riferimento.Tra le motivazioni che più di frequente spingono le imprese private a sostenere eventi culturali, un ruolo di primo piano è occupato, paradossalmente, dall’interesse personale del manager che adotta la decisione, nonostante la letteratura economica cerchi di convincere sulla razionalità informata delle scelte imprenditoriali.

Si tratta dunque di relazioni desiderabili, ma alle quali manca l’elemento della sistematicità.

Essa va incentivata dal quadro istituzionale; sappiamo che in Italia la previsione normativa di un’esenzione fiscale per le donazioni culturali è a tutt’oggi priva del regolamento di attuazione. D’altra parte, non sarˆ soltanto la previsione legislativa di uno “sconto” sulle imposte societarie a poter indurre le imprese a rivolgersi alla cultura, se esse non colgono preventivamente i benefici concreti che dal sostegno alla cultura possono trarre.

E qui è il caso di chiarire che, anche nei paesi che in Italia si prendono a modello, il concetto stesso di sponsorizzazione sta cedendo il passo a un più ampio e incisivo concetto di coprogettazione strategica. Invece di guardare a pratiche ormai obsolete, sarebbe allora il caso di concentrarsi su un più articolato ventaglio di opzioni che consentano alle imprese di

Michele Trimarchi The debate on art sponsorship, and on the relationships between private funding and cultural institutions, in Italy seems to be based on a series of abstract suppositions and on the experiences of other countries.

Here there are positive examples of support for artistic and cultural initiatives.

We have to avoid to make generalisations.

A few businessmen have seen the strategic role of art and culture, even if only in economic terms. But the occasional nature of such relationships have not allowed to clearly define its parameters.

Amongst the most common motivations for a private sponsorship of cultural initiatives is, paradoxically, the personal interest of the manager, despite the economic literature on rationally informed business decisions.

We are dealing with a positive relationship, but a systematic approach is still missing.

It is well-known that in Italy the laws about tax exemptions on cultural donations have been never put into effectiveness. On the other hand, the discount on taxation cannot be the only reason for business to turn into culture.

I would like to point out that in many of the countries that Italy takes as its models, the concept of sponsorship is giving way to a wider and more incisive practice of strategic collaboration. Instead of looking to practices which, in the complex cultural market, it would be better to consider a more articulated variety of options that allows private enterprises to interact with cultural institutions for a mutual advantage, reciprocally respecting the different characteristic and aims.

Often the banks are considered a safety valve for cultural institutions: in fact, in the past few years over 30% of their total donations have gone towards culture.They chose however to contribute to autonomous and finalised projects rather than donating to large and already running cultural institutions.They chose the acting-

interagire con le istituzioni culturali con vantaggio reciproco.

Si pensi, per tutte, alle fondazioni bancarie, ritenute un’ancora di salvezza finanziaria per le istituzioni culturali; in effetti, negli ultimi anni esse hanno destinato più del 30% delle proprie erogazioni alla cultura. Hanno però preferito progetti autonomi e compiuti rispetto al sostegno sporadico (per quanto rilevante) a grandi istituzioni cuturali già operanti. Al modello, comodo ma deresponsabilizzato, della giving foundation hanno preferito, correttamente, quello della acting foundation.

Non è più, dunque, perché la cultura è “buona” di per sé che si può pretendere il sostegno delle imprese private o delle istituzioni pubbliche. L’offerta culturale va ridisegnata in modo da fornire al consumatore qualità e formazione. Ciò allarga i margini dell’intervento imprenditoriale, nella misura in cui il settore privato è disposto a considerare la cultura non più un “fiore all’occhiello” aziendale, ma un campo privilegiato nel quale spendere le proprie risorse in un processo di moltiplicazione virtuosa che, partendo dall’idea creativa, colmi la parabola produttiva e sociale verso un livello crescente di benessere.

Guido Belli La relazione tra aziende sponsor e organizzazioni culturali si basa sull’acquisto di merci immateriali quali immagine, prestigio e valori positivi portati dalle arti in cambio di denaro o servizi.

Anche nei casi più articolati, questo rapporto vede il venditore in posizione subalterna.

Lo stato cronico di bisogno, la difficoltà a valorizzare l’offerta, la concorrenza di organizzazioni non culturali che offrono abbinamenti a valori positivi e alta esposizione nei media, una scarsa propensione degli artisti e degli operatori culturali a trattare con le aziende, costringono spesso il mondo della cultura in una posizione debole.

Arts@Work, un programma proposto da Arts & Business, l’associazione inglese delle aziende che sponsorizzano la cultura, rovescia i termini della questione, proponendo agli artisti un ruolo per loro inusuale. Le aziende si rivolgono agli artisti perché essi diventino formatori e docenti degli stessi manager.

Liberare la creatività, gestire l’incertezza, comunicare efficacemente e accettare positivamente le novità, sono soggetti che un artista riesce ad insegnare meglio di chiunque

foundation model rather that the more comfortable giving-foundation one.

Therefore, it is no longer because culture is valuable in itself that we can ask for support from private companies, or public institutions.What culture offers must be redesigned to provide the consumer with both formation and quality of life.

Guido Belli The relationship between private sponsors and cultural organizations is based on the acquisition of immaterial goods such as image, prestige and positive values brought by the arts in exchange for money or services.

The chronic state of need, the difficulty in pricing an offer, the competition between cultural organizations associated with positive value and high media coverage, a lack of inclination of the artists and cultural agents to deal with businesses, all this often force the cultural world into a weak position.

Arts@Work, a programme by Arts & Business, the English association of businesses that sponsor culture, reverses the terms, and offers a new role for the artists.

Thus artists become teachers to managers.

To free their creativity, manage uncertainty, communicate effectively and positively accept changes are issues that an artist, can deal with probably better tha anyone else.

Workshops conducted by artists have shown themselves to be useful in confronting sensitive areas in business organisation.

For many companies, used to business plans, market analyses, budgets and stock exchange values, recognizing the value of creativity in their work can be an important step.

But what happens when artists and managers get together? As an example, the workshop Intuition & Collaboration held

by Praxis Theatre Company uses role plays and dramatization.

During a short piece of theatre, the action reaches a crisis point and the actors engage the audience in finding the solution.This is played out on the stage, and determines the outcome of the drama.

The aim is to enable managers to develop their intuitive capacity, their imagination

altro. I workshop gestiti dagli artisti si sono dimostrati anche utili per affrontare i delicati argomenti che riguardano l’organizzazione aziendale.

Per molte aziende, abituate a business plan, analisi di mercato, budget e valore delle azioni, riconoscere il valore della creatività nella loro attività è un passo importante.

Ma che cosa succede quando gli artisti incontrano i manager? Per esempio nel workshop Intuition & Collaboration, Praxis Theatre Company usa giochi di ruolo e drammatizzazione.

Durante la recita di una breve pièce teatrale l’azione arriva ad un momento di crisi e gli attori coinvolgono il pubblico nella sua soluzione. Questa viene rappresentata sul palcoscenico, determinando lo svolgimento della trama.

L’obiettivo è accrescere nei manager le capacità intuitive, di immaginazione e di comprensione dei fattori di rischio e di fallimento in rapporto allo sviluppo della collaborazione e della creatività nel gruppo di lavoro.

Mario Cresci Da un punto di vista educativo, il tema in questione appartiene non solo allo stato dell’arte e della cultura d’impresa, ma anche (forse ancor più intensamente), allo stato della scuola. In particolare le Accademie di Belle Arti in Italia avrebbero bisogno di un profondo mutamento formativo che la recente riforma ministeriale non sembra aver colto in tutti i suoi aspetti.

Il rapporto dell’arte con il mondo imprenditoriale ed economico non appartiene alla sola cultura del design, come spesso si crede, quanto piuttosto ad una rete di rapporti cognitivi che vedono il ruolo dell’artista configurarsi all’interno dei modelli specifici dei vari ambiti progettuali e produttivi del sistema degli oggetti, degli spazi urbani, della visibilità dei segnali e di tutto ciò che richiede flessibili modalità del pensiero progettuale che l’artista ha sempre svolto all’interno del proprio lavoro di ricerca al di là della settoriale frammentazione delle convenzionali forme di identificazione e specializzazione delle professioni. Si tratta quindi di attivare, all’interno della scuola, processi formativi che siano in grado di relazionare i tempi dell’esperienza e della crescita cognitiva dei giovani con i problemi della realtà fisica e

and understanding of the risk factors and failures related to developing collaboration and creativity in the work place.

Mario Cresci From an educational point of view, the theme of debate concerns not only the arts and the business world, but also (and perhaps more) the schools. In particular the Academies of Fine Arts in Italy need a profound change in their philosophy of formation that recent ministerial reforms do not seem to have fully taken on board.

The relationship of art to the business and economic world is not to be found only in the field of design, as often thought. It is to be found in a network of cognitive relationships where the role of the artist takes shape inside specific models of various conceptual and productive areas regarding the system of objects, of urban spaces, of the visibility of signs. A flexible conceptual model, characteristic of artistic research over and above the disciplinary fragmentation and specialisation, is required.

Formative processes must therefore be activated in educational institutions to relate the time needed for the development of knowledge and experience of youth to the physical and productive reality.

A new look has to be taken at the use of ancient and modern technology, new materials and multimedia languages that require the knowledge of rules of both the creative and the business culture.

We must understand that there are no alternatives for the value of study and theoretical research in constructing interdisciplinary models verified both in educational institutions and in the outside world. Every cognitive practice is related both to individual work and to multidisciplinary connections, that are external to the educational field but necessary to recreate a global vision of art which extends to the quality of life, of the environment, of the city, of the objects we use, of social interaction.

In these terms, Bauhaus is not the only historical parameter to define the nature of these principles, but it stands for an acknowledgement of these urgent needs and changes, from market demand and the

produttiva del territorio.

Tutto ciò denota nuovi livelli di progettualità nell’uso delle antiche e moderne tecnologie, dei nuovi materiali e dei linguaggi multimediali che richiedono le conoscenze, le emozioni e le regole della cultura del progetto creativo e della cultura d’impresa.

Dobbiamo comprendere che non vi sono alternative di altra natura che possano sostituire il valore dello studio e della ricerca teorica nella costruzione di modelli interdisciplinari verificati nella scuola e nella realtà esterna ad essa. Ogni pratica cognitiva segue metodi e modalità connesse sia al lavoro individuale, sia alle connessioni interdisciplinari di più competenze anch’esse esterne all’ambito educativo ma necessarie a ricostruire una visione globale dell’arte estesa alla qualità della vita, dell’ambiente, della città e degli oggetti d’uso, nonché dei nuovi comportamenti sociali e delle nuove fruizioni dei manufatti e degli ambienti in cui noi viviamo.

In questi termini, il Bauhaus può essere un parametro di riferimento storico che definisce la natura di questi princìpi; resta comunque necessaria la conoscenza dei bisogni urgenti e dei mutamenti del mondo reale, della domanda di mercato e della qualità dell’offerta che gli artisti possono dare.

I partner vanno quindi acquisiti all’arte in un rapporto di simbiosi e di reciprocità culturale che sia in grado di stabilire equivalenti comunicazioni di senso e di mantenimento del medesimo alla luce di una permanente e non sporadica programmazione tra Impresa, scuola e arte.

quality of what artists can provide.

Art needs to find partners in a symbiotic reciprocal cultural relationship able to establish an equal exchange of meaning and to maintain this as part of a permanent and not sporadic programme made up of business, education and art.

Tranlated from Italian by Rosemary McKisak, RoseMcK@aol.com

LA GRANDE TRUFFA DELL’ARTE THE GREAT ART SWINDLE Avete mai la sensazione di essere imbrogliati?

Do you ever have the feeling of being cheated?

Darko Maver è un saggio di purissima mitopoiesi.

I confini tra realtà e falsificazione, se esistono, sono talmente sottili che spesso i ruoli si invertono ed è la realtà che si trova a copiare l’imitazione.

Costruito nei dettagli per penetrare le difese immunitarie del sistema artistico, novello cavallo di Troia, Darko Maver non ha fallito. Nel momento del suo recupero - inevitabile sorte di ogni pensiero/azione per quanto estremo e radicale - è svanito, rivelando tutto il suo potenziale.

L’opera di propaganda comincia nell’agosto del ’98 in una rinomata galleria di Lubiana, Capelica Gallery, dove viene esposta la documentazione dell’opera “Tanz der Spinne”: simulazioni di omicidi violenti inventate utilizzando fotografie trovate in rete. (Tutto questo repertorio di immagini raccapriccianti è reperibile nel sito Internet rotten.com e in altri simili). Questa prima mostra a Lubiana costituisce un prezioso precedente per quelle successive dedicate al fantomatico artista. Presto segue infatti quella di Bologna, il 18-19-20 febbraio 1999 nel contesto di una manifestazione per la libertà d’espressione. Il 12 giugno alla Biennale dei Giovani Artisti, a Roma, il gruppo teatrale SciattoProduzie dedica all’artista serbo il suo spettacolo-performance intitolato Awakening, a tribute to Darko Maver ed espone nuovamente il materiale documentario sulla sua opera.

In rete, dal periodico ‘EntarteteKunst’, sono

Darko Maver is an essay of pure mytho poeia.

Where the borders between reality and fake, if they exist, are so thin that often the roles exchange and it’s reality that start to copy imitation. Studied in details to pene trate the resistance of the art system, new Trojan horse, Darko Maver hasn’t failed. In the moment of his recycle - inevitable destiny of any thought/action, even extreme and radical - he disappeared, revealing all his potential. In August ‘98 a well known gallery of Ljubljana, the Kapelica Gallery, shows the documentation of ‘Tanz der Spinne’. Simulations of savage murders have been invented using photos founded in Internet. (All this inventory of horrifying images is available in the Internet site www.rotten.com and in other sites like that).

This first exhibition in Ljubljana creates a precious precedent for the following ones dedicated to the elusive artist. Soon comes the Bologna one, on February 18th through 20th, 1999, during an exhibition for the free dom of speech. The 12th of June, at the Biennale of young artists, in Rome, the theatrical group SciattoProduzie dedicates its spectacle-performance to the artist: Awakening, a tribute to Darko Maver, and shows once more the documentary stuff about his work. In the net the results of the events are posted to hundreds of subscri bers of the periodic ‘EntarteteKunst’ pro voking quotations and links in other sites; at the same time some articles are spread:

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riportati a centinaia di iscritti gli sviluppi sulla vicenda del discusso artista sloveno: la censura delle opere – la distruzione delle stesse – l’arresto per propaganda antipatriottica, fruttando numerose citazioni e link da altri siti.

Contemporaneamente escono alcuni articoli: Flash Out (n. 3, aprile/maggio ’99) dedica due pagine alla vita e alle opere di Maver mentre Tema Celeste (n. 73, marzo/aprile ’99) pubblica il comunicato stampa dell'incarcerazione, avvenuta il 13/1/1999 nell’area del Kosovo.

Al 30/4/1999 risale la notizia della morte di Maver. L’immagine del corpo, verosimilmente pervenuta via Internet, si diffonde rapidamente insieme all’interrogativo inquetante: omicidio o il suicidio come ultima tragica performance? Quest’ultimo atto della “vita” di Maver ha trovato eco in un lucido e pungente articolo, “Manichini di guerra” apparso su Modus Vivendi (n. 6, luglio/agosto ’99), che illustra puntualmente come Darko Maver, le sue opere e la sua storia potessero essere lette come una critica alla realtà mediatica e alla strumentalizzazione delle immagini delle vittime del conflitto bellico.

Il 23 settembre, alla 48ª Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte a Venezia, viene presentato il documentario Darko Maver – L’arte della guerra. La presenza di Maver alla biennale veneziana ha rappresentato senz’altro il massimo obbiettivo perseguibile nel lungo processo di creazione del mito.

“Flesh Out” (no. 3, April 1999) gives two pages to the life and works of Maver while “Tema Celeste” (no. 73, March 1999) publi shes the imprisonment press release, hap pened the 13th of January 1999 around the Kosovo area. On April 30th, 1999, the announcement of Darko Maver death is publicly given. The image of the body spread rapidly together with an intriguing question: homicide or suicide as his most tragic performance? This last act of Darko Maver’s life is explained in a clear and sharp article, “Puppets of war”, appeared in “Modus Vivendi” (July – August 1999) which shows how Darko Maver, his works and his story, could be read as a critic to the media reality and to the exploitation/manipulation of the victim images in the war conflict. The 23rd of September, at the 48th Art Biennale in Venice, the documentary “Darko Maver – the art of war” is presented. The presence of Maver at the Venice Biennale is surely the highest target in the long demonstrative pro cess of the permeation of such a vulnerable system like the art one.

A claiming by 0100101110101101.ORG Per la completa documentazione della beffa vedi: http://www.0100101110101101.ORG/maver For a complete documentation of the phrank see: http://www.0100101110101101.ORG/maver

Una rivendicazione di 0100101110101101.ORG

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TUBI OR NOT TUBI

ARTISTI DELLO SPURGO (24 ore su 24)

PARTITO DEL TUBO

PARTITO DEL TUBO

UN PARTITO DI LOTTA E DI S-CULTURA

TUBI MAJOR MINOR CESSAT

PARTITO DEL TUBO

PARTITO DEL TUBO

STAR WARS, THE NATO MENACE Private stories from countries of Yugoslavia (and not)

formances, and publications. In order to achieve all the goals, they hope to live 500 years more.

Venice, September 25th, 1999

Sanja Perisic. You’re not good; you don’t know what’s good and what’s bad; yell, scream in the crowd; then stop, confused and bewildered; listen to me; repeat after me: I am confused…

Ferdinando Mazzitelli. There are experiences in life that go beyond the involvement of people and subjects, leaving inside of us the feeling that something happened. As if one experience could belong to many people or things, as if we could communicate our experiences with the rest of humanity. I had this feeling in the summer of 1999, first in Montescaglioso (at the residency program of Oreste) and than in Venice, meeting friends from Montenegro, Bosnia, and Croatia. Even though they were reasoning through and around art, these people, beyond competency and high quality of their works, showed affection, honesty and cordiality and showed irony and sense of humor, so typical of a people rich in culture and history. I would say that I was impressed with their and their culture, but what truly moved me was the pride and the irony of their intelligence that always came through. I am indebted to all of them for this experience but I would like to thank in particular Melisa Rastoder that so kindly, sensitively, and passionately made this meeting possible.

Federico Tanzi Mira. During the criminal bombardments of NATO against Yugoslavia and the cruel murders in Bosnia, the plastic art’s world was discussing about the names of the artists for the Venice Biennale. Some people from Oreste were more interested in looking for sense about their own lives, in such a sad period, also in relations with a new sense of making art. Some of them projected to present real persons, real facts, real problems, in real time. In this way the Oreste at the Venice Biennale project became almost one of the very few possibility of meeting for all the person that weren’t satisfied with the contemporary art usually presented as an abstract show or a superficial aesthetic shock, just to beat and be sold. I admired Ferdinando Mazzitelli and Melisa Rastoder for the incredibly hard work they did to organise the meeting and to offer hospitality to artists from former Yugoslavia in Montescaglioso first, and then in Venice.

In Jusuf Hadzifejzovic’s work, the furniture, household appliances and similar objects represent the frustrating and vacuous environment of communications violence from inside and out. In it, we attempt to overcome the paralyzing fear of the world with its cold universe of high technology, its ignorance and repression. All this, however, cannot hide its essential falsity and defeat. The refrigerators, televisions and washers are decorated with lace, small vases, plastic dolls and similar infantile objects, which try to assuage the fact the world has invaded our houses hoses as monad and that even inside our own houses we are not free to fulfill our absurd ceremonies of self-love, of denial of the world. In the words of Jusuf Hadzifejzovic: “Kitsch is just one step away from blood.”

Four years after the peace treaty of Dayton, the mined camp projects of Alma Suljevic are even more interesting, whether she herself goes into the camps or install them in different places. The interventions are fundamentally different from the paranoia which the mined camp in itself suggests.

In a statement that is not planned or forced, we have the opportunity in every moment to decide if we should approach with caution, as if with a mine (if no caution is used it could explode) or whether to continue to cross the camp running the possible risk of hurting ourselves, and others, with death as a certain outcome. The mined camp is similar to a communication network. The network has no center, yet the center is everywhere. There are no real motives to neglect the close for the faraway and vice-versa. It is enough to get involved and be open and attentive. Look up to the sky sometimes to make sure that no bombers are near.

Sanja Bokan. The performance reveals core human relations and uneasy feeling of loneliness.

This mosaic choreographic structure fills up the space and the time with its polysemantics, yet each part communicating with the other in a perfect organic connection which will lead us to tango. We have to face our fears and memories, find ourselves between fantasy and reality.

The new path in the activity of Gordana Andjelic Galic is underscored by the effort to render visible the phenomenon which, incidentally, is important for modern-day Bosnia of the denial of fear with paranoia. The illustrative level of her gigantic installations made with offset plates used by newspapers, is only an ironic game with forms used to bring out the moment of perversion of the fear which stimulates dialogue, a striking monologue with ourselves, terror without correction.

The work of The Books of Knjige is focused on a sarcastic criticism of life and reality with the individual as its axis: his strenghts and weakness in the contemporary society. In their own specific way, they protest and fight against all kinds of manipulation of people, animals and plants, whatever the reasons may be. The main instrument of their fight is humor, expressed in different forms of creative work including radio shows, music, per-

After a long series of transdesign projects Amra Zulfikarpasic spontaneously enters into the eminent art world. Using feminine letters, specifically Bosnian, sensuality and meditation combined together with uses of bathroom, kitchen or prayer space as media, she provocatively illustrates relationships between men and women in their full essence, putting emphasis on everything indicating productive inheritance.

The social utility of art 26th september 1999

San Marino meets Bremen What actually led to comparison between the different realities of various European countries was a number of questions that are generally inherent in artists during their creative output. We have therefore sought to examine art as performing a social function and rendering a social service at the same time. We have sought to understand the relationship between art and social context, how countries like Germany and San Marino different from one another, how artists are coping with their economic needs or rather what their economic position is. We have also sought to find out the way artists search for their own identity and the kind of feedback they receive, how they conceive and develop their working methods and their personal attitude towards public and private institutions. Barbara Fässler invited to discuss with the following artists: Anne Schlöpke, Künstlerhaus Bremen (Germany): «K.Ö.N.I.G./K.Ö.N.I.G. Dienst am Kunden» (Is the client the king?) presents new forms and spaces of meeting between artists and clients. Artistic strategies to create net-works between different social groups. Discussions about what does the public expect from art. Consumer culture? Art as public service.

Pier Paolo Coro (San Marino): «Point Out – Foreign Students in Italy. An Overview of their Experience».

The relationship between different social, economic and cultural backgrounds as experienced by some university students. An approach combining social analysis and artistic research.

Rita Canarezza (San Marino): «Between East and West». A research experience at the Kitakyushu Centre of contemporary art, Japan.

The importance of little rituals and things of everyday life. Relations and communications between different cultures.

Isolde Loock, Anne Schlöpke, Barbara Thiel (Künstlerhaus Bremen):

Communication Service In a situation of economic crisis, service is often perceived as a remedy, allowing continuos growth through the acquisition of markets and the creation of further needs. The same applies to the art system.

To get in touch with the public: acting as Artservice personal

Exhibited photographs: K.Ö.N.I.G. Nr. 1: 10 artists offer their services to the public (October 1998)

• Distribution of artists statements about art as service.

• Offer of Venice-postcards, with K.Ö.N.I.G. sign.

• Interviews:

What do you wish from art? … «Transparency» (B), «Sense» (D), «to be a child again» (USA), «something nicer than reality», (USA), «to do, what you like» (I), «several realities at the same time» (USA), «icecream» (GR), «to remember something» (I), «more liberty» (I), «new interesting stuff» (GB), «Ideas for your own head» (D), «more seriousness, no joke» (B)…

Every visitor gets a present. The client is the king.

Rita Canarezza:

Hairdressers

Hair is an extension of thought.

In Japanese tradition, the women’s hair represented their life itself and for that reason was never cut. The only exceptions were religious women and widows who would cut their short hair to symbolically offer or sacrifice their lives.

The first Japanese girls having their hair cut were insultingly called «moga» from, «modern girl.»

Still today, in Japan, a long-haired girl going to the hairdresser’s is asked several time whether she is absolutely sure of her decision, before cutting.

(expert from a conversation with an exponent of Japanese Daily Life and Culture, Tokyo/drawing from Japanese Encyclopedia, Fukuoka City Library, Japan)

Pier Paolo Coro:

Point out Foreign students in Italy: an overview of their experience The presence of foreign students in Italy clearly testifies to an increased open-mindedness of our society towards other cultures.

In particular, the events of the last two decades helped change this attitude, with Italy experiencing greater immigration flows from Africa, The Middle East and Eastern Europe and more recently from Kosovo and former Yugoslavia, as a consequence of the war in that region.

Considerable efforts have been made to cope with this situation as effectively as possible, though a solution may not always be immediate. I feel that these students further bear witness to a strong, common longing for peaceful coexistence and mutual respect.

The idea of interviewing foreign students with different cultural backgrounds and establish with them a dialogue was conceived in conjunction with the contemporary arts exhibition entitled ÂŤGiochi di Luce 1999Âť (Plays on Light 1999), held at the University of Ferrara, Italy.

SuperSkyWoman & her GRUPPO TIKYSK (things I know you should know) do “Let’s Perm”, a healing exchange / Permaculture event 30 Sept. invited by Oreste.

Jasa Ban, for TIKYSK “Let’s Perm”, Sensazione Perduta, preparing the feet My participation in the TIKYSK “Let’s Perm” event is the consequence of a long collaboration with the artist Coco Gordon & above all the thought & experience that binds us when we explore in different ways the great word Nature, which is often used but is unknown or more or less known. At times we discover what’s hidden in the obscured. I left all time to nature... my beans grew protected from the most hideous overgrowth. –Jasa: Have you ever walked on the earth with bare feet? –No, actually I live by the sea two steps from the beach, but it isn’t possible to walk in bare feet, it’s full of syringes.

–We live in Berica but we were born in India, we often walk in bare feet & when it rains we go outside to celebrate that moment, we eat the wet earth & it’s a time of great joy. With the experience of your action we felt “at home”. –We come from Virginia, I have never walked with bare feet on earth. Thanks, it’s a most beautiful sensation. –I walk often in bare feet & I must say this path on the leaves pleases me greatly, but when I wind up on the refuse I want to return to the leaves. It’s an immediate sensation, perhaps unconscious… –It seems to pull me into contact with the whole world.

Why do you make me walk in this way forcing me on a path decided by you?

Jasa: --I’d like to reawaken in you the lost feelings that belong to everyone. –This emits an energy I feel surges throughout my whole body.

I love your hat, what’s it made of? Is it magic?

Jasa: –It is made of grasses.....................................

Coco Gordon a. k. a. Super SkyWoman, originator of TIKYSK, a shifting group of collabora tors, for “Let’s Perm”–hair contact Stepping into two large feet I’ve recycled from water bottles & egg cartons, you reach out to pick a card with a word embossed on my father’s face – erosion or dowsing, raccogliere o risparmiare, a condi tion to investigate with SuperSky Woman how to permaculture that part of your life. Six gauzy blue beauty-parlor aprons around the Oreste room float on & off who gets “permed”. Large groups sit gangstyle in a snake through the door to il canale terazzo, confess & linger, one broods dizzy, others struggling for sane & ecological meaning find a home in their heads under my hands. I offer a head massage,–Giovanna–gentile, piacevole, compresiva, serenità--a tune-up. I have invited four powerful women who practice bodywork, healing, & permaculture to give an empowerment of contacting one’s possible ecological nature. I teach principles of permaculture relaxing into, question habits, casual talk but searches inside that call up old & new feelings on the needed things–cellular grieving, indicators, patterning. Kinships, allurements, utterance. Sostenibilità, death.

--Due bacinelli, spugne, terra, foglie. Coperta covers the computer.

The indian woman rediscovers her childhood & future interconnected essence. Beatriz wants news of Mexico permaculture work. Silvana, “Permed”, offers to “Perm” with me next time which we do as gruppo TIKYSK at the Biennale for ArtWay of Thinking.

Antonella Catelli, for TIKYSK “Let’s Perm”--tocco esperienza, pratica lavorativa Metodo Grindberg –It was an efervescent uncomplicated encounter light with ample energy.

I practiced the Grindberg Method, the art of becoming body through touch, massage, word = the expression of the art of becoming, confronting myself with the reality of persons who experimented major presence in their selves and more serene to savor the Biennale. Inside TIKYSK we breathed the sensations of space, respect, creativity, attention, union, a merging of art, ecology and creation. During the treatment– *the yeilding of tensions & blocks in the treated zones, *the pleasure of being touched, *the need to receive more, mixed with a curiosity of discovering things pertaining to oneself, *the understanding that one can do something for oneself NOW *Noticing one’s actual limits, & being convinced that one can be right & others can err.................

After the treatment–

* more open, space at the mental level, major clarity for thinking & improving vision, *more contact with the earth & one’s legs, feeling the earth with major stability; plus ease of movement, plus tranquility, *less unease and more determination to confront one’s problems. *general reflection and major tranquility for being where one is, *tuned and desirous of doing without forcing, *understanding that things can change, *a sense of gratitude to one’s body and to life.

Zoe Collier, for TIKYSK “Let’s Perm”--Yoga / Permaculture Permaculture teaches harmony and connectedness to everyone and all life. We are whole and a part of a greater wholeness. Yoga is harmonizing to my mind, body and spirit. During our TIKYSK event I was practicing my yoga as one of five women living their healing as an expression of our potential together. Thinking about TIKYSK (things I know you should know), on some cellular level we Do know these things. We are so alienated from our earth and our very own bodies that we THINK we don’t know. When teaching yoga to new students I’m astounded when a student will tell me (often!) that just discovering their own breath is a revelation.

That’s why I see such a correlation between yoga and perma culture , to help mother earth save herself we must first find OUR SELVES as part of the very fabric of the whole.

Much more than seeing our water as polluted and our air dirty we learn to see our bodies as her body, her pain as our pain, her beauty as our beauty.

Andreana Bruno, for TIKYSK “Let’s Perm”, il silenzio silenzio...............................

Jonathan Applefield--from TIKYSK correspondence cards sent to twelve art venues-Jonathan-- I love your TIKYSK... Coco: --you are TIKYSK. -Jonathan--My Permaculture project is Garbage to Food, ”recipes from refuse” --a theoretical feasibility study in progress.

SuperSkyWoman reports-- At least 300 visitors were “Permed” in waves. Students lingered all day taking part. By chance, no microphone no video. Lucky however, as all energy was concentrated in life-sustaining amplification of one’s senses. Biennale guards came back to be “Permed”................

2050-a SuperSkyWoman rearranged excerpt from Vision 21 sent by Barbara Harmony from the water people-Almost everyone in the world knows hygiene, safe adequate water and energy accessed sustainably without degrading the ecological balance. Improved self-knowledge & rampant Permaculture practice have reduced the prevalence & severity of many diseases.

Scientists have identified links between cancers & chemical contamination of water. People make fertilizer from their own wastes. Individual s, communities & local authorities manage the collection & composting services, Compost is the cornerstone of every neighborhood. Old wetlands are reinstated. Edges are used for increasing niche & yield of crops. Riversides are outfitted with constructed wetland parks to prevent & clean water borne contamination while bringing people safely to the river. Rainwater harvesting is applied broadly as is extensive use of reclaimed urban wastewater. No need is seen for expensive & controversial water & sanitation projects. There is work for everyone. How has this happened? New thinking started during the 90s water supply, sanitation & energy decade when “rights” sales, exchanges and privatization “improvements” were promoted. The real break through came when concerned agencies recognized most effective action came from the energy of people themselves who, having learned guiding Permaculture principles from the cradle learned how to inter-relate with all species in the entire web of life, & learned to create more soil by not only covering fields but also covering abandoned highways with sheet-mulch.

People harnessed their immediate renewable resources.

Berms & dead-ends, feces, keyline gravity feed. Dumps became obsolete. The cost of health care vastly reduced. Women & children’s time freed for DBOM in all activities. Men became interactive. Benefits far outweighed costs of improvements themselves. Waste became an obsolete term.

Saturday, October 2nd, 1999

Perceiving the urban space through one’s own body.

Stories and practices by a globetrotter Albert o’ Grandpied is a globetrotter and street artist (even if he doesn’t think of himself as an artist). He is the artist and his work at the same time. He travels around the world using spaces, people, his own body and experiences in his performances. This choice, lived with the need to continuously interact in everyday life with every kind of people, is the artist’s way of life. Maybe of the artist that everyone can be. That’s why he has been invited to Oreste at the Venice Biennale. He has been asked to tell his story, and to do and describe what he normally does when he gets to a new city or a new place. He has been invited to transform the Oreste’s space in the Italian pavilion into a square, or a street. He has been asked to try to make people aware of their actions, their movements in the space they live in, and of the relationships among them, and between events and people. Grandpied begins to draw people passing through Oreste’s space around him: he describes how he changed from being a mathematician to being a clown; he makes the “circle” and other jokes, continuously describing what’s going on. Then he begins to ask people to identify themselves with a place: San Marco’s square. Suddenly a man becomes San Marco’s Basilica and another the Clock Tower, a woman becomes Caffè Florian and another Caffè Quadri, and another the Mori’s Tower.

While San Marco’s lion roars, the two little Caffè-orchestras, in competition one against the other, sing two different waltz, and the tower’s bell rings, a different image of the famous square, little by little, appears.

Organized by: Paola Di Bello, Albert o’ Grampied, Giulia Sanderson Marabini, Antonio Scarponi

DON’T READ - GO ON URBAN STICKERS Urban stickers are a virus that slowly penetrates the metropolis. They are little signs that gradually modify perception of metropolitan space.They are insinuating signals that disturb, correct and transform the official street signals. Every unauthorised sticker, every little image becomes a symbol of unusual intervention which deflects attention from the image as a final normative to a free and decoded message. Urban stickers are healthy implements of visual terrorism.

Viviana Gravano STICKERS IDEAS - TAGGERS ACTIONS In the 80’s Mimmo Rotella tore strips off street-billboards, they were fragments of monochrome ads covered with various kinds of graffiti. More recently in another place: in the ideal city Keith Haring was walking desecrating the subway. At the end of the 70’s Haring, the graffiti artist was using pieces of chalk to draw over the black posters used to cover the advertisements at the end of leave or without permission.The urban art journey lives here in the brief space between art and life, future museums and anarchy, money and morality.

Its power and the means of its message were a radical form expanding for the use of freedom. Urban stickers concern themselves with the very same synerg. Another smart invasion of the system, an expanding stain leaving it mark message in altering conformity.

Guglielmo Achille Cavellini was a prophet of these turbulent characters. He produced enormous quantities of stickers used by others to flood pedestrian areas. A certain buZ blurr took his stickers and covered up many U.S. train-carriages. Bill Gaglione, Lon Spigelman stuck theirs on clothes and cars. Mail-art opened the way while urban invaders opened the field with their bill-stickers, the stickers of Chuck Stake, Michael Leigh “Musicmaster”, even if autonomous pieces could be found on walls and surfaces of any imaginable place.

Maximum respect in this case to the Italian Piermario Ciani with his superhero Stickerman, his stickers turn up everywhere, invasive, irritating, abusive and stimulating. The words invite those who want to do it, to stick them up wherever they think most useful. Phrases, words, puns all way of breaking down the simple logic of the system. A Pipe Party (a sort of silly party) plays with anomalous slogans putting them on posters to advance the urban invasion. Over and out in this clear expanding invasion is Pino Boresta, with his baldly-crown and justreleased madman’s stare. His crazy little faces are exciting street-signs which suddenly spring up looking at you.At the “one-way”, at a “stop” or “do not enter”.The road to freedom is surely after this stop.The invasion has already begun.

Keep your eyes on the red light.

Gianluca Marziani STICKERMAN IN VENICE AAA Edizioni, in collaboration with the Association of Autonomous Astronauts and the Stickerman Museum, produced a series of original “adhesive actions” in the notorious lagoon town.A first stickers invasion was orchestrated in the days from the 9th to the 12th

of June, 1999, during the opening of the Venice Biennale: some members of AAA, strategically positioned next to the main entrances to the exhibition, pasted over the clothes and bodies of thousands of visitors, apocryphal permissions “Access All Areas” and promotional stickers with surreal slogans like “Artists Against Art-Rites” or “AstronAuti dAppertutto - You’re too an astronaut!” Sunday October 3rd, 1999 a selection of “urban stickers made by artists” assembled by Piermario Ciani and Pino Boresta was exhibited in the Oreste space in the Biennale. For this occasion, Ciani distributed a new series of stickers playing on the “identity” concept, related to Stickerman, Blissett, Oreste, U.Man and other names part of a self-mythology of the artist (“Pablo votes for the pipe party and Oreste”, “David is more beautiful and damned than Oreste”, etc.). On the same day,Vittore Baroni illustrated in an open meeting the Stickerman project and the activities of the Stickerman Museum, that, since 1992, has organised various exhibitions, actions and publications about the art of the sticker.

Vittore Baroni, Piermario Ciani

DANGER RADIOACTIVE BOOK

WARNING NO ARTWORKS HERE

URBAN ARTIST STICKERS One of Pino Boresta’s “Urban Artist Stickers” was the first image I saw upon entering the Venice Biennale in September, 1999. It was a small black and white sticker with something written below the face of some guy with an ugly grinning mug and a bald head. It turned out to be Boresta who had pasted the sticker on a building at the entrance to the Giardini.

I immediately said:“Let’s steal it; its probably the best piece here, except for Dan Perjovschi of the Romanian Pavilion.” But I couldn’t get the sticker off the wall. Boresta has perfected his craft. Next thing I knew, I met Boresta in the Oreste space, and asked if he had any more of the stickers (which I could not manage to lift). Being the unpretentious, engaged, and direct kind of guy that he is, I was handed a bundle of material and given his promise to speak to my students at Venice International University (VIU), where I was teaching that fall.

In October, Boresta talked to my students (from Germany, England, Spain, Italy, and the Kristine Stiles USA) for nearly four hours.

BILL STICKERS WILL BE PROSECUTED It’s little past midnight when I start walking through the city. It’s nice outside around this time. Less people and activity is going on.The city reveals itself better this way, I believe to think. The association-factory run on fullspeed at daytime, but at night-time the whole urban circus seems to rest for a while. The architecture, the traces people leave by using their surroundings.The attempts to influence our consuming behaviour are sometimes very subtle but never the less omnipresent. Adds, glossy posters, traffic signs, shop windows, flashy neonsigns, the fashion, little logo-things at fences and on houses, even little boards attached to trees. Plenty meaning everywhere I look. Shit, even the shirts in the shops carry words and logos. I think that the era of alphabetism must have had a strange side-effect on the use of language and the meaning of words.All becoming clichés on forehand… let’s put up some of my new little word-stickers here on this electric box… just to see how it works.“15.000 most popular words in advertisement (in random order)” it says as its subtitle. No matter what word is put on the sticker. The subtitle does the work and should make clear where the words come from and what, more or less, are about.

I place some more in the street. On a lamppost here and some other publicspace-furniture there. And why not, also one street further… Then I’m thru, no more stickers left already. I 15,000 most popular words in advertisement (in random order) walk back. Ha! Looks nice this way…

CRIME

all this little words on all this indifferent and unused places.While walking, all of these places are at the boundaries of my perspective. Most of the little words slide along my view as they pop up in my mind… SIZE… TRUE… SERIAL… VIEW… NOW… SCALE… FREE… DETAIL… MORE… SURE… LARGE… HOPE… IMAGE… OBJECT… They all pop up in random order, as poetry in motion.Too indifferent to mean anything.As the general language of our time, neutrally presented. Okay, enough for now, time to go back home for a sleep. Along the way, I discover some others were busy in the city too… some stencils, graffiti… and another independent sticker, with a text saying “while you where sleeping…” Very nice.Well, I’m back home again. Goodnight. Sleep well.

BILL STICKERS IS INNOCENT!!!

Jeroen Jongeleen SURGICAL VANDALISM: is a terroristic plague psycho-sensorily diffused. – Describes extreme, invasive and vandalistic surgical practices that empowers its members, alters and deform its enemies. – Generates images: sign-images, body-images, flesh-images, cut-images, scar-images, prosthetical images. – Blends in urban labyrinths stunning them, operating actions of deviant propaganda. – Is an unsterile, loo-tech performing practice.

Umberto B. STICKER DISORDER IN KASSEL JUNE 1997 • On each posters advertising the “DOCUMENTA X” exhibition, I placed stickers with an image of my grimacing face exactly in the centre of the “X”.Two days later, while I was still in Kassel, someone told me that some uninformed people who had seen the stickers thought it was the curator’s face.

• On June 23, 1997 at 11.30 AM I put a big sticker of my grimacing face inside a public locker with a text attached.The locker was then closed. I kept the key of the locker as evidence of my action.

• I thought it was relevant to place a small sticker above every label with the word “IMPORTANT”, located in all the areas of the exhibition.The way you interpret it is your decision. I can’t do everything. Can I? • One of the main intentions of the invited artist Carl Michael Von Hausswolff was to gauge the reaction of visitors to his potentially dangerous installation. I thought it would be right to place one of my stickers over every “STOP” sign along the electric fence around his installation.

• In a rough cavity of the wall close to the entrance of the main hall dedicated to Gerhard Richter, I placed another of my “Grimacing Face”, stickers. I can now claim to have exhibited alongside the great German artist.

• On the top of both basalt stones beside the two oaks planted by Beuys, just in front the Fridericianum Museum, I stuck a small sticker face. The funny thing is that a lot of people continued to sat on them ignoring the small face flatten under their ass.

• On January 30th 1999 in Bologna, I was talking to someone who wanted to arrange a video interview with me, concerning my urban stickers. Our conversation was interrupted

by Hans Hermann who said he needed to speak to me immediately. He went on protesting at length about some of the stickers I had placed at the Documenta X exbition in Kassel. I put one of them on his “Kosmologische systemologie” arrow pointing. After a brief explanation to which he probably wasn’t even listening to, he suddenly said to me “This time I win!… because on my stickers I wrote io and my name”. He was referring the fact that at the Bologna ArteFiera, I had placed my stickers next to his stickers unaware that he was the same artist of the arrows in Kassel… I replied very calmly “Of course you win!… I don’t do what I do to win, I’m absolutely sure of losing”.

Pino Boresta

ALESSANDRA PIOSELLI INDIZI URBANI Andare ad indagare tra le pieghe dello spazio urbano quelle tracce poco visibili all’occhio distratto, indici di un uso quotidiano dello spazio e di storie minime e minimali che, sovrapponendosi e disegnando sul territorio i propri rituali, danno ad esso identità e significati: è questo un desiderio e una logica di lavoro largamente presente tra coloro i quali, artisti o architetti che siano, hanno deciso di leggere e raccontare i molteplici accadimenti del paesaggio contemporaneo.

Se nell’arte si è riscoperta questa prospettiva, investigando la nozione di “luogo specifico” e ponendosi sulla strada di una relazione dialettica con gli spazi pubblici con il compito di rilevare urgenze e aspetti del vissuto urbano, una stessa attitudine a lavorare negli spazi interstiziali della città è un’esigenza evidente anche nell’ambito dell’architettura. Anche le modalità di lavoro, oltre che gli obiettivi, scorrono sulla stessa strada dell’utilizzo di pratiche performative, dell’esplorazione e del “viaggio” – che implica il desiderio di conoscere direttamente e soggettivamente il territorio, della gestione di uno scambio e di un coinvolgimento dei diversi attori presenti sul territorio secondo modalità non prettamente inerenti alla tradizionale metodologia progettuale.

E così come quando si parla di “arte pubblica” si intende oggi una decisa interazione a livello fisico e concettuale con la specificità di un luogo e con la sua identità culturale/sociale, andando oltre il mero concetto di collocazione di “oggetti” nello spazio, così nella ricerca architettonica entra la necessità di non costruire, di non lasciare segni pregnanti, immutabili e tangibili, ma di inventarsi pratiche, spesso effimere e transitorie, per elaborare continue riconfigurazioni dello spazio e dei vissuti che gli danno senso. Percorrere a piedi le periferie o le campagne, rileggere gli spazi e le identità marginali, convogliare la gente in luoghi dimenticati allo scopo di ristabilire una connessione tra il luogo e chi lo abita o potrebbe abitarlo, sono modalità operative che rientrano in questo bisogno di rivedere gli strumenti di analisi e di progettazione del paesaggio contemporaneo, dichiarando da un lato l’inadeguatezza dei peculiari linguaggi disciplinari e dall’altro la necessità di esperire e di far esperire in prima persona i luoghi, ristabilendo le coordinate del rapporto tra soggetto e spazio.

Sono stati invitati a presentare il proprio lavoro quattro gruppi di architetti – artisti – professionisti, nella maggior parte con una formazione in campo architettonico, che hanno sviluppato tali pratiche di indagine: Città Svelata (Torino), Cliostraat (Torino), Gruppo A12 (Milano e Genova) e Stalker (Roma).

Città Svelata Città Svelata ha iniziato costruendo abusivamente due ponti. Ha iniziato tirando dei cavi da un lato all’altro di uno dei due fiumi di Torino, il Sangone, che sono serviti per un’estate intera a congiungere le due sponde lungo un tratto privo di ponti stradali di collegamento, rendendo più facile l’utilizzo di una zona che, spontaneamente, era diventata un luogo di passeggio. I ponti sono durati un’estate e se ne sono andati all’arrivo della piena in autunno. In realtà poi negli anni il Comune ha costruito un ponte stradale ed uno pedonale in punti non molto distanti da dove li costruì Città Svelata.

Con questo progetto nacque l’idea di far scoprire luoghi che normalmente non si

conoscono o che non si possono raggiungere, come le immense fabbriche cittadine destinate dal piano regolatore di Torino a distruzione e ricostruzione, spesso in previsione di realizzare quello che viene chiamato un “environmetal park”, spazi dei quali si può provare a pensare un destino diverso. Da qui la definizione di “luoghi da svelare”.

Il progetto Luoghi da Svelare è iniziato ufficialmente con un evento pubblico in uno dei quartieri a edilizia popolare di Torino nel 1994. Da allora Città Svelata è andata avanti con la progettazione di eventi in una borgata di periferia (quartiere Le Vallette, Torino, evento De Paura), in un grande complesso industriale abbandonato, le OGR (Officine delle Grandi Riparazioni) – luogo condannato dal piano regolatore di Torino ad essere demolito e per il momento chiuso, che ha richiamato all’incirca 10.000 persone invitate ad inventarsi un uso diverso dello spazio, e poi con tutta una serie di interventi anche fuori dalla città, ad esempio con un progetto di collegamento e di pellegrinaggio a piedi per le “strade del sale” (quelle dei contrabbandieri, che univano le coste ligure con i centri della pianura piemontese) e con un’esplorazione e una mappatura dell’amiantifera del Canavese (un territorio chiuso e totalmente recintato a causa della pericolosità dell’amianto, luogo intrigante, ma non raggiungibile, quindi esplorato clandestinamente da Città Svelata con alcuni gruppi di persone in previsione di intervenire all’interno).

L’importanza di questi interventi non è tanto quella di riscoprire l’esistenza di un luogo marginale e dimenticato, ma di riuscire a portare in quel dato luogo delle persone: se si ha la possibilità di far succedere qualcosa in presa diretta, è possibile trasformare lo spazio, creare delle relazioni. In questo senso l’intervento sul luogo diventa una sorta di prefigurazione non univoca del suo destino.

Cliostraat Dall’esplorazione della Pianura Padana al percorrimento a piedi delle periferie della città (progetto Moto Perpetuo, per l’edizione torinese della Biennale dei Giovani Artisti del Mediterraneo, assieme a Stalker e così come gli Stalker avevano già fatto a Roma), il viaggio è sempre stato una costante dei progetti di Cliostraat, spesso formalizzato nella realizzazione di “guide” o “libretti” fondati sulla rilettura soggettiva dei percorsi e degli spazi (tra cui l’omonima rivistaCartolina). Invitati a Stradarolo 1998 – Arte e Spettacolo sulle vie dei pendolari – a presidiare uno dei cinque pullman di linea utilizzati per trasportare il pubblico da un paese all’altro, hanno preparato degli occhiali da distribuire, Vista Capri, sostituendo le lenti con diapositive di vari luoghi del mondo, per sottolineare come “altri” paesaggi possono essere visti attraverso l’immaginazione, ma anche per sollecitare un altro modo di guardare, di rapportare se stessi all’ambiente quotidiano.

“Abbiamo sempre cercato di realizzare progetti che avessero una certa quota di utopia, di fantasia, e che quindi implicassero e suggerissero l’idea del viaggio a diversi livelli, non solo nel senso fisico, ma anche mentale, fantastico, coinvolgendo stimoli provenienti da differenti ambiti disciplinari e dall’immaginario collettivo, dalla musica, dal cinema, dai fumetti”: il piercing (Baci Urbani, piazza Corpus Domini, 1996, con Corrado Levi) fatto ad un palazzo del centro storico di Torino era in questo senso la visualizzazione dell’immaginario giovanile, ma concretizzava anche l’idea della città considerata come corpo sul quale intervenire.

Oltre le indicazioni e la storia della disciplina, Cliostraat ha sempre cercato di non perdere il rapporto con il sogno e con il gioco, approfondendo la valenza fantasti-

ca dell’architettura, così come, per esempio, nei progetti di un edificio a forma di “gufo” (che verrà probabilmente realizzato a Quarrata) o a forma di “cuore”, ideato in occasione di un concorso per Zara, che derivano dal desiderio di contaminare l’architettura con i molteplici e mutevoli aspetti dell’immaginario contemporaneo.

Gruppo A12 Inseriti negli spazi della città o conservati all’interno dei luoghi destinati all’arte contemporanea, i nostri lavori sono stati sempre dei frammenti di una certa idea di architettura e di città. Abbiamo agito con operazioni di disturbo, inserendo elementi dissonanti rispetto a quanto codificato e imposto nei vari contesti nei quali abbiamo operato: si volevano sfigurare dolcemente i codici linguistici attesi. In questo senso la nostra ipotesi è stata di usare l’architettura come attività critica e rivelatrice, in grado di cambiare i modi di guardare. Ventimila cubi di cartone, un’epidemia urbana, disseminati per le strade di Torino (1997), si sono rapidamente trasformati nei simulacri vuoti di un consumismo deprivato di contenuti, diventando per una settimana gli oggetti del desiderio di un’intera città. A Reggio Emilia (1997) una serie di specchi lasciati nei luoghi pubblici della città innescava una serie di ragionamenti sul rapporto tra identità singola e appartenenza ad una comunità. In questi due interventi il desiderio era di uscire dai limiti angusti della nostra disciplina, per andare a saggiare, direttamente sul terreno, i modi e le forme d’uso degli spazi urbani. In realtà si è poi rientrati da queste esperienze, scoprendo la distanza che separava le nostre intenzioni dalle reazioni inattese delle persone, dalla sorpresa della ricchezza di attitudini che ogni abitante della città riesce a proiettare nei luoghi che abita: ne deriva una serie di questioni sui livelli di variazione e libertà in grado di essere tollerati all’interno dei progetti di architettura.

Tale processo di contaminazione è stato spesso invertito laddove della città abbiamo recuperato elementi, tracce, vero e proprio materiale costruttivo, trasposti all’interno di ambiti differenti. Incaricati, dal 1998, di immaginare una serie di allestimenti che presentassero alcuni progetti di arte per Internet all’interno di gallerie, musei o fiere d’arte in Germania, abbiamo costruito luoghi dove fosse possibile ai visitatori utilizzare gli strumenti con i quali visitare tali siti web. Oppure abbiamo temporaneamente alterato alcuni luoghi, dove si svolgevano attività artistiche. A Colonia, ad esempio, in una galleria d’arte, si è costruito un chiosco, simile a molte casette delle periferie delle megalopoli africane, in pallets e alluminio, ed una grande pedana coperta da tappeti da quattro soldi e plastica a bolle, dove fosse possibile sdraiarsi per guardare i video. Allo ZKM di Karlsruhe (1999), invece, una enorme piattaforma di legname ha occupato lo spazio centrale del museo, per accogliere divani, sedie, materassi, una piccola baracca di favela, luoghi dai quali navigare nel sito Internet.

Elemento unificante di tali esperienze è stata la scelta di utilizzare materiale recuperato in cantieri edilizi, discariche, mercati delle pulci, e di costruire, con tale ammasso di oggetti eterogenei, insieme agli autori dei progetti web, tali spazi.

Desideravamo costruire luoghi improntati ad una sorta di funzionalismo straccione, dove le misure e le proporzioni tra le singole parti dell’intervento fossero determinate solamente dalle posture e dai movimenti del corpo: luoghi di comodità. E che tali luoghi fossero realizzati con materiale di scarto ci sembrava adeguato rispetto all’intenzione di manifestare un’architettura fatta di relazioni, e quindi nel

corso della sua realizzazione in continuo disfacimento e rifacimento. La sequenza di minuscoli baraccamenti, prossimi nella loro immagine a molte costruzioni abusive delle città dei paesi in via di sviluppo, rappresentava anche una sorta di controcanto rispetto sia alla immagine algida e razionale delle tecnologie informatiche, sia al senso dei luoghi che la ospitavano, gallerie e musei, di un biancore e astrazione totali. In tutti questi interventi sussiste l’intenzione di investire le persone, gli utilizzatori di tali “dispositivi”, della responsabilità di interpretarne il senso, selezionare gli usi o gli abusi possibili, usare nei modi più diversi le possibilità offerte: il desiderio di questa linea di ricerca, parallela alla nostra attività di architetti, è di rendere gli utenti, per quanto possibile, dei soggetti attivi.

Our projects are usually inserted inside the vast spaces of the city or conserved inside contemporary art spaces, always being fragments of a certain idea of architecture and of the city.

The operations are usually disruptive using dissonant elements within a codified, expected predictable context. The intention is to sweetly modify the expected linguistic code, using architecture as a critical and revealing activity, able to change our way of seeing things. Twenty thousands cardboard boxes, decorated with blue and white optical design, placed in the city of Turin in 1997, rapidly became the empty simulacrum of consumerism absolutely devoid of contents, becoming the object of desire for a week for the whole city. That same year, in Reggio Emilia, a series of hidden or simply abandoned mirrors in public spaces of the city became the catalysts for a series of ideas about single and multiple identities in relationship to ones belonging to a specific community or society. Both of these projects had the desire to touch by hand, on the field, the way of using, and living in, public urban spaces without the intellectual mediation of strict disciplinary architectural theorization. The field work showed the distance separating our intentions from the people’s spontaneous reactions and their perpetual surprise of the richness of habits and interpretations that each citizen may project into the places that s/he inhabits. This consideration allows a series of punctual questions about the levels of variation in liberty and the degree of toleration of such variables within the space of an architectural project. Such a process of inserting contamination of different objects within the city was often inverted where we retraced fragments of a trail, elements for real construction materials to be transferred into different environments.

In 1998, we were called to imagine a series of installations for some Internet art projects inside art galleries, museums and art fairs in Germany, building places where the visitors could use the computers and navigate in the web site. Another theme for that year was the temporary modification of spaces where artistic activities where in act. In April 1998 inside a private art gallery in Cologne, a kiosk resembling the ones found in an African periphery was built.

Its structure was made out of pallets, aluminum profiles and a big wooden stage covered with carpets and plastic bubble wrap where one could lie and watch videos and slide projections.

In August 1998 the modification of an art-bar in Darmstad using tinfoil, 200 candles, black plastic from trash bags and transparent plastic to show the main entrance from the outside, was realized. The Cologne November Art Fair was the occasion to build a stand, analogous in shape and volume to all the others that were there, but transformed in a vast and comfortable tzigan living room where hoards of exhausted visitors passed their time in an environment poorly enlightened by few video screens. In the ZKM Museum of Karlsruhe (November 1999) a huge wooden floor occupied the central space of he museum to house chairs, sofas, mattresses, couches, a Venezuelan favela lookalike shack, all places where to navigate in Internet but also crystal prisms that contained precious historical and scientific elements that belonged to Alexander Von Humboldt. The unifying element of all these experiences is that of using heterogeneous found materials from construction sites, junk yards, second hand stores or even objects stolen at night or bought at a flea market, in order to put them together with

web projects for artists. The intention was to construct a sort of derelict functionality space where only the proportion between the single parts could be determined solely by the posture and the movements of the body to create spaces of comfort. It seemed adequate that such spaces be built with a low budget, using recycled material to manifest an architecture made of relations and therefore in a continuos evolution made of building and destroying. The result of many days spent working together is the materialization of complex and often conflictual relations between architects, artists, gallerists, and specialized technicians, workers that result to be in a position of physical mediation between different attitudes and desires. Sometimes the process has seen us absorbing information as sponges, sometimes even refusing outside advice. The sequence of small encampments and provisional installations, with a very close image to many abusive constructions of the peripheries of developing countries, represents the opposite side to that of computer highly technological and rational efficiency rhetoric, as well as the total whiteness and abstraction of the places that housed them, like galleries or museums. All our projects have the intention to invest the people, either visitors to an installation or users of our “things”, with the responsibility to interpret the sense, make a selection among the possible different uses, freely modify the possibilities themselves, become active subjects.

Fabrizio Gallanti

Stalker Esistono ovunque nelle grandi città delle pieghe dove la ripetuta sovrapposizione di margini consente al corso del tempo di sedimentare frammenti eterogenei di spazi e di tempi diversi da quelli che la città stessa vorrebbe riuscire ad affermare, frammenti di altrove che col tempo diventano humus, si territorializzano, garantiti dalla marginalità e dallo scarso controllo, danno vita a forme congenite di diversità. Si tratta spesso di aree di scarto, prossime alle porte delle città, ai porti, alle stazioni.

In una città come Roma, dove è il tempo piuttosto che l’urbanista a disegnare lo spazio, un territorio di questa natura sopravvive ancora oggi: proprio dove anticamente era il porto fluviale, in un angolo del centro storico, tra le Mura Aureliane, la ferrovia e il Tevere, si trova il Mattatoio, con il Monte Testaccio. Una posizione marginale, e eccezionale, che riesce a garantire al Testaccio una sorta di diversità dal resto della città. Non a caso il segno fisico più rappresentativo dell’area è il Monte Testaccio, frutto del sedimentare dei resti delle anfore con cui i romani trasportavano mercanzie. Sotto si distende il Mattatoio, complesso dismesso nel 1975. È diviso in due aree, il Mattatoio vero e proprio, recentemente aperto al pubblico, e il Campo Boario che, pur recintato, ha visto succedersi una quantità infinita di appropriazioni dello spazio: hanno occupato alcune stalle i conducenti delle carrozze che fanno servizio turistico nel centro storico, da anni vi transitano i Calderasha, nomadi italiani che lavorano il metallo, vi ha luogo il centro sociale Villaggio Globale, nonché comunità di immigrati, una palestra e un ristorante palestinese. Così il Campo Boario è un’enorme area vuota, ma ricca di usi diversi.

Più attenti all’ascolto e all’uso dello spazio che non all’astratta pianificazione, Stalker è intervenuto sull’area in occasione dell’apertura al pubblico del Mattatoio, con la Biennale dei Giovani Artisti del Mediterraneo (1999). Lo abbiamo fatto, con un workshop, per far fronte ad una emergenza civile alla quale sentivamo che la città dovesse rispondere: uno spazio di legittimazione per esistere non solo come individui ma soprattutto come società civile, così centinaia di curdi in esilio, molti dei quali arrivati a Roma al seguito di Ocalan, hanno costruito Cartunia a due passi

dal Colosseo, nella speranza di mantenere una visibilità internazionale, di ricordare il loro dramma. Cartunia è stata smantellata: era uno spazio architettonicamente inconsistente, fatto di baracche, eppure un raro esempio di spazio pubblico contemporaneo. C’erano un piccolo ristorante, una sala da te, due barbieri e spacci alimentari. Obiettivo del workshop è individuare uno spazio pubblico dove progettare una nuova piazza Kurdistan, dove sia pensabile il trasferimento, in forme meno aleatorie, di quello spazio da loro costruito per riconoscersi e far conoscere la propria causa. Uno spazio di scambio e di confronto, frutto di una relazione, quella tra la città e i Curdi, tutta da inventare.

Così è nato, al Campo Boario, l’Ararat: a maggio 1999 l’ex-veterinario del Foro Boario è stato occupato per sperimentare una nuova forma di spazio pubblico fondata sull’ospitalità, per verificare le potenzialità di relazione tra l’attività artistica, la solidarietà civile e la trasformazione del territorio. L’edificio è stato ribattezzato Ararat, il monte leggendario emerso dal Diluvio Universale. È il monte dei Curdi e degli Armeni, ma è anche uno dei territori simbolici sottratti dal nazionalismo turco alla memoria delle genti oppresse del Kurdistan. La costruzione di questo spazio è stata possibile grazie ai profughi curdi, all’associazione Azad, al Villaggio Globale e agli artisti, architetti e studenti di architettura che hanno partecipato al workshop “Da Cartunia a Piazza Kurdistan” curato da Stalker per la sez. architettura, curata dall’IN/Arch, per la Biennale dei Giovani artisti dell’Europa e del Mediterraneo. Durante il workshop gli studenti e i profughi hanno realizzato la sala da tè, la cucina, il barbiere, la sala di lettura e gli spazi abitativi. L’edificio continuerà a trasformarsi nel tempo attraverso nuove iniziative artistiche, culturali e politiche. Ararat è dunque un progetto per trasformare un confine in uno spazio pubblico. Il confine è quell’insieme di distanze e differenze che ci dividono da chi è stato costretto ad abbandonare il proprio paese. Per chi vive in città e si confronta con l’evidenza dell’immigrazione, non esiste un percorso di avvicinamento e di comprensione. Questa evidenza rende tale confine trasparente e allo stesso tempo insormontabile, condannando all’emarginazione culture compresenti in città, ma che non convivono in assenza di spazi di rappresentazione della propria identità. Nel tentativo di dare spazio alle differenze, vorremmo dare a questo confine la visibilità di uno spazio pubblico, dove si possano abitare quelle distanze e quelle differenze.

Entrando nelle delicate dinamiche di convivenza nell’area siamo venuti a contatto con il grande sforzo di gestione di difficili convivenze, di contenimento del degrado, svolto dal Villaggio Globale da più di dieci anni. Qui è nata l’idea di un progetto di recupero del territorio, che fa della caoticità e della marginalità del Campo Boario la principale risorsa per un suo rilancio non solo urbanistico, ma anche ambientale e sociale. A questo progetto abbiamo aderito con l’intento di istituire un laboratorio di ricerca interdisciplinare. Davanti alle ennesime ipotesi di riqualificazione dell’area invitiamo l’amministrazione e la cittadinanza a comprendere che il Campo Boario è un luogo unico, espressione delle contraddizioni della città contemporanea, che non ha bisogno di una tabula rasa per essere reinventato, ma di un’operazione di ascolto e di interazione creativa, affinché la marginalità che lo connota si possa emancipare e dar luogo ad un laboratorio dove l’arte possa contribuire, calandosi al centro delle contraddizioni, a elaborare nuovi modelli di convivenza, ovvero a trasformare quel luogo di confine in uno spazio pubblico.

Lorenzo Romito

hIuImIbIoItI

1999

Re-tracing travels, experiences, memories, transformations.

Inspired from Alexander von Humboldt explorations.

September 99, MedienkunstRaum, Bonn.

September 99, net_condition, ZKM, Karlsruhe.

January 00, hIuImIbIoItI, Galerie K&S, Berlin.

Philip Pocock Flor ian Wenz Daniel Burckhardt Udo Noll gr uppo a12 Rober to Cabot

2004

www.humbot.org

a.titolo/Pioselli

Arte Pubblica: esperienze e progetti europei seminario a cura di a.titolo (Giorgina Bertolino, Francesca Comisso, Nicoletta Leonardi, Lisa Parola, Luisa Perlo, Bianca Polledro) e Alessandra Pioselli 3 ottobre 1999 L’incontro, frutto di una collaborazione tra il coordinamento critico a.titolo e Alessandra Pioselli, è nato dal desiderio di far convergere in una giornata di studio posizioni teoriche relative al concetto di arte pubblica (PA), alla luce di differenti esperienze e pratiche individuali e di gruppo. La scelta del tema risponde a un interesse forte che, in questi anni, abbiamo condiviso pur nell’autonomia dei nostri rispettivi progetti editoriali e curatoriali. La sede dell’incontro, nella sala del Progetto Oreste alla Biennale, ha fornito l’opportunità per concepire l’iniziativa come momento per un confronto riguardante l’ambito europeo. Gli inviti ad artisti, collettivi e agenzie sono pertanto stati estesi in modo da rappresentare, quanto più possibile, diverse tipologie e strategie di intervento nella scena pubblica. Il seminario, inteso come sguardo critico sulle attuali pratiche di PA, ha costantemente sollecitato una prospettiva storica, attraverso il richiamo alle ricerche artistiche e alle politiche culturali che si sono succedute a partire dagli anni Settanta. Tali premesse sono state l’argomento del testo di Alessandra Pioselli, Public Art: storia, finalità e funzioni (contenuto nella cartella di documentazione del seminario) e di alcuni interventi successivi. Tra le condizioni preliminari per affrontare l’argomento è il chiarimento circa la definizione di «pubblico», inteso non solo come indicazione di luogo, ma anche nella dimensione sociale e politica di un vivere collettivo diversificato e complesso.

L’assunzione del punto di vista storico rispecchia l’aspirazione a chiarire le varie declinazioni e interpretazioni delle pratiche di PA. «A questo proposito sembra importante risolvere l’ambiguità insita nella frequente associazione della dimensione politica con la PA. Per molti anni, e in parte tuttora, una posizione consistente di PA è stata realizzata nella forma tradizionale del monumento scultoreo permanente. In questi casi, lo spazio pubblico è stato utilizzato come estensione di quello del museo o quello della galleria» (1). A questa pratica, essenzialmente estetica, si sono affiancate, già a partire dagli anni Settanta modalità d’intervento con e per il pubblico, e non semplicemente nel pubblico. Quando si parla di interventi con il pubblico non s’intende sottolineare solo una modalità di lavoro, ma il fatto che le condizioni culturali, sociali, geografiche, politiche, economiche, di un «luogo specifico», di un luogo vissuto, definiscono i parametri, le ragioni, i contenuti del lavoro e le modalità della sua attuazione. A sancire le differenti posizioni legate le une all’idea di monumento e le altre a quella d’intervento nelle sue varie espressioni, valgono anche i mutamenti terminologici coniati soprattutto in seno al dibattito anglosassone. Definizioni come Community Arts e New Genre

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Public Art, da un lato testimoniano la vitalità della riflessione teorica, la sua capacità di formulare ulteriori categorie, dall’altro riflettono le specificità sociali, politiche e culturali dei contesti da cui originano (2).

Restando in ambito linguistico è significativo che, nel corso del seminario, rilevanti spunti di riflessione siano scaturiti dall’intervento del progetto The Gate, unica esperienza extra-artistica tra i partecipanti. Cosa che dimostra quanto un approccio interdisciplinare sia utile non solo ad una lettura critica, ma necessario sin dalle fasi di ideazione e progetto di una pratica di PA. The Gate si è costituito a Torino nel 1995, come Progetto Pilota Urbano, con finanziamenti europei, della Città e del Ministero dei Lavori Pubblici, con il fine di migliorare le condizioni di vita e di lavoro del quartiere Porta Palazzo.

Obbiettivo del progetto è quello di favorire lo sviluppo economico attraverso iniziative di tipo sociale e culturale e mediante interventi di trasformazione fisica degli edifici, dei luoghi di incontro e degli spazi pubblici. L’arte è tra i numerosi strumenti individuati per la messa a punto di una metodologia innovativa, programmaticamente richiesta ai Progetti Pilota di «rigenerazione urbana». Questa espressione, impiegata nell’intervento di Ilda Curti (direttore del progetto The Gate) e poi di Antonella Marucco (responsabile dell’Unità Metodologica del progetto), sebbene assente nel lessico della PA, ha rivelato con essa forti affinità di atteggiamento nell’approccio alla scena pubblica. Rigenerazione è infatti utilizzato in sostituzione a riqualificazione e sottolinea la volontà di operare a partire dall’esistente, dalla specificità dei vissuti che si intrecciano in un territorio dato, che in quel caso è determinato da un forte multiculturalismo. Non si propone quindi un meccanismo verticistico in cui la «qualità» viene aprioristicamente progettata e sovrapposta al tessuto socio-culturale in cui s’intende agire, ma piuttosto si parte da quello per rilevarne le potenzialità e la ricchezza. Ascolto, accompagnamento, attesa, sono le parole chiave che scandiscono le fasi di un intervento di natura «istituzionale» che sceglie di darsi una visibilità continua in un periodo determinato. Gli operatori sono cioè fisicamente presenti sul territorio, disponibili a un confronto continuo con gli abitanti. La scelta di The Gate di presentarsi come comitato sottolinea l’assenza in Italia di strumenti giuridici appropriati a supportare i nuovi rapporti con il territorio, comprese le pratiche di PA. Differente la situazione in altri paesi (USA, Francia e Inghilterra), dove programmi governativi e agenzie private rivestono un ruolo importante nell’articolazione delle varie iniziative di PA. È il caso del PACA (Public Art Commissions Agency) di Birmingham, diretto da Vivien Lovell, attivo dal 1987 come agenzia no-profit, gestita da un Board of Trustees e finanziata, per la programmazione didattica, dal West Midlands Arts. Non scelgono una veste giuridica rigidamente formalizzata gruppi di artisti come WochenKlausur (invitati a rappresentare l’Austria nella 48a Biennale di Venezia), Project Environment (Lancs, Gran Bretagna) e Wurmkos (Sesto San Giovanni, Milano, Italia). Gruppo a numero variabile il primo, agisce sulla convinzione di una responsabilità sociale dell’arte

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mediante iniziative concrete. Progetti indirizzati a situazioni problematiche quali la disoccupazione, l’immigrazione, la prostituzione, sono costruiti sulla base di collaborazioni con istituzioni locali e professionalità competenti. Nella definizione dell’intreccio di questi ruoli, WochenKlausur supplisce, con l’invenzione di una procedura inedita, l’assenza d’iniziativa dell’amministrazione pubblica. Promotore di azioni interdisciplinari nei contesti del sociale e dell’ambiente, in particolar modo rurale, Project Environment non riconosce come referente l’ambito istituzionale, ma i cosiddetti «attori locali» (organizzazioni, cooperative, sindacati). Infine Wurkmos, laboratorio di arti visive nato nel 1987 presso la Cooperativa Lotta contro l’Emarginazione, si pone come esperienza che mette in relazione l’arte con il disagio psichico, al di fuori di intenti terapeutici.

Si tratta di «tante persone insieme, a seconda delle occasioni lavorative. L’elenco dei nomi parzialmente cambia, perché è una dimensione aperta agli interventi di chiunque lo voglia» (3). Sebbene i tre gruppi di artisti finora citati condividano analoghe finalità di tipo sociopolitico, a livello operativo scelgono strategie differenti in cui il rapporto con l’istituzione è a volte auspicato altre rifiutato.

Ulteriori stimoli alla riflessione derivano dalle operazioni di Stephan Kurr (Berlino), Adriana Torregrossa (Bologna) e Paola Di Bello (Milano). In tutti e tre i casi l’azione sul territorio implica l’innesco di un sistema di relazioni, strutturate secondo differenti modalità.

L’operazione itinerante Più frontalieri, avviata da Kurr nel 1992, porta in strada la garitta di frontiera, un oggetto ad alto contenuto metaforico dove il senso insito di ostilità viene mutuato in ospitalità . Il posizionamento di questa struttura negli spazi pubblici di molte città europee, avviene a fronte di richieste e concessione di permessi. Più frontalieri, che dà il titolo all’intero progetto, è la scritta nelle dodici lingue della Comunità Europea che compare in una lapide all’interno della garitta. «La garitta materializza l’idea di frontiera, rendendola presente in un territorio ove le frontiere sono state formalmente abolite. Ma non solo. Kurr, di fatto, con il suo colorato posto di blocco, sottopone a un check-in non tanto come forma di controllo, bensì di confronto, fa passare la frontiera ricordandoci che siamo tutti frontalieri, cioè costretti ad attraversare il territorio fisico dell’estraneità» (4). In modo analogo anche il progetto Art. 2 (1999) di Adriana Torregrossa implica una fase preliminare di concessione di consenso sia da parte delle istituzioni politiche locali, sia della comunità musulmana coinvolta nell’operazione, che ha avuto luogo a Torino nel quartiere di Porta Palazzo. Assumendo un ruolo di «mediatore», l’artista ha condotto a termine le trattative che hanno portato alla trasmissione sonora, sulla piazza del mercato, della preghiera che segnala la fine del Ramadan, la principale festività condivisa da tutte le comunità di fede islamica. La scelta di «amplificare» questo momento, di portarlo sulla piazza pubblica, non intendeva fare appello a una vaga idea di tolleranza, quanto evidenziare la pluralità e la complessità del contesto culturale

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contemporaneo. «Lo scopo dell’azione pubblica è quello di rendere manifesto il riconoscimento dell’altro. Per garantire all’“ospite che resta”, secondo la definizione di A. Loycke, un’identità che la nostra lingua accomuna con la generica definizione di extracomunitario. Un termine che designa una non appartenenza, un’estraneità e un’omologazione dei contesti di provenienza» (5). Anche Paola Di Bello opera sul «territorio pubblico» a partire da coloro che lo abitano (6) scegliendo spesso di misurarsi con un’alterità che diventa sinonimo di marginalità. È il caso del progetto Video Rom (1999). Di Bello, in collaborazione con Marco Biraghi, si è proposta di creare un «ponte» mediante uno scambio fotografico tra alcuni zingari che vivono nella periferia di Milano e i loro famigliari rimasti a Costei, una cittadina di campagna vicina a Timisoara, in Romania. Video Rom documenta il duplice scambio di fotografie, affiancando le immagini di volti, gesti, spazi di vita quotidiana, scattate a Milano a quelle di Costei. «Tale parallelismo non è soltanto una modalità della rappresentazione: riguarda la realtà stessa dei luoghi. (...) I luoghi fisici ai margini delle metropoli nelle quali abitiamo e di cui ci sentiamo padroni si rivelano così non soltanto modificati, ma addirittura determinati dalla presenza di zingari ed extracomunitari (ovverosia proprio di coloro che comunemente vi si ritengono estranei)» (7).

Nella maggior parte di questi lavori emerge dunque il ruolo dell'artista come «inventore di servizi» rilevatore di nodi, bisogni, urgenze: servizi intesi non in senso strettamente utilitario, ma, come ha rilevato Antonella Marucco (The Gate) come espressione di un’operare artistico che gioca con i confini e «provoca l’istituzione su quanto avviene nella complessa dimensione del vivere collettivo». È interessante a questo punto riportare la riflessione su quanto è accaduto negli anni Settanta, in particolar modo per quanto concerne il concetto di partecipazione, parola chiave delle pratiche artistiche nel territorio urbano. Nelle «azioni» degli anni Settanta, caratterizzate da una componente contestataria e oppositiva, il referente del lavoro era un corpo collettivo (cittadinanza, mondo operaio, donne, studenti ecc.) considerato nella sua identità politica. L’attività di Eduardo Alamaro (Napoli), invitato nel 1976 alla Biennale di Venezia Ambiente, Partecipazione, Strutture Culturali, nel Padiglione Italia curato da Enrico Crispolti, riflette questo approccio. Egli muove inizialmente nell’ambito della progettazione urbanistica partecipata, come allievo di Dalisi alla Facoltà di Architettura di Napoli, per occuparsi in seguito di numerose iniziative nel sociale, come i «laboratori dello spontaneo e del popolare», l’animazione e la «partecipazione creativa».

Oggi, sebbene alcune modalità di lavoro siano simili, è diversa la concezione del referente: non più un «corpo politico», ma delle persone portatrici di vissuto. La relazione avviene in modo diretto e non più tra operatore culturale e collettività. Inoltre gli interventi hanno una valenza mimetica, tendono ad operare come virus senza dichiarare un’opposizione al sistema sociale, ma evidenziandone le contraddizioni.

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L’ultima parte della giornata di studio è stata dedicata al dibattito. A fronte delle riflessioni dei presenti, dei racconti delle esperienze, dell’illustrazione dei materiali di documentazione, è emersa una varietà di posizioni che è anche indice della forte problematicità insita nel tema e nelle pratiche di PA. La ricerca di un equilibrio nell’ideazione e realizzazione di un progetto sul territorio, la definizione del rapporto con i «destinatari» dell’intervento, il rischio costante della loro stessa strumentalizzazione, sono alcuni degli spunti su cui si è maggiormente focalizzata l’attenzione dei partecipanti. Da una posizione sostanzialmente esterna allo specifico artistico, Ilda Curti del progetto The Gate, si chiede quali possano essere i «lasciti» dell’arte ad un luogo reale, ad un abitato. All’uso strumentale di un «buon palcoscenico» oppone la necessità politica del «fare comunità», del non considerare un sito quale «vuoto da riempire». La sua rilettura di Art. 2 di Adriana Torregrossa (alla cui attuazione The Gate ha collaborato attivamente), fa pensare che l’entità di un «lascito» possa essere non solo una traccia materiale ma, come nel caso specifico, «l’avviamento di un processo di cittadinanza». Da un’altra prospettiva Vivien Lovell, contribuisce all’analisi delle problematiche del rapporto con la committenza. Rilevando i «cambiamenti radicali» della PA nell’ultimo decennio, sottolinea il passaggio cruciale che, dall’inserimento di un «oggetto» nel pubblico, passa a «interventi basati sulla relazione». Eppure a fronte dell’avvenire di questa trasformazione, nota quanto l’attesa dei finanziatori (pubblici e privati) sia pur sempre diretta a una finalizzazione materiale e permanente del progetto. La risposta delle agenzie che ha creato e diretto (PACA e Modus Operandi) sembra indicare nell’attività di servizio, e in particolare nell’attività didattica, una direzione percorribile. In tema di «servizio», specificamente correlato ad una situazione di emergenza, l’operatività di WochenKlausur lega strettamente il processo artistico ad una coscienza sociale e politica.

Nel far ciò il gruppo è costantemente chiamato a misurarsi con la confusione dei ruoli, a chiarire all’esterno che la propria ricerca consiste nella costruzione di un modello variabile rispetto alle procedure burocratiche ed istituzionali, e non in una pratica di «assistenza sociale». La riflessione sul ruolo dell’artista tocca analogamente la lettura degli interventi di Adriana Torregrossa, Paola Di Bello, Stephan Kurr. Project Enviroment richiama l’attenzione sui rischi di «feticizzazione, da parte degli artisti, dell’impegno sociale».

Avvisando sul pericolo di «semplificazione», oppone all’applicazione di una formula operativa la necessità di esercitare un costante ripensamento delle modalità d’intervento. Modalità che non possono – secondo la posizione politica di Project Environment – non tener conto, in negativo, della «complicità» che la socially engaged art può sviluppare con le Istituzioni. Analoghi timori sono sottolineati da Wurmkos che pone l’accento sulla «spettacolarizzazione della povertà». La consapevolezza della complessità del sociale viene rispecchiata dal gruppo italiano a partire dalla composizione dei suoi

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aderenti. Composizione per scelta elastica, variabile e, soprattutto, aperta all’esterno a tal punto da prevedere momenti di consegna ad altri dei progetti.

Come curatrici dell’incontro non possiamo che rilevare la capienza dell’argomento che abbiamo voluto affrontare. A questa sintesi dei caratteri dell’iniziativa è nostra intenzione far seguire una riflessione teorica maggiormente articolata. L’evidente assenza, in Italia, di contributi teorici sull’argomento (che in altri paesi è tema di programmi, concorsi, corsi universitari etc.) ci stimola a proseguire, da un lato una raccolta di esperienze, dall’altro a impegnarci in un’attività teorica che sentiamo come assolutamente necessaria sia per il versante critico che per quello curatoriale della nostra professione. a.titolo e Alessandra Pioselli

Note 1) a.titolo, Territori e politiche, in “Artel. Fenomeni contemporanei”, n. 1, Castelvecchi, Roma, 1999, pp. 82-91.

2) Si veda sull’argomento, M. Miles, Art, Space and City. Public Art and Urban Futures, Routledge, London-New York, 1997. Di particolare interesse, in questo senso, è la riflessione sui Community Arts Programmes che, a partire dai tardi anni Sessanta, affrontano il rapporto tra arte, comunità etniche e movimento delle donne (Art in Public Spaces. An Outline of the Territory). Questo tipo di esperienze risulta strettamente connesso con la situazione sociale americana e non ha riscontro in Italia. Il tema del passaggio da monumento a intervento è stato affrontato in Italia da R. Pinto e M. Senaldi curatori della rassegna di incontri e relativa pubblicazione La città degli interventi. La Generazione delle immagini III, Comune di Milano, Settore Sport Giovani, Progetto Giovani, Milano, 1997.

3) P. Campanella, E. Longari, Wurmkos, presentazione (cartella di documentazione del seminario).

4) G. Bertolino, Attenzione/Rallentare. Interventi artistici a ridosso della lingua metropolitana, in a.titolo (a cura di), “Zebra Crossing. Esplorazioni artistiche del territorio urbano”, a.titolo edizioni, Torino 1998.

5) L. Parola, Art. 2, scheda di presentazione nell’ambito della rassegna Situazioni, a cura di a.titolo, Unione Culturale Franco Antonicelli, Torino 1997-1999.

A questo proposito sono ricchi di spunti per ulteriori riflessioni gli interrogativi sollevati durante il seminario da Ilda Curti circa il significato dell’abitare. «Chi sono gli abitanti, quanti sono e quali sono le diverse modalità d’abitare? Come queste possono coesistere?

Spesso l’abitante è sempre quello che c’era prima».

7) P. Di Bello, presentazione del progetto. Vedi anche P. Di Bello, bxh/2, in “Progetto Oreste Uno”, Charta, Milano 1999, p. 53.

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Public Art: European experiences and projects Seminar by a.titolo and Alessandra Pioselli October 3rd, 1999 While following their respective publishing and curatorial projects, the group a.titolo and Alessandra Pioselli have shared a strong interest in the theme of public art (PA) over the past few years. Their joint work has led to a day of study, aimed at going through various theoretical positions and different group or single experiences and practices.

The space where the meeting has taken place, the room of Progetto Oreste within the Biennale of Venice, has given us the opportunity to develop a European confrontation. The invitations have been extended to artists, collectives and agencies in order to represent, as much as possible, different kinds and strategies of intervention in the public scene. The critical investigation on the current practices of PA has been led with a historical point of view, referring to artistic researches and cultural policies beginning from the Seventies. These premises have been treated by Alessandra Pioselli in ther essay Public Art: history, purposes and functions . One of the preliminary remarks has been the clearing up of the term «public», referring not just to a place, but to the social and political dimension of the diversified and complex reality of collective life.

The historical point of view reflects our attempt to clear up the various forms and interpretations of the practices of Public Art. «On this subject I think it is important to solve the ambiguity caused by the frequent association of the political dimension with PA. Throughout many years, and in a sense still nowadays, a substantial position of PA has been realized in the traditional form of the permanent sculptural monument. In these cases the public space has been used as an extension of that of the museum or of the gallery» (1).

Besides this aesthetic pratice in the public, there have been interventions with and for the public since the Seventies. The expression «intervention with the public» does not only refer to a way of working, but it means that the cultural, social, geographical, political and economic conditions of a «specific place» determine the parameters, the reasons, the contents and the realization of the work.

The different positions connected to the idea of monument or to the idea of intervention are evidenced by new expressions coined to define PA. Community Arts and New Genre Public Art are definitions which testify to the vitality of theoretical reflection, capable of formulating new categories, and reflect the social, political and cultural specificities of their original framework (2).

It is also meaningful that many interesting hints of reflection have issued from The Gate project, the only extra-artistic experience among the people attending the meeting. This shows the great advantage of an interdisciplinary approach, not only for a critical interpretation, but also for the formation and planning of a PA pratice. Funded by the City of Turin, The European Community and the Italian Ministry of Public

a.titolo/Pioselli

Works, The Gate was established in 1995 as an Urban Pilot Project. with the goal to improve life and work conditions in the area of Porta Palazzo. The project aims at promoting economic development by the means of social and cultural activities and through the physical transformation of buildings and public spaces. Art is one of the instruments used by these pilot projects for «city regeneration». This expression, used by Ilda Curti (director of The Gate project) and Antonella Marucco (head of the Unità Metodologica - The Gate), even if absent from PA lexicon, shows a great affinity in its approach to the public scene. Regeneration is in fact used instead of retraining and this underlines the will to start working from the real situation of a specific territory, determined in this case by multiculturalism. The work is not based on an a priori planning, but on a precise analysis to find out the potentialities of the social and cultural tissue. Attention, accompanying, wait are the key words of the different phases of an voluntarily institutional intervention, based on constant visibility in the area during a certain period of time. The fact that The Gate was established as a committee indicates the italian lack of appropriate juridical instruments to support the new relations with the territory, PA practices included.

In other countries (USA, France, England etc.) the situation is different: government platforms and private agencies play an important part in the coordination of the various activities of PA. PACA (Public Art Commissions Agency) of Birmingham, directed by Vivien Lovell, for example, is a non-profit agency created in 1987, run by a Board of Trustees and financed, for its teaching programme, by West Midlands Arts. Groups of artists such as WochenKlausur (representing Austria in the 48th Biennale of Venice), Project Environment (Lancs, Great Britain) and Wurmkos (Sesto San Giovanni, Milan, Italy), do not have a rigid juridical structure. WochenKlausur is a group of artists with a varying number of members, which acts through concrete activities, believing in the social responsability of art. They work with local institutions and experts on problematic situations, such as unemployment, immigration and prostitution. In this way WochenKlausur compensates for the frequent absence of civil service with the invention of a new procedure. Project Environment promotes interdisciplinary actions in social and environmental (rural in particular) areas. Its interlocutors are not institutions, but local organizations, cooperatives, craft unions. Wurmkos is a visual arts laboratory created in 1987 by the Cooperativa Lotta contro l’Emarginazione. This cooperative is concerned with mental disorders, but without therapeutical intentions. It is «a varying group of people, who work together according to the different circumstances. The list of names changes because the group is open to any intervention» (3).

Although these three groups of artists share similar social and political purposes, they act with different strategies, and their relationships with institutions (demanded or refused) is very different.

Other hints of reflection have been the works of Stephan Kurr

a.titolo/Pioselli

(Berlin), Adriana Torregrossa (Boulogne) and Paola Di Bello (Milan).

In these three cases the action on the territory implies a system of relations. The itinerant work Più frontalieri, started by Kurr in 1992, consists of placing a frontier booth in the road. The frontier booth is a metaphorical object, but with this work its meaning of hostility is changed into hospitality. Kurr has had to ask for numerous permits to place his frontier booth in public spaces in many European cities. The title of the work, Più frontalieri, is written inside the sentry-box in the twelve European languages. «The sentry-box materializes the idea of frontier in a territory where the frontiers have been formally abolished… Furthermore, this coloured box is used for a check-in, which is not a form of control but a confrontation to remind us that we all are frontiersmen, compelled to cross the territory of extraneity» (4). Art. 2 (1999) by Adriana Torregrossa has taken place in Turin, in the area of Porta Palazzo. The artist has had to ask for a series of permits from the local political institutions and the Muslem community who were involved in her work. In this case the artist has acted as a mediator, allowing the transmission of the final prayer of Ramadan in the market-place. The «amplification» of this moment in a public square was not aimed at appealing to a certain idea of tolerance but to demonstrate the plurality and the complexity of the present-day cultural framework. «The public action is aimed at showing the recognition of the other and assuring an identity to “the hosts who stay” (according to A. Loycke’s definition), the so-called “extracomunitari” (an italian word which designates a non-belonging, an extraneity and an homologation of the places of origin)» (5).

Paola di Bello also works in the «public territory», with those who live in it (6), choosing frequently the other which is synonymous to marginalized. In Video Rom (1999) Di Bello, with Marco Biraghi, has put in contact some gypsies who are living in the suburbs of Milan with their families in Costei (a little village near Timisoara, in Romania).

She has done this through an exchange of photographs. Video Rom documents this exchange, putting side by side the pictures of faces, gestures and everyday life spaces taken in Milan and in Costei. «This parallelism is not only an aesthetic choice: it is connected to the reality of these places. (…) These suburbs, in which we live, and of which we feel masters, are not only modified but are even determined by the presence of gypsies and extracomunitari (people who are generally considered foreigners)» (7).

In most of these works the artist acts as an «inventor of services», able to identify needs and emergencies. These services, as stressed by Antonella Marucco (The Gate) are not solely utilitarian: «art provokes institutions about the complex dimension of collective life». On this subject it is interesting to quote the reflection about the Seventies, underlining the concept of «participating», a key word for artistic practices in urban territory during that period. Those «actions» were marked by a protesting and oppositional component. The work was adressed to a collective corps (citizens, workers, women, students etc.),

a.titolo/Pioselli

regarded as a political identity. The activity of Eduardo Alamaro (Naples), invited by Enrico Crispolti in the Italian pavilion of Biennale of Venice 1976, Environment, Participation, Cultural Structures, reflects this approach. He was a student of Dalisi at the faculty of architecture in Naples and he began working in town-planning. Later he became concerned in various social activities, such as «laboratories of spontaneous and popular» and «creative participation».

Nowadays, even if some ways of working are similar, the idea of the receiver is different: it is not a «political corps», but people with real life experience. The relation is not between a cultural operator and the public, but it is direct. Moreover, the interventions are subtle: they act as a virus, without declaring an opposition to the social system, but stressing its contradictions.

The last part of the day has been devoted to a debate. The reflections proposed, the experiences related, the documentation presented have revealed a variety of positions, highlightening the problematic nature of the theme and the practices of PA. The search for a balance in the conception and realization of a project in the territory, the definition of the relations with the «receivers», the constant risk of instrumentalization, are some of the ideas which focused the attention of those present. From a point of view external to art, Ilda Curti (The Gate) wonders what could be the legacies of art to a real place, to a built-up area. The site is not an «empty space to fill up», or a «fine stage». There is a political need of «community». Her interpretation of Art. 2 by Adriana Torregrossa (to which The Gate has actively taken part), means that a «legacy» could be not only something material, but, as in this case, the «start of a process of citizenship».

From another point of view, Vivien Lovell analyses the problem of the relation with clients. She points out the «radical changes» of PA during the last ten years, stressing the crucial passage from the insertion of an «object» in the public space, to «interventions based on relation». In spite of this, public and private clients still expect a material and permanent work. The agencies she has created and directed (PACA and Modus Operandi) propose service activities (particularly teaching activities) as a possible answer. An activity of service correlated to emergency situations is that of WochenKlausur, which considers art as strictly connected with social and political consciousness. In this kind of activity, the group always has to specify its role, making known that its aim is the search for a new variable model, different from the old bureaucratic and institutional one, not a sort of «welfare service».

The reflection on the role of the artist concerns also the interpretation of the interventions of Adriana Torregrossa, Paola Di Bello, Stephan Kurr. Project Environment emphasizes the risk of «fetishism towards social engagement». There is no fixed operating system to apply, and only a constant reflection on the ways of acting can avoid the danger of «simplification». These ways of acting must also consider the «complicity» between «socially engaged art» and institutions.

Wurmkos stresses the same dangers, emphasizing the

a.titolo/Pioselli

«spectacularization of poverty». The consciousness of social complexity is reflected by the varying number of members of the italian group. Its composition is voluntarily elastic and so open to commit some of their projects to others.

As curators of this seminar, we point out the vastness of the theme we have proposed. Following this synthesis of the meeting, we intend to develop a deeper reflection on PA. The evident absence in Italy of theoretical studies on this subject (to which in other countries are devoted programmes, contests, lectures etc.) stimulate us to go on, collecting experiences and engaging ourselves in theoretical activity, which we feel is absolutely necessary for the critical and curatorial aspects of our profession. a.titolo and Alessandra Pioselli Translated from Italian by Annamaria Ferrero

Notes 1) a.titolo, Territori e politiche, in “Artel. Fenomeni contemporanei”, no. 1, Castelvecchi, Rome, 1999, p. 82-91.

2) See M. Miles, Art, Space and City. Public Art and Urban Futures, Routledge, London–New York, 1997. Particularly interesting is the reflection on the Community Arts Programmes, which have delt, since the Sixties, with the relation between art, ethnic communities and the womens’ movement (Art in Public Spaces – An Outline of the Territory). The theme of the passage from «monument» to «intervention» has been treated in Italy by R. Pinto and M. Senaldi, curators of the series of meetings La città degli interventi. La Generazione delle immagini III, Comune di Milano, Settore Sport Giovani, Progetto Giovani, Milan 1997 (see publication).

3) P. Campanella, E. Longari, Wurmkos, presentation (see documents from the seminar).

4) G. Bertolino, Attenzione/Rallentare. Interventi artistici a ridosso della lingua metropolitana, in a.titolo (ed. by), “Zebra Crossing. Esplorazioni artistiche del territorio urbano”, a.titolo edizioni, Turin 1998.

5) L. Parola, Art. 2, presentation within the review Situazioni, by a.titolo, Unione Culturale Franco Antonicelli, Turin, 1997-1999.

6) On this subject, other interesting reflections are the questions put by Ilda Curti about the meaning of «inhabiting». «Who are the inhabitants, how many are they and which are the different ways of inhabiting? How can they coexist? The inhabitant is often the same as before».

7) P. Di Bello, presentation of her project. See also P. Di Bello, bxh/2, in “Progetto Oreste Uno”, Charta, Milano 1999, p. 53.

LAURA PALMIERI ARTE A TUTTO VAPORE. ART STEAM AHEAD Nella conferenza svoltasi il giorno 9 ottobre 1999 a Venezia, nella sala Oreste del Padiglione italiano, sono stati trattati argomenti sul tema della navigazione per contribuire alla promozione del progetto Arte a tutto vapore (sulla nave “Pietro Micca”), coordinato da Laura Palmieri. Le varie relazioni sono risultate interessanti per capire che è possibile rapportarsi alla navigazione, ed ai campi attigui al navigare, tenendo presente come tematica di partenza la questione dell’arte. Sono state messe in discussione diverse problematiche: la navigazione e la storia della navigazione, la storia del restauro della nave a vapore e il rapporto con l’arte.

In questa fase si è cercato di far ruotare le argomentazioni dei contributi intorno a problematiche diverse per non fossilizzare la discussione soltanto sul campo artistico. L’effetto è stato quello di dare un certo respiro al progetto di ospitalità di artisti (ed anche non artisti) sulla nave. Sono stati invitati a raccontare le proprie esperienze due marittimi: Valentina Giua ed Emiliano Parenti, che hanno spiegato le difficoltà di un’eventuale realizzazione del progetto in discussione, infatti hanno proposto all’attenzione dei partecipanti la questione della navigazione e della nave attraverso una visione strettamente nautica, fornendo quindi un contributo specifico e tecnico preziosissimo per il progetto Arte a tutto vapore.

Il rapporto tra la navigazione e il Mare Adriatico è stato brillantemente svolto dalla storica dell’architettura Anna Bedon, che ha stimolato la riflessione sul piano storico attraverso una visione “utilitaristica”: ha parlato dei problemi e dei costi che si potevano avere nella navigazione del passato, ad esempio per organizzare una crociata in Terra Santa. Questo tipo di considerazioni hanno fatto riflettere sul perché, nell’attualità, non è più un’esigenza navigare; di riflesso l’attenzione verso la nautica mostra una caratteristica in comune verso l’arte: non sussiste più un interesse economico e utilitaristico verso questi due campi, considerati nella società del mercato non più utili, bisogna quindi tenere conto di questo cambiamento, bisogna attuare una tutela culturale per non perdere questi due campi.

Su di un tema affine si è mosso l’artista Roberto Cascone che ha partecipato alla riflessione con una sua performance in cui si è presentato con in testa una maschera da elefante (di gomma) metafora della difficoltà dell’artista di autopromuovere se stesso tra timidezza e commedia dell’arte.

L’intervento del gruppo di curatori di Attitudes, struttura indipendente di Ginevra, è stato interessante e costruttivo soprattutto per quanto detto riguardo ai finanziamenti per l’arte, dagli interventi sono state tratte informazioni interessanti per il progetto con il “Pietro Micca”. Hanno partecipato, fuori programma, anche la critica d’arte Viviana Gravano e il Grupo Provisional di Caracas che hanno offerto un loro contributo alla discussione sui temi della conferenza.

Ancora tra i partecipanti alla giornata di discussione un gruppo composto dall’architetto Simona Messina e l’ingegnere Giorgio Pineschi, che hanno spostato la riflessione sui “Sistemi Naturali” intorno alle aree navigabili. Il tema è scaturito dalle loro passeggiate lungo le sponde romane del fiume Tevere, in cui hanno riscoperto altissime potenzialità ambientali che il fiume ancora possiede e che credono importante recuperare per restituire il fiume alla città e alla navigabilità. Operazione preliminare perché questo accada è il risanamento igienico-ambientale dell’area fluviale. La proposta di intervento che hanno presentato consisteva nell’opportuno inserimento di zone umide ricostruite nelle aree ripariali, che assumano forme e valenze di parchi naturali integrati nel contesto urbano. Non è solo una risposta

tecnica adeguata ma un tentativo di addentrarsi in una regione più incerta, fatta di sogni e suggestioni, di cui sempre più forte sentiamo il bisogno di riappropriarci.

Claudia Cassatella, architetto, ha fatto un intervento sul rapporto fra architettura e nomadismo in riferimento alla navigazione. Caroline Bachmann, artista, che ha contribuito alla parte teorica del progetto, ci ha parlato delle particolarità del mezzo di trasporto e l’esperienza dei tempi di viaggio. La nave, con i suoi particolari tempi e ritmi del viaggio, anche su distanze limitate, offre una specifica esperienza della distanza, diversa da quella di altri mezzi di trasporto.

La giornata di discussione sul progetto Arte a tutto vapore è servita per uno scambio di proposte che avranno un seguito proprio attraverso la collaborazione futura. Ci sono gli elementi giusti per far scaturire altri progetti intorno al tema navenavigare-arte.

During the meeting that took place in Venice, in Oreste space, in the Italian Pavilion, on October 9th 1999, several aspects concerning navigation were discussed, in order to contribute to the promotion of the project Art Steam Ahead “Pietro Micca”, promoted by Laura Palmieri. Several reports allowed us to understand that it is possible to refer to navigation (and to other fields connected to it) keeping art in mind as starting point. Several aspects were introduced: the history of navigation, the restoration of this steamboat, and the relationship with art.

Thanks to various contributions, we touched different issues, avoiding to focus exclusively on contemporary art. We highlighted the project of giving hospitality to artists (and not only them) on board. Two sailors, Valentina Giua and Emiliano Parenti, talked about their experiences and this project, telling us about the difficulties we may run into. They also introduced us to sailing in general and to some specific problems concerning steamboats, with regard to a strictly nautical viewpoint, providing Art Steam Ahead of a very valuable technical contribution.

The relation existing between navigation and the Adriatic Sea was brightly pointed out by the architecture-historian Anna Bedon, who stimulated historical reflections by a “utilitarian” view: she talked about expenses and problems that sailors had met in the past (for example to organize a crusade to the Holy Land). We were induced to ask ourselves why sailing is no more considered a need in our society.

The lack of attention towards both navigation and art makes clear the fact that the market doesn’t consider them useful anymore. Such a change has to be taken in consideration in order to culturally preserve both fields.

The artist Roberto Cascone with his performance touched a similar issue: he introduced himself wearing an elephant-mask that was a metaphor of the difficulties artists have to face to promote themselves, having to deal with their shyness and the art game. The contribution given by the curators of the non-profit organization “Attitudes”, based in Geneva, was interesting and positive, especially concerning fundraising, and provided relevant information for the project “Pietro Micca”.

Unexpectedly, the Italian curator Viviana Gravano and the Grupo Provisional from Caracas participated as well, giving their interesting contribution.

Simone Messina (architect) and Giorgio Pineschi (engineer) shifted the attention to the “Natural Systems” that are around navigable areas. Such a subject matter comes from the walks they use to take along the banks of the river Tevere, in Rome, where they discovered the high potentialities of that environment. They consider it worthy of interest and aim to give the river back to the navigability. In order to make this happen, first of all we need to get back the area around the

river. They presented the following proposal: inserting fitting moist areas onto the banks, which may become natural parks integrated into the urban context. This would be not only an adequate technical answer, but also an attempt to enter an uncertain region, made of dreams and suggestions, which we need to gain back.

The subject introduced by Claudia Cassatella (architect) was the relation between architecture and nomadism, referring to navigation. The artist Caroline Bachmann, who contributed to the theoretical part of the project, talked about certain characteristics of transport and the experience of the duration of the journey. The ship, with its particular time and rhythm during the journey (also within short distances) makes us experience distances in a different way from other means of transport.

Such a talk dedicated to the project Art Steam Ahead â&#x20AC;&#x153;Pietro Miccaâ&#x20AC;? allowed exchanges of proposals that hopefully will bring us to further collaborations. There are the right elements to start new projects about the topic: ship-sailing-art.

“Ma le cose come stanno?”

“Le cose stanno” Alberta Pellacani, Silvia Gramigna

Perché l’arte? Perché ognuno di noi ha scelto questo e non qualcos’altro?

Cos’è che ci riporta in un museo? Perché di nuovo di fronte a un’opera?

Cosa sto cercando? Mi aspetto una risposta? Vado con una domanda?

Perché qualche opera mi attrae, qualcun’altra mi respinge o peggio ancora ne rimango indifferente? Perché mi scatta quello sguardo semplificatore dell’abitudine?

Eppure ancora mi emoziono, ho i brividi e, quando capita, qualcosa sorge, mi tiene lì a contatto con l’assurdo che pervade ogni cosa, che è in ogni cosa.

Che cos’è?

Che differenza c’è tra me e quello che passa in quell’istante? Tra me e quelle figure, quei colori? Cosa succede in quel momento, cos’è questo sentire?

E poi il fare. Perché produciamo opere? Chi ce l’ha chiesto? Cosa cerchiamo in questo fare? Offriamo una domanda? Abbiamo un messaggio? Abbiamo una risposta?

L’artista sente, ma cosa sente? Il pubblico dell’opera sente, ma cosa sente?

E perché a volte non sente proprio nulla?

Una possibile risposta a queste domande è stata proposta, attraverso un’esperienza, in “Perché mi sottopongo a questo disagio? Incontro sul sentire e sul significato ultimo della ricerca artistica”, che ha avuto luogo domenica 17 ottobre 1999 nello spazio di Oreste alla Biennale di Venezia.

Una via esperienziale che Silvia Gramigna (storica dell’arte, già direttore della Sovrintendenza ai Beni Artistici e Storici di Venezia) e Alberta Pellacani (artista) hanno maturato all’interno di A.S.I.A. (Associazione Spazio Interiore e Ambiente) di Bologna, in particolare grazie all’insegnamento filosofico di Franco Bertossa.

“How are things?”

“Things are” Alberta Pellacani, Silvia Gramigna

Why art? Why have we chosen this and not anything else? What is that take us to a museum? Why in front of an art work, again? What am I looking for?

Am I waiting for an answer? Am I going with a question? Why does an art work attract me, while another rejects me or, even worst, makes me feel indifferent? Why do I look in this way simplified by habit?

However, I still get excited, I shiver and when it happens, something rises, it takes me in contact with the absurd that is in every thing. What is it? What is the difference between me and what I feel in that moment? Between me and those pictures, those colours? What does it happen in that moment, what is this feeling?

And then, the making. Why do we produce artworks? Has anybody asked it to us? What are we looking for? Do we offer a question? Do we leave a message? Do we have an answer? The artist feels, but what does s/he feel? The spectator feels, but what does s/he feel? And why does s/he sometimes feel nothing at all?

A possible answer to those questions has been proposed trough an experience during the meeting: “Why do I submit myself to this uneasiness?

Meeting about the feeling and the ultimate meaning of artistic research.” It took place in the Oreste’s room at the Venice Biennale on Sunday, October 17th 1999. Silvia Gramigna (art historian, former director of the Sovrintendenza ai Beni Artistici e Storici of Venice), and Alberta Pellacani (artist) have tried to experience – and make others experience – a way, in the context of the researches by A.S.I.A. (Associazione Spazio Interiore e Ambiente) of Bologna, thanks in particular to the teaching of philosopher Franco Bertossa.

Sunday School

Sunday School is a project conceived

by Giles Perry. From a house in North London, it operates by adopting the appearance and some of the practices of an art school.

During the first week of October 1998 a 'prospectus' was distributed to students starting Fine Art degree courses at colleges in London. This prospectus attracted roughly fifty applicants of which (following a random selection process) about twenty currently attend.

St Martins

Teaching staff include: Giles Perry, Dermot Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Donnell, Caitlin Elster, Jorn Ebner, Daniel Thorpe, Anthony Davies, Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt, Jaspar Joseph Lester, and Angela Hicks.

sunday.school@virgin.net

Š D@n Thorpe

Each month the school invites a couple of guest artists to take part in a group tutorial. Three or four students present their work to the group, and their work is discussed. Occasionally, the guest artists will show some slides. In addition to these group tutorials, the school arranges individual tutorials which take place in the students' studios at college.

These tutorials are not conducted in secret, but Sunday School does not inform the colleges when its staff visit.

Anna Doehner Maiko Hatano Angela Huntbach John Meldrum Oliver Nissen Helen Nodding

Klara Hobza Iina Kuusimäki Sophie Ruderman Sam Windett Amelie von Harrach José Benitez Lars Johansson

Chelsea

Goldsmiths Chelsea

Sunday School

The Slade Tim Dodds

Abigail Hirsch Elzbieta Buslowska Tien Wei Woon Miho Shimuzu Sophie Kahn Tom Ormesher Fiona Taylor Adam Thompson

‘Incroci’ 20.10.99

Volker Eichelmann / Jonathan Faiers / Roland Rust / Johannes Schweiger The idea of collaboration is central to the work of the artists. However, they are not a group but a network of individuals who form aliases for specific projects. For their intervention ‘Incroci’they presented a number of their collective and individual enterprises and invited the audience to discuss the work.

Eichelmann, Faiers, Rust and Schweiger developed the Canopy especially for their presentation in the ‘Oreste’space. The ‘Canopy’provides a zone for discussion as well as functioning as an architectural intervention into the structure of the ‘Biennale’.

Canopy - installation view, paper fabric, size variable.

‘Do you really want it that much?’- ‘More!’ (V. Eichelmann / J. Faiers / R. Rust): The video investigates the representation of art spaces in mainstream cinema. By using found footage to construct alternative narratives the video presents endless formulations and possibilities for the art space. ‘Do you…’documents via mainstream cinema and T.V. the representation of art criticism, the construction of ‘genius’through the figure of Van Gogh, the topographic emphasis placed on the museum and gallery staircase and the spectacularisation of the private view, amongst other scenarios. The project is ongoing and the re-recording and collating of existing and new material allows the question in the work’s title to be continuously asked and the demand for ‘More!’ceaselessly supplied.

‘Becoming 1’ (J. Faiers): A video response to the concept of “becoming” as formulated by Deleuze and Guattari. Using images of transformation selected from science fiction and horror film and documentary footage of the patterns of swarms and multiplicities to be found in nature, the video provides a visual documentation of becoming in myth and science, whilst simultaneously exploring formal notions of becoming via the successive assemblage of images.

‘Interiors’ (V. Eichelmann): The slide projection analyses the fictitious homes of celebrities.

Images from interior magazines are matched with celebrities who might inhabit those places. Superimposed captions provide a scurrilous commentary. The analysis of these homes combines the observation of the place with cultural critique, gossip and jokes and proposes a reception of popular culture that is both joyful and critical.

Canopy - view from the Italian pavillion to the Austrian pavillion.

‘Style Substance - The MaxMara Coat Project’ (V. Eichelmann / R. Maclennan): The book documents the artist’s project for the MaxMara fashion label. They were asked to interpret MaxMara’s classic cashmere camel coat and to produce an artwork inspired by it.

Eichelmann and Maclennan decided to put the question of value to a wider public, by offering to swap the coat for whatever people thought it was worth. The book presents the responses and the two winning swaps: a play by Josh Lacey and a miniature version of ‘Das Kapital’.

‘My Fidelity“ EP (R. Rust / J. Schweiger): The ‘My Fidelity’EP consists of five videos for specially chosen music-tracks. Like five songs on a record, they share some ideas and viewpoints, but try to evoke different moods by stressing different aesthetics and speeds.

Each video relays a small concept, a prototype of an idea or a description of a potential environment for the video.

‘Where do you want to go today?’ (R. Rust / J. Schweiger):‘Identities are used and reproduced daily, continuously changing their contexts. The question of a copyright is no longer valid. This is a phenomenon, which is being established in all areas. Every production is tied to an automatic renewal. The output is the sampler, or something which can be sampled. Instead of a copyright a shareware’is produced.’‘Where to you want to go today?’is a 27-minute video-compiler containing actual material from February 1997.

Trailers, TV Commercials, Documentary Footage is accompanied by male and female voiceovers, talking about the nineties, its micro-revolutions and how these have been perceived.

Inner Networks Interactive performance by Regina Frank –

Thin different-colored threads in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, sapphire, and silver-gold were affixed to my body at seven different chakras. People were invited to spin, tangle, tie me into a network of threads. Inspired by their movement and energy, by their meshwork that started from me and developed around me between the participants and the viewers, I began writing on my laptop: Writing without knowing where to go, spinning thoughts while others are spinning their web... I don’t know where I am going. With my stream of consciousness I drift, move spiritually while sitting, a spider in the middle of your web, but you are the spinners – and spiders – feel people touching me, lightly, high energy, I am hot in this web, feel cabled, wired, caught and still the web symbolizes freedom. While spinning this outer meshwork we often forget our inner network. How will we be able to function outside if inside none of our communication centers are in sync... we can’t fix this inner web, this sensitive network of meridians inside of us, like a defective phone line... Acupuncture points communicate through love lines from head to toe. Inside thoughts are

The Artist Is PresentÂŽ

dwelling, nesting comfort between cells... cells like bits store memories, cause pain, lines of suffering are busy... While I write this I am spun into the universal thought system of seven different people, seven different colored roles of thread â&#x20AC;&#x201C; red: my roots where I come from, where I sit, where I dwell, live, food for thought and for the body, energy... orange: sacred, whole, me, creative, sensual, senses, sex, comfort... yellow: sun, power, life, I am strong, happy, someone takes that thread and carries it away, spins around another person, passes it on... green: love, green grass, heart, compassion, giving... blue: here we are, communication, expression, networks... sapphire indigo: things become clear, I follow my intuition, no rules, just my inner heart tells me what I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know, I see inside... silver, white gold: I fly cosmic flight, mediator between medium and message, the sun hits the water, glitter, crystal, diamonds...

If you would like to read the complete text, please visit: www.regina-frank.de; or write: present@regina-frank.de

Con molto piacere You are welcome Assaggio d’arte relazionale A taste of relational art Spazio Oreste, sabato 23 ottobre 1999 Saturday 23 October 1999 Autostrada A14 - Siamo invitate a presentare il nostro lavoro nello spazio Oreste, alla Biennale di Venezia.

- Cosa si può fare per mostrare un lavoro d’arte relazionale?

- Non ha senso mostrare l’arte relazionale.

- Allora diciamo: come può esserci in Biennale l’arte in forma relazionale?

- Quanto tempo a disposizione?

- Una giornata; poco per creare relazioni, per far vivere un’esperienza.

- Meglio pensare ad un entrée, un antipasto.

- Un assaggio di come la relazione per noi è strumento del nostro fare; per creare, allargare l’ambito dell’arte, scavalcare specificità.

(Rapida carrellata sulle relazioni di artway, passate e presenti) - Le persone con le quali lavoriamo, gli amici e sostenitori, i nostri committenti… loro possono portare il nostro lavoro in Biennale!

- Sì, Portatori di relazioni!

- Come cominciano le relazioni?

- Affinità, cose in comune, fascino, oppure curiosità, apertura al dialogo, allo scambio…

- Prima; prima ancora.

- Un incontro; un saluto, una stretta di mano. (porgendo istintivamente la mano) - Piacere - Il piacere è mio.

- Allora cominciamo?

- Con molto piacere.

Highway A14 - We've been invited to present our work in the Oreste Space at the Biennale in Venice.

- How can we show a relational artwork?

- It doesn’t make any sense to show relational art.

- So, let’s say: how can art be in a relational form within the Biennale?

- How much time do we have?

- O ne day. It’s a pretty short time to create relationships, to make a lived experience.

- Better if we think about an entrée or an appetizer.

- A taste of how a relationship is a tool for us, to create, to widen the circle of art, crossing over specificity; shortly, our way of making art.

(Brief list of the relationships of artway, past and present) - People we work with, our friends and supporters, our clients… they can bring our job to the Biennale!

- … Bearer of relationships!

- How does a relationship start?

- Affinities, things in common, charm or curiosity, openness to dialogue and exchange…

- Before that, even before that.

- With a meeting, a look, a handshake.

(Instinctively stretching out her hand) - It’s a Pleasure!

- The pleasure is mine.

- So, shall we start?

- With great pleasure.

artway of thinking Stefania Mantovani e Federica Thiene

Gian Andrea Bandieri, aeronautic engineer Paola Pellicciotti mi ha informato sulla vostra iniziativa di arte relazionale, mi sembra proprio un’ottima idea. Complimenti per la pensata, che è poi il vostro lavoro… … your relational art initiative… seems like a really excellent idea. Congratulations for the brainwave; of course, it’s your job…

Carmen Bottacin, business agent Proporrei che eventi del genere siano fatti più spesso; intendo in altre occasioni, per esempio l’inaugurazione di una chiesa.

I'd like to propose that such events take place more often; I mean, on other occasions, like the inauguration of a church.

The busy bee worker A dir la verità, “Con molto piacere” ha cominciato a fare il suo “dovere” fin dai primi giorni di vita. Capire cosa Stefy e Fede volessero fare è stata dura! Ma a fine racconto tutto era semplice, bello e particolarissimo; con niente nasceva un evento!

To tell the truth, "You are welcome" started to do its “job” right from the moment it came into life.

It wasn't easy to understand what Stefy and Fede had in mind! But in the end, everything turned out to be simple, beautiful, and very special: an event was born out of nothing!

Martina Cafaro, architect Test “Sei un portatore sano di relazioni?”

Scopo: dimostrare a tutti i costi, improvvisandosi psicologa, che si è in grado di attirare l’attenzione su di sé e creare una “situazione” dal nulla.

Test “Are you a healthy bearer of relationships?”

Goal: to demonstrate at all costs, by becoming an improvised psychologist, that is possible to draw the attention to oneself and create a “situation” out of nothing.

1. In una situazione di questo tipo: a. Sei infastidito; b. sei incuriosito; c. cerchi tutte le maniere per attaccare bottone.

1. In such a situation: a. You’re annoyed; b. You’re curious; c. You do whatever you can to buttonhole somebody.

2. Se sei con uno straniero e non conosci la sua lingua: a. Eviti ogni contatto con la persona; b. Rimandi alla prossima volta e ti riprometti di imparare l’inglese; c. Inventi il “globish” pur di comunicare.

2. If you’re with a foreigner and you don’t know his/her language, do you: a. Avoid all contact with the person; b. Wait until next time and make a promise to learn English; c. Invent globish, if that’s what it takes to communicate.

3. Nel tuo lavoro, se devi incontrare una persona: a. Mandi un collega al posto tuo; b. Vai e arrivi in ritardo; c. Arrivi all’ultimo momento perché nel frattempo hai incontrato un sacco di amici.

3. In your work, if you have to meet someone, do you: a. Send a colleague instead of you; b. Go, but get there late; c. Get there at the last minute, because in the meantime you run into a lot of friends.

4. All’uscita della Biennale ti è chiesto un parere sulla mostra vista: a. Scappi, se no perdi il vaporetto; b. Ci pensi un po’ perché temi di dare la risposta sbagliata; c. Dici al tuo accompagnatore di attenderti al bar perché ne avrai per mezz’ora.

4. As you are leaving the Biennale, someone asks your opinion about the exhibition you’ve just seen. Do you: a. Run away because don’t want to miss the ferry; b. Think about it because you might give the wrong answer; c. Tell your friend to wait for you at the bar because you’ll be busy for the next half hour.

5. Spazio Oreste è per te: a. La Società per Azioni fondata dallo zio Oreste; b. L’ennesima invenzione delle Artiste; c. L’ultimo sperato tentativo per fare incontri interessanti nella vita.

5. What Spazio Oreste means for you: a. The Company founded by Uncle Oreste; b. the latest invention those women Artists come up with; c. The last chance to meet the most interesting people in your life.

Profili psicologici: (punti: 0a 1b 3c) Da 0 a 5 punti: restio al contatto, temi che gli altri vogliano giudicarti e coinvolgerti in cose che a te non interessano. Da 6 a 10 punti: ti piace stare tra la gente però allo stesso tempo fai fatica a lasciarti andare e vai via sempre prima degli altri. Da 11 a 15 punti: SEI UN PORTATORE SANO DI RELAZIONI, quindi YOU ARE HERE Psychological profiles: (score: 0a 1b 3c) From 0 to 5 points: reluctant to have contacts, you’re afraid that other people might judge you and get to involve you in things that you're not interested in. From 6 to 10 points: you like to be around people but at the same time you find hard to let yourself go and you always leave before anybody else is gone. From 11 to 15 points: YOU ARE A HEALTHY BEARER OF RELATIONSHIPS, therefore YOU ARE HERE Giovanna Cestaro, seller Ricordo di aver parlato per un bel po’ con un giovane tutto preso a capire il mio mondo, quello della cosmesi… Si fa sera troppo presto per spegnere le nostre parole, ma rimane una convinzione: aver partecipato all’arte. Quella giornata mi ha fatto capire cos’è artway of thinking.

I remember speaking for quite a while with a young man who was completely into trying to understand my world, the world of cosmetics…

Evening came too fast, bringing our words to an end, but one certainty remains: we took part into art. That day helped me to understand the artway of thinking.

Silvia Colla, business agent Penso che questo lavoro porti a vivere in maniera naturale l’arte, tanto da diventare automaticamente arricchimento personale. Mi piace dire che in quel giorno è stato fatto molto perché non è stato fatto nulla di straordinario; soltanto eravamo lì e tutto era possibile.

I think that this work leads us to live art in a natural way, so much so that it automatically becomes a personal enrichment.

I like to say that a lot was done because nothing extraordinary was done; we were simply there and everything was possible.

Maurizio Fipponi, choir director Per un profano come me, che vive questo problema nella musica, forse una risposta, uno stimolo di ricerca: un’arte vicina, non banale, provocatoria, ma calda!… Oreste ci sei riuscito!

Continua così.

For an outsider like me, who has a similar problem in the music field, perhaps this is an answer, a stimulus for further researches: a kind of art that’s close-up, not banal, provocative, but warm!

Oreste, you did it! Don’t stop.

Monica Mantovani, receptionist Fuori del padiglione, sotto la pioggia, con il buio che avanzava, le relazioni non volevano cessare… Sembrava quasi che le persone fossero da anni nell’attesa che qualcuno dicesse: “È tempo di relazionarci un po’!”.

Outside the Pavilion, under the rain, in the coming darkness, it seemed that the relations just could not stop... It was almost as if people had been waiting years for someone to say: “It’s time for us to set up a relation!”

Silvana Mascioli, artist Così si abbandonavano a quella relazione libera ed aperta… cercando di accogliere con gioia e felicità… il proprio essere… il proprio vissuto… il tutto… gli altri…

So they abandoned themselves to the freedom and openness of the relationship… welcoming with joy and happiness… their own being… their own experience… everything… everybody…

Beppe Mora, artist and cartoonist Per moltiplicare l’effetto relazionale, ho pensato di relazionarmi con chi desidera relazionarsi attraverso il mio piccolo test:

In order to multiply the relational effect, I thought I would relate with anyone who wants it through this little test of mine: 1. Chi ti ha invitato/a?

A. La Cooperativa Sgombero Padiglioni; B. Thinkway of Arting; C. Non ricordo.

1. Who invited you?

A. The Pavilion Cleaning and Removal Corporation; B. Thinkway of Arting; C. I don't remember.

2. Che significa “portatori sani di relazioni”?

A. Portatore sano a chi?; B. Non conosco gli sherpa; C. Eh! 2. What does "a healthy bearer of relationships" mean?

A. Healthy for whom, exactly?; B. I don't know any sherpa; C. Huh? 3. Che cosa ti ha colpito della Biennale?

A. I toponi del Padiglione Italia; B. I topi nel bagno; C. Squit!

3. What struck you the most about the Biennale?

A. The big rats in the Italian Pavilion; B. The rats in the bathroom; C. Squit!

4. Conosci Oreste, e che ne pensi?

A. Non ho nulla contro gli omosessuali; B. Oreste chi?; C. Mi deve trentamila lire.

4. You just got to know Oreste, so what do you think?

A. I have nothing against homosexuals; B. Oreste who?; C. He owes me thirty bucks.

5. Commentami “Con molto piacere” A. Altrettanto; B. Grazie; C. Perché?

5. Please comment on "You are welcome" A. Same to you; B. Thank you; C. Why? 6. Riflessioni finali su questa esperienza alla Biennale A. Com’è triste Venezia; B. Ci torno l’anno prossimo; C. Penso che ai Giardini dovrebbero esserci i giochi per i piccini.

6. Final reflections on this experience at the Biennale A. How sad Venice is!; B. I'll come back next year; C. I think there should be a children's playground in the Gardens.

Se hai collezionato almeno 3 A sei un portatore sano ma ci sfugge la tua patologia.

Se hai collezionato almeno 3 B sei un portatore non c’è dubbio. I dubbi sono sul “sano”.

Se hai collezionato almeno 3 C dov’eri quel giorno?

If you got at least 3 A’s, you’re a healthy bearer of relationships but we're not quite sure about your pathology.

If you got at least 3 B’s, you’re a healthy bearer of relationships, no doubt about it. We're just not sure what you mean by “healthy.”

If you got at least 3 C’s, where were you that day?

Giancarlo Smiraldi, computer manager and Lina Ceccato, employee at the Court office L’arte è indubbiamente creazione; cosa c’è di meglio che creare incontri tra varie esperienze, mentalità e persone? Questa è forse la più antica forma d’arte.

Art is undoubtedly creation; what could be better than creating opportunities between different experiences, mentalities and people? This, perhaps, is the most ancient form of art.

Luciano Trevisan, cultural manager Al di là delle mille domande sulla “performance”, se il tutto finisce alla cinque del pomeriggio, cosa succede dopo? Mi farebbe un po’ tristezza tornare a casa ed impantofolarmi. … apart from thousands of questions about the “performance,” if the whole thing ends at five o’clock in the afternoon, what’s going to happen afterwards?

Valter Tronchin, architect Da “Ceci n’est pas une pipe“ a “questa è la realtà”. Da Arte come rappresentazione alla Presentazione di un’arte. Da Arte senza funzione ad ogni funzione fatta ad Arte.

From “Ceci n'est pas une pipe” to “this is the reality.” From Art as representation to the Presentation of a work of art. From Art without a function to every function done as Art.

Lucia Vergani, coordinator of souls Mi perdo piacevolmente nell’approfondimento delle relazioni, scordando il sonno e il naturale fuso orario, ormai sballato senza affrontare viaggi interstellari.

Venezia piove, l’acqua alta… (oggi ho imparato l’amore).

I love to lose myself exploring a relationship; I forget sleeping and natural timing, I get jet-lagged without taking any interstellar voyage. Venice is raining, it’s high water time… (today I have learned about love). artway of thinking (Stefania Mantovani e Federica Thiene) ricerca uno spazio d’azione per l’arte. Uno spazio fisico, sociale, intellettuale, economico, artificiale, con nuovi interlocutori; uno spazio da contaminare. Per questo è stato necessario costruirsi uno spazio mentale, una coscienza del ruolo e delle responsabilità dell’artista nella società lavorando in aree non protette, ripensare a un’identità e a un processo del fare.

Identità catalizzatrice, organizzatrice, stimolatrice, disponibile al dialogo, ricettrice, trasformatrice, trans-, inter-, a-specialistica; sostanzialmente creativa, senza un linguaggio specifico.

Processo: dialogo con il committente, identificazione della tematica, costituzione di un gruppo interdisciplinare di lavoro, consolidamento delle relazioni tra i vari soggetti interessati, analisi del contesto (punti di forza e di debolezza, attori sociali, risorse, obiettivi da raggiungere).

Qualità dell’azione proposta: perseguibile, capace di innescare un processo di trasformazione e di innescarsi in processi già esistenti. artway of thinking (Stefania Mantovani and Federica Thiene) seeks a space of action for art.

A physical, social, intellectual, economic and artificial space, for new conversation partners. A space to be contaminated. This is what makes necessary to build a mental space: an awareness of the role and responsibility of the artist in the society. Working in non-protected areas, it has been necessary to re-think an identity and a new process of doing.

Identity: catalyst, organizer, stimulator, available for dialogue, receptor, transformer, non-, trans-, inter- specialist; mainly creative, without a specific language.

Process: dialogue with the client, identification of the issue, establishment of an interdisciplinary group; consolidation of the relationships between the various parties involved; analysis of the context: (strengths and weaknesses, social actors, resources, objectives to reach). Quality of the proposed action: feasible, capable of setting off a transformative process and of activating processes already existing.

artway of thinking P.zza dei caduti, 32 I-31021 Mogliano V.to (TV) tel e fax +39 041 5904300 e-mail: artway@tin.it www.undo.net/artway

PIER LUIGI SACCO PRESENTAZIONE DELLA RIVISTA KÉIRON. THE KÉIRON MAGAZINE 29 ottobre 1999 La presentazione nello spazio di Oreste di Kéiron, frutto della collaborazione di Farmindustria con Emilio Fantin e Pier Luigi Sacco assistiti da Roberta Iachini, è stata dedicata all’analisi delle problematiche della salute e della sanità attraverso la molteplicità dei punti di vista della scienza, dell’etica e dell’economia, e ha rappresentato un importante momento di confronto con la realtà economico-produttiva e allo stesso tempo con la comunicazione scientifica. La presentazione è stata impostata su un doppio binario: quello dell’illustrazione dei contenuti dei primi due numeri della rivista e quello dell’evento performativo dato dalla presentazione di tali contenuti all’interno di un percorso museale e di una specifica cornice visivosonora progettata per l’occasione.

Nel corso della presentazione sono intervenuti Gian Piero Leoni, presidente di Farmindustria, che ha presentato al pubblico lo spirito dell’iniziativa nel più ampio contesto dell’impegno di Farmindustria nel campo della cultura e della comunicazione scientifica e sociale; Ivan Cavicchi, direttore responsabile di Kéiron, che ha offerto una presentazione approfondita del progetto editoriale della rivista; i responsabili delle tre sezioni di Kéiron, che hanno illustrato le linee metodologiche e tematiche essenziali delle rispettive aree di competenza e la loro collocazione all’interno del progetto editoriale complessivo: Gilberto Corbellini per la sezione Scienza, Armando Massarenti per la sezione Etica, Pier Luigi Sacco per la sezione Economia.

Due dei collaboratori dei primi numeri della rivista hanno presentato i contenuti degli interventi da loro pubblicati sulle pagine di Kéiron: Giuseppe Bianchi, primario di Nefrologia dell’Ospedale S. Raffaele di Milano, e Stefano Zamagni, Ordinario di Economia Politica presso l’Università di Bologna.

Sono intervenuti infine Cesare Pietroiusti ed Emilio Fantin, analizzando il senso di questa operazione all’interno della programmazione complessiva delle attività di Oreste e sviluppando alcune considerazioni sui possibili spazi di dialogo tra comunicazione artistica, scientifica e mondo imprenditoriale. L’intera presentazione è stata accompagnata da una ambientazione video che elaborava il repertorio iconografico della rivista, curata da Oreste in collaborazione e con la regia di Isabella Bordoni e Roberto Paci Dalò di Giardini Pensili.

Gran parte del pubblico della presentazione era costituito da rappresentanti del mondo della cultura, dell’università e della medicina espressamente invitate. Si è comunque registrata anche una certa attenzione da parte del pubblico occasionale della Biennale, abbastanza disorientato (non diversamente dalle guide) dalla imprevista occupazione del percorso espositivo da parte di un evento che aveva tutta l’aria di un covegno scientifico. Alla fine della presentazione è stato organizzato un pranzo su un battello viaggiante per la laguna, cui hanno partecipato tutti i relatori e gli invitati nonché una rappresentanza di Oreste.

Nel pomeriggio è stata infine proposta una visita guidata agli spazi espositivi dei Giardini di Castello curata da a.titolo, nella quale i ruoli si sono ribaltati: gli addetti ai lavori della comunicazione scientifica sono diventati spettatori a loro volta un po’ disorientati ma molto curiosi e motivati. La sensazione complessiva è quella di un esperimento che dovrebbe essere ripetuto in futuro su scala ancora più ampia e sistematica.

The presentation of Kéiron, a journal published by Farmindustria, has been organized by Farmindustria, Pier Luigi Sacco and Emilio Fantin with the assistance of Roberta Iachini. The presentation, devoted to the analysis of health issues through the multiple points of view of science, ethics and economics, has been an important moment for Oreste in that it has allowed a confrontation with the reality of economics and production, and at the same time with the reality of scientific communication. The presentation ran on a double track: illustrating the contents of the first two issues of the journal and performing as people involved presented these contents in the middle of an exhibition space and of an appropriate visual and environmental frame designed for the event.

The presentation involved Gian Piero Leoni, president of Farmindustria, who illustrated the spirit of the event within the wider context of Farmindustria’s commitment in the field of culture and of scientific and social communication. Ivan Cavicchi, managing editor of Kéiron, who provided a deep exposition of the editorial project behind the journal. The editors of the three sections of Kéiron, who discussed the basic methodological and thematical lines of the respective sections and their place within the global editorial project: Gilberto Corbellini for Science, Armando Massarenti for Ethics, Pier Luigi Sacco for Economics. Subsequently, two of the contributors to the first two issues of the journal made a presentation of their authored articles: Giuseppe Bianchi, Head of the Nephrology department of St. Raffaele Hospital in Milan, and Stefano Zamagni, Professor of Economics at the University of Bologna.

Eventually, Cesare Pietroiusti and Emilio Fantin have analyzed the meaning of this event as part of the whole program of Oreste. They have developed some thoughts on possible opportunities for dialogue between artistic communication on the one side, and scientific and entrepreneurial communication on the other. The whole event has been embedded in a video environment based on the iconographic material of the journal pages, produced by Oreste in association with Isabella Bordoni and Roberto Paci Dalò of Giardini Pensili. The most part of the public was made of people from the cultural, academic and medical world, who were personally invited to attend. There has however been some attendance from the occasional public of the exhibition, who was pretty puzzled (as guides were) by the unexpected occurrence of what seemed a scientific meeting in the very middle of the exhibition pathway. At the end of the presentation there has been a lunch on a boat sailing across the Laguna, which was attended by participants as well as by some Oreste representatives. Finally, in the afternoon a guided tour to the exhibition spaces of Giardini di Castello, curated by a.titolo, was proposed.

Now roles were turned upside down: speakers and experts of scientific communication became puzzled but curious and motivated spectators. The overall sensation is that of an experiment that ought to be repeated in the future on a even larger and more systematic scale.

“Da quelle parti vicino alla spiaggia” un progetto di film di Stefano Arienti e Alessandra Tortarolo Soggetto Figure nude giocano una situazione ancora non ben definita.

C’è un vero gioco con regole precise?

Un gioco di società dove la gente si spoglia e sta nuda?

Ambientazione Un selvaggio paesaggio marino.

Un luogo possibile: la spiaggia del Giudeo a Chia in Sardegna Riprese Primavera del duemila Produzione Numero Civico Rovereto TN

a i z a p s i c s i u

It was quite an experience for me to talk at the meeting. I enjoyed being at one table with UnDo.Net and 01 very much. Everybody was so careful with me. The public tried hard to follow my words. I only speak a little English with a weak French and a strong German accent at the same time. Nevertheless I had the feeling to be understood. I would love to be with you in Italy right now. During my stay in Venice I met so many interesting people doing so many interesting things. I would like to meet artists from Oreste more often and I hope that I can be helpful to improve the presence of art from Italy in France (Synesthésie is constantly looking for new contributors.)

In the coming weeks I am creating an international art calendar on http://www.synesthesie.com/international. I look forward to receive information from Italy.

Christian W. Denker

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SOME LINES ABOUT MY TALK AT ORESTE…

d e s i d e r i

Created in 1995, Synesthtésie is a magazine conceived expressly for the Internet. It gathers theoretic texts, presentation of artistic processes, and specific creations. The site exposes and develops an original analysis of contemporary creation and of his esthetic and social implications putting them in perspective with the development of numeric nets. The authors are professionists, art critics, university, writers, sociologist, philosophers and artists. The no. 9 is dedicated to the theme “Multiply identity.”

n e c e s s i t à

Y a h o o !

c o m p e t i t i o n

‘ACCUMULAZIONI’ group of friends, architects, students ACCUMULAZIONI isisaagroup of friends, architects, students of of architecture, and people passionately fond of architecture, design, architecture, and people passionately fond of architecture, design, visual arts, fashion, that grew up with the intention of creating a new visual arts, fashion, that grew up with the intention of creating a new reality in the web space. This site is created as a meeting and reality in the web space. This site is created as a meeting and confronting space open to different disciplines, based on participation. confronting space open to different disciplines, based on participation.

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A C C U M U L Stefano Bettini - Matteo Ghidoni - Daniele Levi

0100101110101101.ORG

L A Z I O N I Giulia S. Marabini - Tommaso Santostasi - Antonio Scarponi

spazia@libero.it

is famous in the net community for having robbed the net art museum Hell.com, which is a password protected private site; it has been entirely downloaded in a weekend and re-proposed freely reproducible and distributable in an anticopyright version. In spite of every threats of accusation the clone is still online. After Hell.com it was the turn of another net.art gallery: Olia Lialina’s “Art.Teleportacia” whose exhibition has been replaced by ‘Ibridi del periodo eroico’ (‘Hybrids of the heroic period’).

The trilogy was completed with the clone of Jodi.org, a couple of famous net.artists’ site, that has been cloned without any alteration.

0100101110101101.ORG also contains several “remix” of other very famous net.artists’ sites. http://www.0100101 110101101.ORG

ph. Giancarlo Norese

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s c i o g l i

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BUCO NELLA RETE (Hole in the net) has been the first confrontation moment with the aim of finding what is really missing in Internet and thinking about something new and useful for the net. A day of debate open to everyone who is interested in this matter and with the cooperation of people who already work and create in the net with different ideas and interventions.

Fanzine e pubblicazioni aperiodiche, altri modi di comunicare.

Fanzines & non-periodical publications, other ways to communicate.

Giornata di incontri sul tema della comunicazione underground. Dalle fanzine alle pubblicazioni d’arte aperiodiche.

A cura di Fabrizio Basso e Silvia Cini Day of communion on the theme of underground communication.

From fanzines to non-periodical art publications Under the care of Fabrizio Basso & Silvia Cini Il 6 novembre la Sala di Oreste nel Padiglione Italia della Biennale si è trasformata in un grande bancone, simile all’infoshop di un centro sociale, dove il pubblico poteva sfogliare la quasi totalità delle fanzine d’arte italiane e straniere oltre ad una vasta collezione di ’zine degli anni ’80 e ’90, chiedere informazioni e scambiare indirizzi e materiali autoprodotti.

Per chiarire cosa sia una ’zine e quali siano le finalità di chi la produce, si è tenuto un incontro in cui, attraverso gli interventi di Giovanni Bai (Museo Teo), Gianluca Umiliacchi (ex Archivio Fanzines Autoprodotte), Gianni Bandini (Wide spread), Gianni Donaudi (mail artista) e Marco Carbone (fanzinaro), è stato possibile ricostruire e mostrare la storia delle pubblicazioni autoprodotte, cercando di fare il punto sulla situazione attuale.

FAN + MAGAZINE = FANZINE Fanzine proviene da FAN (di un gruppo musicale) + MAGAZINE, quindi: rivista dei “fans”. Da questa prima connotazione la fanzine o ’zine si è trasformata fino a diventare un vero e proprio strumento di informazione fatto in casa. Nasce così un’infinita serie di pubblicazioni autoprodotte, ognuna inerente agli argomenti che più interessano chi le redige. Informazione personale quindi, o di piccoli nuclei, dove sono riportate le notizie che non interessano alla maggior parte dei fruitori dei grandi media o che non si vogliono far trapelare fino ai mass media, come nel caso delle ’zines politiche.

La ’zine è la voce dei movimenti underground e dei singoli sperimentatori che, scambiandosi informazioni e idee, spesso si contaminano a vicenda creando nuove tendenze che solo dopo un inevitabile processo di banalizzazione sono strumentalizzate e trasformate dai mass media in argomenti accattivanti: è il caso del “trash” o del “fetish”.

Per un fanzinaro porsi in una situazione di controcultura verso i sistemi di informazione più ufficiali non è soltanto un atteggiamento, ma un modo di essere e comunicare, alla cui base sta un’esigenza più vasta che sfocia nell’autoproduzione di media. D’altronde autoprodurre non significa esclusivamente realizzare un prodotto a proprie spese, evitando ideologicamente l’appoggio di un’etichetta discografica o di una casa editrice, ma innescare un meccanismo che porta alla libera espressione. Così le fanzine, attraverso una complicatissima rete di distribuzione internazionale, sia postale, sia di vendita – i banchetti dei centri sociali o dei concerti – possono circolare e raggiungere chiunque entri in contatto con questo sistema, attivando meccanismi di scambio di materiali, anche mediante una serie di contatti personali, dove il produttore diventa distributore.

Nell’ambito artistico italiano le ’zines prodotte non sono poi molte e gran parte non brillano certo per originalità. Per le ’zines d’arte come per altri fenomeni, quando si tratta di movimenti sotterranei o underground, molte influenze arrivano da quello che è l’ambito della musica e dal circuito indipendente delle autoproduzioni, ma contrariamente alle loro ispiratrici le artzine

italiane mancano di incisività e soprattutto non possono contare su un vero circuito di informazione indipendente attivo all’interno dell’ambiente artistico.

Di quelle esistenti le più note sono Museo Teo, Vegetali Ignoti (anche se si definisce un “quaderno d’arte”), Cattelanews del delirante Cascone, Interzone (che esce però quasi esclusivamente durante le mostre o gli interventi dell’omonimo gruppo), la nostra ObScene che autoproduciamo con Bartolomeo Migliore, DisordinAzioni che è un bollettino romano di informazione su azioni urbane, e da questa esperienza Rotor, sempre di Roma. Ed ancora Eventi Metropolitani di Marco Samoré, Stop Art di Giancarlo Norese, Lavage di Marco Lavagetto, Brigata Es dell’omonimo gruppo napoletano, Viatico (sempre di Napoli), Kontainer dello Strange Alternative Time ecc. Questo, purtroppo, non è che un elenco sommario; esistono infatti un’infinità di piccole pubblicazioni spesso faticosamente autoprodotte, ma per le artzine il confine tra fanzine vera e propria e piccola pubblicazione non è sempre così netto e molte di queste produzioni e di quelle che avremmo potuto citare sono “borderline”, che raramente si autodefiniscono ’zine.

Appunti per una storia delle fanzine, dei bollettini e delle pubblicazioni d’arte aperiodiche, marginali, alternative (ma anche di alcune ricche e periodiche).

Notes for a history of fanzines, of bulletins and of non-periodical, marginal, alternative art publications (but also of some rich and periodical ones) by Giovanni Bai AllBat’Art! (F), Alphacentauri (I), AN (UK), Art Mobil (F), Area (CH), Ario (I), Boiling (UK), Camion (I), Cattelanews (I), Campoblu (I), Centoerbe (I), Container (I), Correnti di marea (I), Ddo (F), DeAppel (NL), Decoder (I), DisordinAzioni (I), E il topo (I), El congelador (E), EntarteteKunst (I), Eventi Metropolitani (I), Everything (I), FA (I), Fikafutura (I), Form+Zweck (D), Ghettoblaster (I), HAG@ news (I), Harta (I), Il fumo del camino (I), Il ruolo (I), Imago (CH), Leonarda (I), Letteratura Underground (I), Lo stato delle cozze (I), L’umanosistemafognario (I), Lusitania (USA/P), Macrobiotic of Thailand (TH), Marca Tre (I), Mediagramm (D), Micro (E), Monnalisa (I), Museo Teo art fanzine (I), Mutabor (D), Muzeologija (HR), Muzeum Dnes (CZ), Name Diffusion news (I), Neural (I), NonOltre (I), O d’art (E), Objes (UK/I), ObScene (I), Offerta Speciale (I), Omnibus (I), Opening (I), Passages (CH), Perché (I), Permanent Food (I), Pneuma (CH), Pogo (I), Pointironie (F), Pompeiorama (I), Quarterly (H), Sdefinizioni (I), Shift! (D), Sonda la Notte (I), Sottotraccia (I), Stop Art (I), Studio Marconi (I), Solchi (I), Tecnicamista (I), Tiracorrendo (I), Tool (I), Tox.1 (F), TrashWare (I), Vegetali Ignoti (I), Viatico (I), Ventre (I), Wurkmos (I), ZeroDue (I), Zivel (CZ), Zone (USA).

Durante l’incontro è stato presentato il nuovo numero di ObScene ’zine: un peso da sub, ovvero un sacchetto di plastica contenente 1 kg di piombo, sul quale sono state serigrafate le parole che artisti e critici ci hanno donato.

During the meeting we have introduced the new issue of ObScene ’zine: one diving weight, or a plastic bag containing one kg of lead on which are silk-screened the words that artists and critics have donated us.

ObScene 9 The weight of words. We home that this weight that divers use to go down deep will bring us inside words, the ones which really represent us, the ones which don’t disperse like a breath in the air. Thanks to all donors of words: Bartolomeo Migliore, Smog, Cesare Viel, Francesco Bonami, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Botto&Bruno, Fausto Bertasa, Chiara Guidi, Cesare Pietroiusti, Anteo Radovan, Miltos Manetas, Giovanni Bai, Luigi Cipparrone, Antonella

Mazzoni, Lorenza Lucchi Basili, Pier Luigi Sacco, Eugenio Giliberti, Tommso Tozzi, Giovanna Trento, Laura Palmieri, Roberta Iachini, Silvio Wolf, Sara Rossi, Armin Linke, Patrizia Brusarosco, Pino Modica, Lino Baldini, Gabi Scardi, Davide Bertocchi, Brigata ES, Gea Casolaro, Giancarlo Norese, Emilio Fantin, Luigi Negro, Paola Gaggiotti, Federico Fazzi, Emanuela De Cecco, Paola Magni, Anna Stuart Tovini, Pier Paolo Coro, Rita Canarezza, Mario Milizia, Alessandra Pioselli, Emanuele Vecchia, Smùt Eusàpia Madgett, Flavio Magani, Luca Scarabelli, Carlo Buzzi, Dario Molinari, Riccardo Paracchini, a.titolo, Mala. Arti Visive, Mario Gorni e Zefferina Castoldi, Augusto Pieroni, Enrico Corte, Andrea Nurcis, Paola Di Bello, Dario Carmentano, Claudia Colasanti, Viviana Gravano, Raffaella Arpiani, Federico Pagliarini, Stefano Cagol, Paolo Bergmann, Federico Tanzi Mira, Roberto Stephenson, Monica Mazzoleni, Loft, Gino Gianuizzi, Sandrine Nicoletta, Alberta Pellacani, Marco Samoré, Silvia Cini, Fabrizio Basso.

Fabrizio Basso Silvia Cini Bartolomeo Migliore 1kg

We have transcribed the words in the same order in which we have received them. The first word corresponds to the first name and so on. disappear, HELD, identità, Tatia, ValeriOOOOO, suburbia, xce, kissono, dubitare, qui, active, innocenza, smarrimento, soli, epifania, attraverso, ragno, Tommaso, energia, domenica, umidità, la voce, azione, az, mamma, luce, determinato, leggerezza, commusication, simulazione, vedere/guardare, rararirro, ciao, coagulazione, rexona, volo, soglia, impazientissimamenteee, lontano, respiro, domoarigatò, agata, lontano, HaRdC0r3, arsel icking, evil, passisparsi, multietnico, devil, senso, a.titolo, “…”, noio, tensione, ggggggg, dormire, clandestina, mansuetudine, onestà, sdefinizione, monomania, adolescenza, cagol, verità, Tan Tien, paqura, ossimoro, PRESENTE, errare, noctiluca, oltre, veloci, libertà, The End.

This ’zine was self produced and shown at the 48th Biennale of Venice, project Oreste, Italian Pavilion.

On Nov. 6th the Oreste room in the Italian Pavilion of the Biennale underwent a transformation into a giant counter, just like an infoshop, where the audience could leaf through almost the totality of Italian and foreign art fanzines, within a vast collection of ’zines of the 80’s and 90’s, and also ask for information and trade in addresses and self-produced materials.

Just to clarify what a ’zine is and what are the final motivations, we held an encounter where, through the interventions of Giovanni Bai (Museo Teo), Gianluca Umiliacchi (ex Archives of Self-produced Fanzines), Gianni Bandini (Wide Spread), Gianni Donaudi (mail artist) and Marco Carbone (fanzine freak), and there we were able to reconstruct and show the history of the self-produced publications, while trying to focus on the present situation.

FAN + MAGAZINE = FANZINE Fanzine derives from FAN (as of a musical group) + MAGAZINE, and actually means fan magazine. From this first aspect the fanzine, or ’zine, has evolved until it has become a true

home-made tool of information. We have then seen the birth of countless self-produced publications, each focused of the subjects which are the closest interest of the publisher. Personal information then, or information coming from small groups, where we find the type of news which are of no interest to the greatest part of the big media users, or which are intentionally filtered away from the mass media, as in the political ’zines.

A ’zine is the voice of underground movements, or of single experimentators who, trading information and ideas, often produce some cross-contamination and create new trends which, only after an unavoidable period of banalization, are exploited and transformed by the mass media into captivating tools, as in the case of trash or fetish.

A fanzine freak will place himself in a counter-culture situation against the more official systems of information: this is not only a pose, but a way to be and communicate, born of a greater need and leading to self-production of media.

To self-produce, however, does not exclusively mean the realization of a product with own funds and means, ideologically avoiding the help of a publisher or a recording label, but also the triggering of a reaction leading to free expression.

In this way the fanzines, through a very complex network of international distribution, via mail or sale – at the banquets or at concerts – can circulate and reach anywhere whoever comes in touch with this system, creating a chain reaction of exchange of material, also with personal contacts where the producer becomes also the distributor.

In the Italian artistic environment not so many ’zines are produced, and most of them don’t stand out for their originality. In the field of art ’zines, an in other fields when we deal with underground phenomena, most influences derive from the music environment and from the independent circuit of self-production, but, contrary to their inspirers, the Italian art ’zines lack in sharpness and moreover they cannot count on a true independent information circuit within the artistic environment.

Among the existing ones, the best known are Museo Teo, Vegetali Ignoti (Unknown Vegetables) – even if it defines itself a “cahier des arts” – Cattelanews of the delirious Cascone, Interzone (which however comes out only during the exhibitions of its namesake group), our ObScene which we self-produce with Bartolomeo Migliore, DisordinAzioni, which is a roman bulletin of information on urban actions, and from this experience Rotor, also from Rome. And again we have Eventi Metropolitani by Marco Samoré, Stop Art by Giancarlo Norese, Lavage by Marco Lavagetto, Brigata Es by the neapolitan group by the same name, Viatico, also from Naples, Kontainer by the Strange Alternative Time, etc.

Regrettably this is only a brief list, there are in fact uncountable examples of little press, often laboriously produced, but for the art ’zines the border between fanzines and little press is not always so well defined, and many of these productions and of those which we could have mentioned are borderline, and each declares its own identity which seldom is ’zine.

o n d e _ s o n o r e . 1 _ . j p g

v e d u t a _ d a l l a _ m i a _ p o r t a . j p g .

e.w.e. e.w.e. - exhibition without exhibition is an exhibition project which takes up different practices of mediation, but does not offer a proper show. There are postcards, posters, previews, a publication and a lecture tour. All practices which normally surround exhibitions are at the center of attention as mediation.

Six artists have been invited to develop works directly for e.w.e.: Nathan Coley (Glasgow), Plamen Dejanov and Swetlana Heger (Vienna), Jens Haaning (Copenhagen), Sandra Hastenteufel (Stuttgart) and Olaf Nicolai (Berlin).

e.w.e. - exhibition without exhibition versteht sich als ein Ausstellungsprojekt, das verschiedene Vermittlungspraktiken aufgreift, aber keine eigentliche Show bietet. Es gibt Postkarten, Poster, Previews, eine Publikation und eine Vortragstournee. Alle Praktiken, die normalerweise eine Ausstellung umgeben, stehen als Vermittlung im Mittelpunkt.

Sechs K端nstlerInnen sind eingeladen worden, Arbeiten direkt f端r e.w.e. zu entwickeln: Nathan Coley (Glasgow), Jens Haaning (Kopenhagen), Sandra Hastenteufel (Stuttgart), Plamen Dejanov und Swetlana Heger (Wien) und Olaf Nicolai (Berlin).

e.w.e.

a presentation by Tilo Schulz

Kunsthaus Dresden, Dresden, Germany Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg

Oreste at the Venice Biennale IASPIS, Stockholm, Sweden Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen, Denmark Art Academy, Malmรถ, Sweden Casco, Utrecht, Netherlands Salon 3, London, England Norwich School of Art and Design, Norwich, England Proto Academy, Edinburgh, Scotland privat, Glasgow, Scotland Scuc Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia ...

thanks to Oreste

DIRECTORY A.N.Y.P. is a magazine founded in 1989 by Minimal Club, Munich/Berlin. <b_books@txt.de> a.titolo is an independent research group founded in Turin in 1997. Its members are art critics and curators Giorgina Bertolino, Francesca Comisso, Nicoletta Leonardi, Lisa Parola, Luisa Perlo, and Bianca Polledro. <a.titolo@iol.it> AAA Edizioni is an independent Italian publishing house founded in 1996 by Vittore Baroni and Piermario Ciani, dealing mostly with themes originating from underground currents of contemporary art, concerning new mutations in the media and the history of international countercultures. Via Latisana 6, I-33032 Bertiolo UD. Serhan Ada is the Program Coordinator for the Managemant of Performing Arts at the Bilgi University of Social Sciences, Istanbul, Turkey. <sada@bilgi.edu.tr> Eduardo Alamaro is an architect, designer, and historian of ceramics based in Naples, Italy.

Francesca Alessandrini is a founding member of Generazione Media in Milan. She works in the editorial staff of Cross art magazine and collaborates with Oreste. <gemedia@planet.it> Alberto Alessi is an architect and founder of “albo architectural strategies”, for projecting and building architecture. He is a teacher for architecture at the IED in Rome and at the ETHZ in Zurich, and a curator of several architectural exhibitions in Rome and USA; co-editor of the architectural magazine Il Progetto. Lives in Rome and Zurich. <alessi@arch.ethz.ch> Francesco Alò is a movie critic. He wrote a book about Monty Python’s work. www.lafinestrasulcortile.com <f_alo_@hotmail.com> Martine Anderfuhren is an artist, working theme and process-oriented. She participated to the MoneyNations project. She’s currently working as a project manager for the Swiss national exhibition, Expo.02. <manderfu@worldcom.ch> Gordana Andjelic-Galic is an artist based in Sarajevo. She is a member of ULUBiH (Federal Association of Fine Artists of Bosnia and Herzegovina) and BBK (Federal Organization of Professional Artists of Germany).

Pepe Andreatta is a Venetian postman.

Giovanni Andreotta is a scenographer, photographer and independent filmmaker; he has been invited to the 54th Venice Film Festival.

Lucio Annunziata is a painter and scenographer for video-art works. He has contributed to the organization of Orestecinema.

Jonathan Applefield lives in New York and he is involved in cooking/baking projects. <jonathan-applefield@hotmail.com> Archivio 3Vtre is a center of documentation on experimental poetry that has been producing about twenty records, CDs and CD-ROMs. www.iii.it/3ViTre <3Vitre@iii.it> Stefano Arienti is an artist based in Milan. <zizol@tiscalinet.it> Ulla Arnell is a curator and a project manager based in Stockholm. She is currently involved in an art project for children and young people from all over Sweden, working together with artists and art educators in all kinds of different venues. www.echo.riksutstallningar.se Arte Continua is an art space and an organization for outdoor installations in the Tuscany region. <artecontinua@tin.it> ARTEria is a non-profit multimedia organization based in Matera. The meeting “Mr. Picasso, I suppose” (September 1999) took place there. <arteeria@tin.it> artway of thinking is an inter-cultural organization that gets together different professional and cultural individuals. Its multiple identity is intended to realize new “cultural achievements”, through international collaborative forms and co-participations. www.undo.net/artway <artway@tin.it>

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A.S.I.A. (Associazione Spazio Interiore e Ambiente) was founded in 1994. It carries out a research into inner balance with the aim of achieving a more real and truthful outlook on the world and a more respectful relationship with environment. www.assasia.net <assasia@iperbole.bologna.it> The Association of Autonomous Astronauts, officially launched in England in 1995, is constituted today by over 40 groups active all over Europe. Its main goal is to support the preparation of independent and self-financed space missions. Italian sections at <balli333@hotmail.com> Associazione Cervello a Sonagli was formed in Rome in 1991 with the aim of promoting artistic researches, concerts and forms of expression free from any rigid disciplinary barrier.

The role of the artist/musician is combined with that of organizer/promoter of events, that can include music and cinema. <a.sordi@kataweb.it> <citrullo2000@yahoo.it> Associazione Circ.a is a self-managed structure for the coordination among various associations that has been promoting concerts, meetings and musical stages, encouraging any form of direct, critical, and non conventional contact between the audience and the artists. www.ecn.org/circ.a <maongaro@bora.iuav.it> Associazione Culturale Dopotutto c/o Giuliano Tremea, via Tortesen 22, I-32032 Feltre BL. The Associazione Culturale Supernova has been active in Venice since 1992. During these years it has been organizing and promoting various cultural events, concerning particularly contemporary international poetry. <gi.pozzi@tin.it> Associazione Terminale Marinella is a group of artists who hold the project of transforming a former complex of social housing unit in Naples neighborhood of almost 36,000 square feet into a center for contemporary art. <pompeiorama@tin.it> Atelier G9 is a studio and exhibition space based in Oslo, Norway. www.atelier-g9.net <g9@anart.no> Attitudes is a non-profit association of curators based in Geneva, Switzerland. Contacts: Jean-Paul Felley and Olivier Kaeser. <attitudes@worldcom.ch> Caroline Bachmann is a Swiss artist living in Rome, involved in Oreste project since 1997. <jonas@libero.it> Giovanni Bai is an artist and organizer of exhibitions and art events living in Milan. Together with Teo Telloli he has been publishing, since 1991, “Museo Teo art fanzine.” <museoteo@virgilio.it> Jasa Ban is born in Croatia, lives in Reggio Emilia, Italy.

Gianni Bandini is a fanzine maker and distributor. He publishes “Wide Spread hard-core ’zine”, a Punk hard-core fanzine with information, photos and reviews of concerts. <fae006K1@ra.nettuno.it> Cristina Bari is an artist, costume designer and visual arts consultant for Teatro Kismet Opera, living in Bari, Italy.

Marion Baruch is a network artist based in Gallarate and Paris. She works in the Name Diffusion group. www.moneynations.ch/cartographes <mbaruch@cybercable.fr> BASE / Progetti per l’Arte is an exhibition space run by a group of artists in Florence. <BASE18r@hotmail.com> Fabrizio Basso is an artist based in Italy, who has developed his art research in the field of the underground. <bassocini@rainbownet.it> Carlos Basualdo is a poet, art critic and curator based in New York. Regular contributor to Artforum, he is a member of the curatorial team for the next Documenta in Kassel (11th edition, 2002).

Jochen Becker works as a writer (die tageszeitung, Kunstforum, springerin) and a cultural producer (Baustop.randstadt, NGBK) in Berlin. He is founding member of BueroBert, and coeditor of “Copyshop – Kunstpraxis & Politische Oeffentlichkeit.” <plaann@gmx.net> Anna Bedon is a historian of Architecture living in Venice.

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Guido Belli has been a librarian for ten years, and now he’s working as a consultant for projects regarding the identification of cultural resources. He is the editorial coordinator of the magazine Notes, cultural events for sponsoring, and writes the column on undo.net/managers.

He teaches at the Department of Industrial Design at the Politecnico University in Milan.

Elena Berriolo is an artist based in New York. <elenaraphael@compuserve.com> Giorgina Bertolino is a contemporary art historian and critic based in Turin. She directs the Luigi Franco Arte Contemporanea Gallery, and works at the Felice Casorati’s archive. <luigifranco.ac@tin.it> Big Sur is a laboratory of communication that produces independent cinema, cultural events, visual and musical installations, publishing, graphics and photography. Letizia Caudullo, Gianluca Costamagna and Paolo Pisanelli, from the cinema department, took part in the Orestecinema project. <bigsur@libero.it> Marco Biraghi is Assistant Professor in History of Architecture at the Politecnico University in Milan. <marco.biraghi@polimi.it> Julien Blaine is a poet and editor. www.averse.com/v.a.c Sanja Bokan is a contemporary dance teacher and choreographer. She is co-founder of the “Peter Pan” dance studio for children and a regular contributor to the daily newspaper of Montenegro “Pobjeda”, for the dance section. <sanja_teatar@yahoo.com> Pino Boresta is an artist living in Rome. <salepepe_99@yahoo.it> <brainmaster@tiscalinet.it> Jens Brand (MeX) is a sound artist, Germany. MeX–Musik Experiments was founded in 1992 to support experimental and intermedia music, and artworks. The foundation projects are mainly collaborations with other foundations. Since 1993 it has presented the work of over 300 artists from different parts of the world. <nobrand@mex.de> Petric’ Branislav is a Yugoslavian artist based in Italy. <parpet@aconet.it> Paolo Bresciani is a video and digital artist living in Italy. <paolobresciani@tiscalinet.it> Erich Breuer is a filmmaker and artist, born in Chile, living in Rome. <ebreuer@hotmail.com> Brigata ES is a group of artists based in Naples, founded in 1992. They are dealing with the “spectacular protagonism” of the artist, who opposes resistance, through a critical irony, to the extinction of his/her own role. space.tin.it/arte/aldoel <brigates@tin.it> Franco Brocani is a filmmaker and movie director; he has been active since 1970, trying to build bridges between the U.S. “underground” and the European “Cinema d’essai”. He lives in Rome.

Andreas Broeckmann is a project manager at V2_Organization Rotterdam, media theorist and European networker commuting from Berlin. <abroeck@v2.nl> Nicole Brossard is a poet (special thanks to the University of California for supporting her participation to the Oreste Project). <nic.brossard@videotron.ca> Hannes Brunner studied Photography, Sculpture, Theater and Architecture. Since 1986 he has been making installations with model sculptures in various media.

Andreana Bruno lives in Genoa. <lbarberi@smartino.ge.it> C.A.M., Centro Associativo Multimediale, is comprised of six cultural associations operating in the city of Matera. It operates as an organ for cultural politics in dealing with local authorities. Piazza degli Olmi 23/8, I-75100 Matera.

The C.A.M. Art Co. is run by Clare Ann Matz. www.myfreeoffice.com/thecamartco <thecamartco@myfreeoffice.com> c/o care of is an exhibition space and documentation center run since 1987 by Zefferina Castoldi and Mario Gorni. It also provides different services for visual arts professionals such as a library, archives, information on grants and workshops, digital video editing and post-production. Via Zucchi 39/G, I-20095 Cusano Milanino MI. www.undo.net/careof <careof@tin.it>

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Camera Oscura is an exhibition space devoted to art, craft, and agriculture. It was founded a few years before the turn of the century by Cornelia Lauf. It is located in a small village in the province of Siena. Piazza Matteotti, 10, I-53040 San Casciano dei Bagni SI. Rita Canarezza is an artist and organizer based in San Marino Republic. <ritacanarezza@hotmail.com> Franco Caputo organized the Oreste Due artists’ residency in 1999 in Montescaglioso near Matera, and he is in charge of Cooperattiva. <francescocaputo@katamail.com> Marco Carbone is a fanzine maker and distributor living in Italy. He self-produces limited editions of tiny, astonishing fanzines under the name “Ediziuin du Marcu e dell’Anchizze.”

Dario Carmentano is a painter and sculptor. He is a founding member of both the cultural association ARTEria and the Coordinamento FARO in Matera. <arteeria@tin.it> Daniela Cascella operates in the connections between visual arts and extreme sounds. <danielacascella@angelfire.com> Roberto Cascone is an artist living in Milan. <catelan@tiscalinet.it> Gea Casolaro is an artist based in Rome. <geacasolaro@yahoo.it> Franco Cassano teaches Sociology of Knowledge at the University of Bari. He contributes to various journals and has served as the director of Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia and the Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerche sulla Pace. <peppix@teseo.it> Claudia Cassatella is an architect. <claudia.cassatella@tidy-soft.com> Antonella Catelli lives in Lanto d’Intelvi near Como, Italy. She is an artist practicing the Grindberg Method.

Annalisa Cattani is an artist based in Imola, Italy. <frivo@tin.it> David Caviola is a poet based in Venice.

Massimo Chieli is an executive manager of Alitalia Express.

Carolyn Christov Bakargiev is senior curator at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, and co-curator (with Laurence Bossé and Hans Ulrich Obrist) for “La Ville, le Jardin, la Mémoire”, Villa Medicis, Rome. <mail@ps1.org> Chroma is a group of artists which carries out projects into art and the environment. They are currently working at a residency program for artists in Celico, Calabria, and at “Via! - Ferrovie Silane”, one of the upcoming Oreste’s Projects. <chroma@tiscalinet.it> Mara Cini works with writing and art. She participated as a partner of Porto Dei Santi. <maracini@hotmail.com> Silvia Cini is an Italian artist. She has taken part in the realization of “Disordinazioni, a bulletin of urban actions”, and co-operates with the publishing of the fanzine “ObScene.”

Luigi Cipparrone is a photographer living in Italy. <lcippar@tin.it> Città Svelata is a group of architects and professionals working in cultural field based in Turin. Since 1994 it has occupied disused or marginal urban spaces organizing public events in them, with the aim of analyzing processes of urban transformation and stimulating ideas on their destiny.

Civitella Ranieri Foundation (New York) run by Cecilia Galiena and Gordon Knox, is an international, multi-disciplinary residency program for artists in a castle in Umbria, Italy.

Writers, visual art directors, and cultural thinkers from all over the world are invited to spend from 5 to 8 weeks at the foundation to exchange ideas and to work on their own projects. www.civitella.org <gordon@civitella.org> Cliostraat is a group of architects based in Turin. It carries out projects linking architecture, art, cinema, cartoons and the collective imagination. www.cliostraat.com <cliostraat@altavista.net> Nathan Coley is an artist based in Dundee, Scotland. <nathancoley67@hotmail.com>

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Zoe Collier lives in Mill Valley, USA. She is a yoga teacher for children and prenatal, and permaculture teacher for children and childbirth assistant, studied in Italy.

Elena Cologni is a funded researcher at The London institute, Central Saint Martins College of Art an Design. <e.cologni1@csm.linst.ac.uk> <ecologn@tin.it> Stefano Colonna runs the press office BTA – Bollettino telematico dell’Arte. <www@bta.it> Francesca Comisso is a contemporary art historian and critic based in Turin. She contributes to the art magazines “Segno” and “Il Giornale dell’Arte”. <franzcomisso@tiscalinet.it> Coordinamento Provinciale per la Pace was formed in Belluno, Italy, during the Kosova crisis and collects in its structure several associations and people who organize meetings, lectures, demonstration parades, conferences about the war as well as the global economy profit depending on the management of the ongoing conflict. <samarcandaol@libero.it> Pier Paolo Coro is an artist and organizer based in San Marino Republic. <ppcoro@omniway.sm> Enrico Corte is an artist living in Rome trying to establish a convergence between video and cinema. <videoache@bruce-lee.com> <no-age@rdn.it> Coyote Books (James Koller) has published primarily literary books, & the irregularly published literary journal Coyote’s Journal since 1964. <jindejinak@aol.com> Mario Cresci is a designer, photographer, and Visiting Professor at the École des Arts Appliquées in Vevey-Lausanne, Switzerland. He is currently the director of the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, Italy.

Ester Curcio is a visual artist and collaborator of Schismophonia. web.tiscalinet.it/ester Gianni Curreli is a poet and an artist living in Italy. <portodeisanti@portodeisanti.org> Dean Daderko is a curator living and working in New York. He also programs the Brooklyn gallery Parlour Projects, which can be reached at the same address. <reedstudio@thing.net> Antonio D’Alfonso is a poet, publisher, and founder of Guernica Editions, living in Montréal, Canada.

Anna Daneri is involved in contemporary art since 1991. She is currently working for the Corso Superiore di Arte Visiva of the Antonio Ratti Foundation. Lungo Lario Trento 9, I-22100 Como. www.undo.net/Ratti_VisualArts Caterina Davinio is a publisher, cultural events organizer, and founder of “Karenina.it, netzine sperimentale.” space.tin.it/arte/cprezi/ <davinio@tin.it> Anna D’Elia is a professor at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bari, Italy; she is an art critic and founding member of Associazione Apotema. <annadelia@libero.it> De Fabriek is an art group based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. www.dse.nl/fabriek <fabriek@iae.nl> Rita Degli Esposti is a poet, an actor and a performer living in Venice. <gi.pozzi@tin.it> Dein Klub was founded in July 1995 in the former storeroom of the non-commercial artspace Oberwelt e.V. It is as well a meeting place as a room for events and hosts people from the artscene and from different other scenes (as everybody is invited to join). <jenshermann@mac.com> Plamen Dejanov & Swetlana Heger are artists based in Vienna, Austria. <deianov-heger@magnet.at> Christian W. Denker is a collaborator of Synésthesie. <cwdenker@synesthesie.com> Raffaello De Ruggieri is currently president of the Fondazione Zetema (Centre for the valorization and management of historical-environmental resources). He was one of the founders of the cultural group La Scaletta in Matera. <zetem@hsh.it> Anna Detheridge is a cultural journalist and art theorist, at present editor of the arts and features pages of the Italian financial daily “Il Sole 24 Ore”. She has curated exhibitions on interdisciplinary subjects and published books and articles on the contemporary visual arts. <detheridge.anna@ilsole24ore.it>

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Paola Di Bello is a Italian photographer and video maker interested in urban, marginal, and “invisible” phenomena. <ladib@tiscalinet.it> <paoladibello@yahoo.com> Giovanna Di Costa is an artist based in Gallarate, Italy.

Digitalismus is a group based on four-say-music composers (Rainer Boesch, Emile Ellberger, Pierre Thoma, and Istvàn Zelenka), acting in variable geometry. The musician Liliane Boesch and the artist Lucas Berchtold collaborated at the Oreste project. <thomap@bluewin.ch> Fabrizio Di Marzio is Magistrate at Crotone Court, Civil Law researcher and teaching at Teramo University, Italy.

Gianni Donaudi is a mail artist publishing since 1997 the fanzine “Emozioni”. He lives in Turin.

Beppe Drago is a photographer living in Italy.

John Duncan is an American multiple-media artist who deals with performance, music, and installations. www.xs4all.nl/-jduncan <jduncan@pop.xs4all.nl> Edizioni l’Obliquo was set up in 1986 in Brescia, on Giorgio Bertelli’s and Aurora Rivadossi’s initiative. They publish tales by classical and contemporary authors, theater texts, poetry.

Volker Eichelmann is an artist based in London; founder (with R. Rust) of the “No Problem Agency.” www.doyou.at <noprob@dircon.co.uk> En Plein Officina is a series of poetry books printed by hand on drawing paper, each containing an image by a visual artist. This project, which Meri Gorni maintains, is indivisible from her artistic practice, was begun in 1997 and now numbers more than 60 titles. <merigorni@virgilio.it> EntarteteKunst www.0100101110101101.org FA+ is an art group formed in Stockholm, Sweden by Ingrid Falk and Gustavo Aguerre. www.fa-art.pp.se <fa-art@ettnet.se> Jonathan Faiers is an artist and lecturer at Goldsmiths College, London. <dogs@arryboy.fsnet.co.uk> Salvatore Falci has been one of the first promoters of Oreste. He teaches at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, Italy. <salvafalci@tin.it> Emilio Fantin is a visual artist working on dematerialization of art as his individual research and on the concept of organism in collective experiences of which Oreste is a meaningful example. <bom1790@iperbole.bologna.it> Barbara Fässler is an artist living in Milan working with installations and photography. As a curator, she collaborated in the artists’ projects ProjektRaum, Zurich, and No Admittance, Milan. <barbara.faessler@iol.it> Franco Fiorillo is an artist living in L’Aquila, Italy. <dabxfi@tin.it> Fabrizio Fiorini is an Italian architect and teacher at the University of Perugia. <cianfi@unipg.it> foreign investment is an international co-operative of gamblers, housewives and accountants involved with art, technique and politics based in London. www.foreign-investment.com <j.wood@gold.ac.uk> Forte Prenestino has been active for more than twenty years, as one of the best organized sites for alternative aggregation in Italy. Counter-information, concerts of independent musicians, underground film festivals, meetings as well as lectures about the most critical and controversial contemporary issues, find their place there. www.ecn.org/forte <forte@ecn.org> Regina Frank works internationally as an artist with performance and interactive multimedia installations. www.regina-frank.de <hermes@regina-frank.de>

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Matteo Fraterno is an artist who lives in Naples and in Rome. <ubub@libero.it> Freeland / zone de gratuité is an art project initiated by French artists and organizers Léonore Bonaccini, Andreas Fohr and Xavier Fourt. <bonafofou@post.club-internet.fr> Céline Galliot is an artist based in France.

The Gate is a project funded by the City of Turin, the European Community, and the Italian Ministry of Public Works with the aim of improving life and work’s conditions in the area of Porta Palazzo through economic, architectural, and environmental interventions as well as cultural and social initiative. <gate@comune.torino.it> Beppe Gaudino is an independent filmmaker, scenographer and costume-designer. <gaundrifilm@tin.it> John Gian is a poet and performer based in Venice. <gi.pozzi@tin.it> Eugenio Giliberti is an artist based in Naples. He is president of Pompeiorama association. <e.giliberti@tin.it> Valentina Giua and Emiliano Parenti <tecnomar@faronet.it> Francesco Giusti is a poet and artist based in Venice.

Glassbox is an artist-run exhibition space in Paris. www.icono.org/glassbox <glassbox@hotmail.com> Coco Gordon is a poet, artist and performer based in New York. She is originator of TIKYSK. <cocogord@mindspring.com> Grafio is a creative writing workshop founded in 1991 in Prato, Italy. It is carrying out an investigation on the relationship between writing and the representation of the Western world. <giacasc@tin.it> Silvia Gramigna is an art historian and coordinator of the Educational Department of “Musei Statali di Venezia.” <dian@libero.it> Alfredo Granata is an artist initiator of “Porto di Mare”, a project of a permanent residency for artists in the Calabria region of Italy, where he lives. <agranata@antares.it> Viviana Gravano is an art critic and curator based in Rome. <vgravan@tin.it> Marija Grazio is a Croatian visual artist and musician living in Dubrovnik. <art-lazareti@du.tel.hr> Grupo Provisional is an artists collective based in Venezuela, including Juan Carlos Rodríguez, David Palacios, Juan José Olavarría, Domingo De Lucía <artquimi@telcel.net.ve>, and Félix Suazo <fsuazo@cantv.net> Gruppo 78 is an organization for the contemporary arts founded 1978 in Trieste, Italy, run by Maria Campitelli. It has produced over 200 exhibitions collaborating with private and public Institutions. wwwmiela.it/gruppo78.html <m.campitelli@iol.it> Gruppo A12 is a group of architects based in Genoa and Milan. It carries out operations which are usually disruptive with the use of dissonant element within a codified context which can be the urban landscape or exhibition spaces. The intention is to use architecture as a critical activity able to change our way of seeing and using things. <gruppoa12@iol.it> Gruppo Mille is an art group from the Veneto region. Its activity is based on establishing contacts with common people. The stories that, through the dialogues, are collected, become the raw material for its artworks and are recorded in Mille’s archive. <robiachi@tin.it> Gianluigi Guido is Marketing Ph.D. at Cambridge University, MBA at San Diego and Chicago University, Marketing Analysis associate professor at Università di Padova.

Jans Haaning is an artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. <jenshaaning@hotmail.com> Jusuf Hadzifejzovic is an artist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Sandra Hastenteufel is an artist based in Stuttgart, Germany.

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Riccardo Held is a poet, translator, and expert in German and French literature living in Venice. He has got the Premio Pasolini award (1985), and the Premio Montale (1995).

Matthew Higgs is an artist based in London and the founder of “Imprint 93,” a collection of artists’ publications.

Per Hüttner is an artist based in Stockholm. He is the founder of FESARS, a network among independent art organizations, and director of the non-profit association of artists and curators Konstakuten. <pah@swipnet.se> Arben Iljazi is an Albanian student of art based in Milan and Paris.

Francesco Impellizzeri is an artist and performer living in Rome. <impiero@libero.it> The International Artists’ Museum is a museum without walls. It is a worldwide channel of communication linking artists and intellectuals from a variety of domains. Its President is Emmett Williams, American poet and artist and founding member of Fluxus International.

Stowarzyszenie Miedzynarodowe Muzeum Artystow, Piotrkowska 220/26, 90-369 Lodz, Poland. <rwasko@muzart.infocentrum.com> Jeroen Jongeleen is a visual artist based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He is also involved in the initiative Het Wilde Weten in Rotterdam, which provides a studio space for 15 local artists and a gueststudio and residency for international visual artists, as well as an exhibition space. <jer2000@aki.nl> Marcos Jorge is video artist from Brazil whose interest is focused on the hypnotic rhythm created by the relation between image and music.

Goran Jovanovic is an artist based in Belgrade, Yugoslavia who started to work with computers in the early 80’s, and is a teacher in prepress programs and system engineering. k-bulletin is the irregular publication of Labor k3000 Zurich, and a platform for alternative movements, self-organization, new forms of cultural and political practices and theory. Every issue reports about specific topics and tries to initiate debates around critical cultural practices. k-bulletin includes also critical views on everyday life experiences, music, fashion and media, as well as theoretical discourses. www.k3000.ch/bulletin <spillmann@access.ch> <marionvonosten@gmx.ch> Friederike Kaiser is a curator for the Museum of Post, Nuremberg, Germany.

Alfred Kedhi is an Albanian student of art based in Milan.

Agnes Kohlmeyer is an art critic and curator. She is assistant of Harald Szeemann for the 48th and 49th Venice Biennale.

Konstakuten is an artist-run space and an organization for an international networking of artist-run, independent, and alternative artistic initiatives. It promoted and organized FESARS, the “First European Seminar for Artist Run Spaces”, that took place in Stockholm May 21st23rd 1999, and brought together representatives from 31 artist-run spaces/initiatives from all over Europe. www.konstakuten.com <info@konstakuten.com> Markus Kreiss is an artist based in France. In 1998 he has created, together with Olivier Reneau, the Stream TV project. <mpkreiss@aol.com> Charles Kriel is an artist and a researcher at Central Saint Martins in London. He has exhibited in Europe and USA, where he comes from. <c.kriel1@csm.linst.uk> KünstlerHaus Bremen is an artist run house founded in 1992 organizing artist projects, exhibitions, conferences. www.kuenstlerhausbremen.de <kuenstlerhb@vossnet.de> Stephan Kurr is an artist based in Berlin.

Louise Landes Levi is a poet, performer, and musician.

Amy Larkin is a producer/entrepreneur who has worked in both large and small institutions in New York, Seattle, and Europe. She is struggling to find the ways for artistic activity to reclaim some influence over our culture and media. <arlark@ibm.net> Kristina Leko is an artist living in Zagreb, Croatia. <kristina.Leko@alu.hr>

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Lemming Associazione Culturale has been organizing three editions of the festival PX3 in Pavia, Italy, and several poetry readings and exhibitions. <lemming999@email.com> Les Lemuriens has been organizing poetry, sound poetry, jazz festivals and performances in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Nicoletta Leonardi is a contemporary art historian. She teaches History of Photography and Modern and Contemporary Art History at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Turin and at the Marangoni Foundation in Florence. <nleonardi@iol.it> Linköpings Universitet, Campus Norrköping. <forum.norrkoping@info.liu.se> Local Access is an intervention and mediation agency opened in 1998. It aims to enable art ways that consider production, discussion and diffusion as strongly linked with one another.

Directed by P. Mairesse, it is run by Grore and by a group of “accessors”. 15 rue Martel, F-75010 Paris. www.acces-local.com <local@cybercable.fr> Anna Lombardo is a poet and curator of “Voci per.” <kbelo@tin.it> Fabrizio Lombardo is a poet and editor of “Verso dove.” <lev9014@iperbole.bologna.it> Gianluca Lombardo is an artist living in Catania, Italy. <iglutri@tin.it> Isolde Loock is an artist working in Context Art, and in the deconstruction of notion of work and author, based in Bremen, Germany. <isolde@loock.de> Vivien Lovell is an art critic and curator based in London. From 1987 to 1999 she has been director of Public Art Commissions Agency, a non-profit company entirely devoted to public art. Since 1999 she is director at Modus Operandi.

Geert Lovink is a media theorist and activist living in The Netherlands. His text archive can be found at thing.desk.nl/bilwet and www.nettime.org. <geert@xs4all.nl> Patrice Luchet is a poet and performer based in Bordeaux, France.

M+M (Marc Weis and Martin De Mattia) is an art group based in Munich, Germany. www.MM-art.de <MM@MM-art.de> Antonio Macrina runs the Enti Locali Department of Consiel SpA – Management Consulting and Formation <a.macrina@finsiel.it> Beral Madra is an art critic and curator based in Istanbul, Turkey. <btmadra@turk.net> Teoman Madra is a multimedia and web-artist based in Istanbul, Turkey. abone.turk.net/btmadra/homepage.html <btmadra@turk.net> Antonella Marino is an art critic based in Bari, Italy. <dodo123@libero.it> Shelley F. Marlow is a fiction writer and visual artist whose works are focused on the difficult subjects of mysticism and sexuality. She has an ongoing column about palm reading at the website for teen girls called www.gurl.com <sfmarlow@mindspring.com> Gianluca Marziani is an art critic living in Rome. <marzio@pronet.it> Ferdinando Mazzitelli is an artist living in Milan and one of the organizers of the Oreste residency programs in Montescaglioso near Matera, Italy. <fmazzitelli@tiscalinet.it> Monica Mazzoleni is an artist based in Bergamo, Italy. <momonica@tin.it> Giuliano Mesa is a poet and organizer. <mesag@tin.it> Maria Mesch is a visual artist also involved in the organization of international projects of Bloom, a cultural center in Mezzago near Milan (www.rete039.it/bloom/), within the European network of independent cultural centers TransEuropeHalles (www.teh.net). <maria97@rete039.it> Metaxù/Quatermass Plunder Space Machine makes musical and multiple-media performances recycling visual and sound sources from other authors. www.axnet.it/slap/metaxu <slap@m1.axnet> Alexander Michael is a sculptor and interior designer living in Australia. He has projected

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the transformation of a former nuclear missiles bunker in New York State into a residency for artists. <bigal@s055.aone.net.au> Angelo Minieri has served as regional councilor and president of the Council of Basilicata Region in Italy. Currently, he holds the office of mayor of the city of Matera.

Chiyoko Miura is a Japanese artist living in Italy. <chiyokomiura@hotmail.com> Ottonella Mocellin is an artist and a costume designer living in Milan. <nip@mail.dexnet.com> The MoneyNations project took place for the first time in the Shedhalle Zurich in 1998. Its starting-point was to address the complex and contradictory process of forming collective and individual identities in changing political conditions. The project concentrated on kindling an active debate between, and bringing together, creative artists and media activists from Eastern and Western Europe. www.moneynations.ch <marionvonosten@gmx.ch.> Gianni Motti is an artist living in Geneva, Switzerland. <giannimotti@hotmail.com> Museo Stickerman is an exhibition space devoted exclusively to sticker art opened in 1992 in Viareggio, Italy. Its permanent collection consists of thousands of artist’s stickers, the activities of the space include adhesive performances, panels, workshops and publications.

Luigi Negro is an artist based in Lecce. <luiginegro@undo.net> Nessuno <ncavagg@tin.it> Olaf Nicolai is an artist based in Berlin, Germany. <nico@snafu.de> Eustachio Nicoletti is a founding member of the Circolo Loe (for egalitarian and solidaristic trade with developing countries) based in Matera, Italy.

NomadenHeft is an art edition, a magazine, a mobile multiple, a homeless exhibition, an open system. The #2 editors are and Ulf Aminde, artist <nomadulf@gmx.de>, and Mark Giannori, art historian, Berlin. Publisher: Edition Sutstein, Berlin, www.edition-sutstein.de With Kathleen Gallego Zapata, actress; Marie Cathleen Haff, publisher; Susanne Gertrud Kriemann, artist <skriemann@hotmail.com>; Bruno Nagel, ghost-writer, Stuttgart; Valeska Peschke, artist, Berlin; Beate Maria Wörz, artist, Berlin.

Giancarlo Norese is an artist based in Italy who has been involved in many Oreste projects.

He is the editor of this book. go.to/norese <signore@undo.net> Andrea Nurcis is a visual artist and promoter (with E. Corte) of Orestecinema. <videoache@bruce-lee.com> <no-age@rdn.it> Hans Ulrich Obrist is the founder of the Nano Museum.

ObScene is a six-monthly publication produced by Fabrizio Basso, Silvia Cini and Bartolomeo Migliore since 1992. It is issued to coincide with exhibition and concerts and has also published the artist’s recording: “We are going in nowhere”.

Officine is a project for a multimedia cultural center in Catania, Sicily, in the area of the old sulfur factories. Its aim is to promote and produce cultural events and activities, with a particular interest on the contamination between different languages. <officine@tau.it> Albert o’ Grampied is a mathematician, a clown, a globetrotter, a homeless, and currently pass-finder in the woods of Lombardia.

Orb.it is an organization for contemporary art based in Lecce. <orb.it@undo.net> Orchestra Stolpnik is a non-profit cultural association founded in 1995 by a nucleus of artists coming from different experiences (theater, writing, architecture, dance, and film/video) around the Zagreb-born director, actor and visual artist Boris Bakal. www.dsnet.it/stagionedicaccia <stolpnik@iperbole.bologna.it> Elisa Ottaviani is at present writing her Psychology degree thesis “Groups of Artists: space, transformations and processes” for “La Sapienza” University of Rome. In particular she has observed the developments of Oreste during the preparation for the 1999 Venice Biennale.

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Laura Palmieri is an artist who promotes the “Art Steam Ahead” project. <lpalmier@datamat.it> Armando Pajalich is a poet, publisher, and an expert in post-colonial literature from English speaking countries. <pajal@unive.it> Lisa Parola is an art journalist based in Turin. She is a regular contributor to “La Stampa.” <glbox@libero.it> Partito del Tubo was founded 1997 on the occasion of the Italian administrative elections.

It is formed by Giuseppe Tubi, Pablo Echaurren, Piermario Ciani. <mascherino@iol.it> Chiara Passa is a video artist living in Rome. <chiapa@libero.it> <c_passa@hotmail.com> Koca Pavlovic lives and works in Montenegro as the editor of information and cultural program in NTV Montena.

Alberta Pellacani is an artist living in Modena, Italy. <albeep@tin.it> Nicola Pellegrini is an artist and a set designer living in Milan. <nip@mail.dex-net.com> Ana Peraica is an artist based in The Netherlands and Croatia <ana.peraica@janvaneyck.nl> <ana.peraica@st.tel.hr> Sanja Perisic is a video artist, studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade. She lives and works in Montenegro. <sanja@cg.yu> Luisa Perlo is an art critic based in Turin. She is a regular contributor to Arte. <lupearl@tin.it> Stefania Perna is an artist living in Piacenza, Italy. <iglutri@tin.it> Eva Persson is a curator and exhibition manager; she is currently teaching exhibition managing at Linköpings Universitet in Sweden. <eva.persson@ituf.liu.se> <for@bahnhof.se> Marco Piamonte is a poet currently running “La Ginestra” bookstore in Venice, specialized in psychology, anthropology, and theater.

Cesare Pietroiusti is an artist from Rome. Since 1997 he has been involved in several Oreste projects. <cmp@shareware.it> Bartolomeo Pietromarchi is an art critic and curator based in Rome, where he runs the exhibition program of the Fondazione Adriano Olivetti. <barttt@iol.it> Alessandra Pioselli is an art critic and curator based in Milan. She teaches History of design at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan and contributes regularly to Flash Art. <alepio@tiscalinet.it> Bianca Polledro is an art critic specialized in museum studies, based in Turin.

Gloria Pomardi is a dancer living in Rome who, together with Paolo Bresciani, video and digital artist, explores the field of the sensorial phase-displacement.

Pompeiorama is an artist-run association, founded in 1997, that realized exhibition projects, conferences, and workshops in collaboration with the city of Naples. Its members are Eugenio Giliberti and Nino Longobardi, artists; Mario Franco, filmmaker. <pompeiorama@tin.it > Pow Group BluePrint is an art group from Yugoslavia. www.blueprintit.com <pow@blueprintit.com> Project Environment is a group of artists promoting cross-disciplinary interventions inside the social and environmental contexts. <sealion@projenv.demon.co.uk> La Rada is a cultural organization based in Locarno, Switzerland. It has been organizing and producing exhibitions, concerts, performances, and readings. <larada@beltrametti.com> Anteo Radovan is an artist living in Bologna. He runs the artspace Graffio where he has been organizing, since 1995, over 290 solo exhibitions of Italian and international artists. <anteor@eur.it> Radio Studio B2-92 / CyberRex Project is a collective formed by artists, musicians, filmmakers and intellectuals from Belgrade, main vehicle for the counter-information about Milosevic’s government and its politics in Yugoslavia. The activity of the radio, declared out of

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law by Milosevic, has continued illegally for months, spreading, also by the help of the Internet, his message to the whole world. At present, under the new name of Studio B2-92, the radio station has reopened with its regular transmissions. www.b92.net, www.rex.opennet.org <www@freeb92.net> <shile@bits.net> Ragazzi Terribili (Marco Moreggia and Romina Romano) was formed in 1984 in Rome as a group of DJs and rave organizers. They created the Mystic Records, an independent music label.

Alessandra Raso is an architect involved in projecting and realizing museum spaces. She has been a member of Cliostraat since 1994. <alessandraraso@tiscalinet.it> Melisa Rastoder is a curator and translator from Montenegro based in Florence, Italy. <rastoder@mailcity.com> Samir Rastoder is currently head editor of the information and political program in NTV Montena, Montenegro. He works as a journalist and as correspondent to various daily and weekly newspapers in different countries of former Yugoslavia. <samirrastoder@yahoo.com> Maria Grazia Recanati was trained as an Art Historian, specialized in Medieval Painting, she now teaches at Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, Italy.

Olivier Reneau is an art critic and curator living in Paris. He is member of the editorial staff of the art magazine Beaux-arts magazine and member of the artistic committee of FRAC Alsace. In 1998 he has created, together with Markus Kreiss, the Stream TV project. <oli@france-japon.com> Riksutställningar is the Swedish Traveling Exhibitions program. Box 4715, S-116 92 Stockholm. www.riksutstallningar.se <ru@riksutstallningar.se> Fabrizio Rivola is an artist based in Imola, Italy. <frivo@tin.it> Massimo Ruiu is a professor of Art History based in Rome.

Roland Rust is an artist based in Vienna; founder (with V. Eichelmann) of the “No Problem Agency.” www.doyou.at <rol@t0.or.at> Neli Ruzic Del Castillo <nexus6@data.net.mx> Pier Luigi Sacco is Professor of Economics at the University of Bologna. <sacco@economia.unibo.it> Sabina Salamon is an art historian engaged in contemporary art activities based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. <sabinsalom@yahoo.com> Daniela Salvioni is a freelance curator and critic who used to live in San Francisco and is now based in New York.

Giulia Sanderson Marabini studied Architecture in Venice, where she lives. <giuliamarabini@hotmail> Gabi Scardi is an art critic and curator based in Milan. <gabisca@tiscalinet.it> Antonio Scarponi studies Architecture in Venice. Currently he is a visiting student at the Cooper Union School of Architecture of New York. <toniboots@hotmail.com> Schismophonia (Mike Cooper and Elio Martusciello) is a group that deals with interactive improvisation and the definition of an acoustic space by manipulating many kind of audio sources, and multiplying the diffusion of sounds. space.tin.it/arte/eliomart <emartus@tin.it> <101576.320@compuserve.com> Anne Schlöpke is an artist interested in the correlation between social life and art.

Tilo Schulz is an artist and curator based in Leipzig, Germany. He is the curator and organizer of e.w.e. <tiloschulz@hotmail.com> Johannes Schweiger <schweigerii@yahoo.com>

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Ann Seebach is an artist based in Germany. <anseebach@kuenstlerhaus-dortmund.de>

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Marco Senaldi is an art critic and theoretician based in Italy; he collaborates with Flash Art, and is the author of “Lo Spirito e gli Ultracorpi”, about dialectic, imagination and art in contemporary society; he also edited in Italian some philosophical essays by Gilles Deleuze, Slavoj Zizek, and others. <marcosenaldi@netscape.net> Setola di Maiale is an independent record label from Pordenone, Italy, devoted to the publishing of experimental music. Its director is Stefano Giusti, percussionist and manipulator of tapes and musical objects. <debecom@tin.it> Alessandro Seu is a writer and performer, lives and works in Bologna and Florence as a creative manager. <aleseu@tin.it> Sistemi Naturali is a discussion group launched by engineer Giorgio Pineschi and architect Simona Messina. Its activity deals with a territorial improvement by planning of naturalistic engineering systems, such as constructed wetlands, buffer zones, renaturalization. <simomess@tiscalinet.it> Smitta (Contagious) is an International interdisciplinary project started in 1995, working to create possibilities of collaboration between artists, and artists with scientists of different fields, arranging seminaries, workshops, exhibitions, publications, lectures and web pages.

Snowdonia www.eponet.it/musica/snowdoni.htm <snowdonia@ctonline.it> Djurdjica Z. Sorensen is a writer, journalist, and translator working in Croatia, Denmark and Italy. She currently lives in Florence. <zleba@mclink.it> Stalker is a group of people based in Rome developing projects and researches about urban and social environment. After exploring suburbs of some Italian cities, it is now involved in a interdisciplinary project at Campo Boario, Rome, which aims to study relationships between art, civil solidarity and urban regeneration. <loromit@tin.it> Ulrika Sten is a curator and project manager living in Sweden.

Igor Stepancic is an artist based in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, working with objects, installations, video and net-art. He is a member of Pow Group-Blueprint. <igor@blueprintit.com> Kristine Stiles is an associate Professor at Duke University – Department of Art and Art History of Durham. <awe@duke.edu> Studio Binser is a canal engineering company based in Munich, Germany.

Alma Suljevic studied Contemporary Philosophy and Sculpture. She is Lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo. Akademija Likovnih Umjetnosti, Obala Maka Dizdara 3, 71000 Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Sunday School is a project conceived by Giles Perry. From a house in North London, it operates by adopting the appearance and some of the practices of an art school. Teaching staff include: Giles Perry, Dermot O’Donnell, Caitlin Elster, Jorn Ebner, Daniel Thorpe, Anthony Davies, Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt, Jaspar Joseph Lester, and Angela Hicks. <sunday.school@virgin.net> Surgical Vandalism <erzulie@tiscalinet.it> Synesthésie is a magazine conceived expressly for the Internet. It gathers theoretic texts, presentation of artistic processes, and specific creations. www.synesthesie.com <redaction@synesthesie.com> Harald Szeemann is the director of the Visual Arts Venice Biennale (editions 1999-2001).

Federico Tanzi Mira is an artist based in Milan.

Teatro della Polvere is a group from Bologna, Italy, devoted to theater as well as to multiple-media productions. Video and films are used with the aim of expanding the theater’s language towards a new way of enjoying it. <tpolvere@iperbole.bologna.it> The Books of Knijge is a cultural organization founded in the middle 80’s based in Cetinje, Montenegro. The members are Aleksandar Radunovic, Goran Vujovic, Zoran Markovic, and Veselin-Vesko Gajovic. <tbok@cg.yu>

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Barbara Thiel is a filmmaker specialized in documentaries, art films, and sociological, political and ethnological researches.

Torazine is a magazine. Its founders organize the annual “CinemaOFF” film festival, in which the present production can be confronted with the experimental filmworks from the Sixties and the Seventies. www.kyuzz.org/ordanomade <torazine@disinfo.net> Roberta Torre is considered one of the most interesting young Italian filmmakers. Her “Tano da Morire” (1997) has got various prizes and awards.

Adriana Torregrossa is an artist based in Bologna, Italy.

Alessandra Tortarolo is an artist based in Milan, Italy.

Annalisa Tota is an ethnologist, communication sociologist, professor at Milan University, and coordinator of “30 something” women’s gender studies. trans is the student magazine of the Faculty of Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. The magazine appears twice a year and is edited and organized by students. The aim is to create a podium for discussion in order to portray the variety of opinion at the school. Articles contributed to the editions are by students, tutors, professors at the ETH Zurich as well as guest-authors. <trans@arch.ethz.ch> Giovanna Trento is an artist based in Rome. <g.trento@mclink.it> <g.trento@undo.net> Michele Trimarchi is an associate professor of Financial Sciences at the “Magna Graecia” University of Catanzaro, Italy.

Simon Tweed is an actor and head of the Drama department of a school in North London.

Gianluca Umiliacchi (Bastian Contrario) runs one of the very few fanzine archives in Italy.

For Millelire Stampa Alternativa he has published “Poveri ma liberi”, a catalogue of Italian ’zines published between 1977 and 1997. <afa@racine.ra.it> UnDo.Net is an art project conceived and realized by Premiata Ditta (Anna Stuart Tovini, Vincenzo Chiarandà) together with Emanuele Vecchia, Federico Fazzi, Laura Brenna, Elena Conti, and Claudio Parrini. It is a project that enables the discovery of new relationships within the contemporary culture, a place where information is mutually exchanged and edited. www.undo.net <staff@undo.net> Vittorio Urbani is the director of the gallery Nuova Icona in Venice. <nuovaicona@iol.it> Barbara Vanderlinden curated, with Hans Ulrich Obrist, the exhibition “Laboratorium” in Antwerp, Belgium, 1999.

Cedomir Vasic is an artist working with video and video installations. As a promoter of mural painting in Belgrade, he has accomplished a number of works in public spaces. He is currently working as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts and Faculty of Performing Arts in Belgrade.

Vegetali Ignoti is an “art copybook” made since 1995 by artists Riccardo Paracchini and Luca Scarabelli. vegetalignoti.supereva.it <vegetalignoti@supereva.it> Laura Verdi is an art sociologist, professor at the Università di Padova.

Pasquale Verdicchio is a poet and artist. <pverdicchio@yahoo.com> Cesare Viel is an artist living in Genoa. In cooperation with other artists he organized at Link (Bologna, 1997) the conference: “How do I explain to my mother that what I do is in some way useful?” <cesareviel@yahoo.it> Vladimir Vinciguerra is a graphic designer. www.flyar.it/ <vladimirvinciguerra@yahoo.com> Luca Vitone is an artist living in Milan. Since 1996 he has been collaborating with the Link in Bologna. <lucavito@libero.it> Vortice Associazione Culturale is the periodical newsletter for Circ.a events in Venice. www.provincia.venezia.it/vortice <vortice@provincia.venezia.it> Katrin Walter is curator at the Museum of Post and Communication, Hamburg.

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Ryszard Wasko is an artist and executive director of the Artists’ Museum in Poland. <rwasko@muzart.infocentrum.com> WochenKlausur is a group of artists based in Wien founded in 1993. It carries out sociopolitical projects, often acting as intermediary among political subjects, private and public institutions, and different social group within a specific territory. <wochenklausur@t0.or.at> Wurmkos is an experimental art therapy group founded in 1987 by Pasquale Campanella and the organization “Lotta contro l’emarginazione” based in Sesto San Giovanni, Milan.

Zar (Aleksandar Caric’) is a Yugoslavian musician based in Italy. <parpet@aconet.it> Zerynthia is an organization for the promotion of contemporary art based in Rome. <grancia@novamedia.it> Amra Zulfikarpasic is a graphic designer living in Sarajevo. She is working as lecturer in Typography and Book Design at the Fine Arts Academy and has organized exhibitions and performances. <emirkas@bih.net.ba>

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Oreste alla Biennale Oreste at the Venice Biennale Edited by Giancarlo Norese with the assistance of Emilio Fantin and Cesare Pietroiusti This book is a documentation of the “Oreste alla Biennale – Oreste at the Venice Biennale” project, which was part of the exhibition “dAPERTutto” at the 48th Venice Biennale, June 10th–Nov. 7th, 1999. The publication was conceived during several meetings among the artists and curators participating in the Oreste Projects. Each event’s documentation was designed by its organizers. In a limited number of cases, requested material did not arrive in time for publication, and subsequently, the related events are not included.

Oreste e-mail: oreste@undo.net For up-to-date information see website: http://undo.net/oreste Edizioni Charta via della Moscova, 27 I-20121 Milano tel +39 02 6598098, 6598200 fax +39 02 6598577 e-mail: edcharta@tin.it http://www.artecontemporanea.com/charta © 2000 Edizioni Charta, Milan © 2000 Oreste and individual contributors ISBN: 88-8158-279-1 Edition: 3500 Printed in Italy Cover by Federico Fazzi (UnDo.Net) Acknowledgments We would like to thank Caroline Bachmann for her support to the editorial work; John Menick, Tamara Sonego, and Giovanna Trento for their help in supervising some of the English texts; Francesca Alessandrini, Barbara Fässler, Martin Hiddink, Agnes Kohlmeyer, Cecilia Liveriero Lavelli, Manuela Lucà Dazi, Vittorio Marchiori, Luigi Ricciardi, Roberto Rosolen, Valter Salvagno, and Harald Szeemann; our sponsors Aquaself srl, Asso.Pr.Oli, Cantine Crifo, Cantine Sergio Mottura, Carissimi Caffè, Cioccolaterie Berardi, Consorzio Pane di Matera, Farmindustria (whose financial support has made this publication possible), Flashnet, Libreria Patagonia, Panificio Cascione, Zanotta.

Special thanks are due to the organizers and the participants of the almost one hundred events that took place during the “Oreste at the Venice Biennale” project, and to the authors of texts and photographs.

oreste

at the

48thVENICE B i e n n a l e June 10 t h r o u g h November 7 , 1999 th

th

Oreste is not a group that produces collective artworks, nor a not-for-profit organization. It is a variable set of persons, mostly Italian artists, who have been working together with the aim of creating spaces of freedom for ideas, inventions, and projects.

During the 48th Venice Biennale, from June 10th through November 7th 1999, on the occasion of an invitation to the exhibition dAPERTutto, Oreste set up an ongoing program of meetings, interactive performances, round table discussions, lectures, lunches and informal encounters. Almost one hundred events were organized, and more than five hundred people from the whole world took an active role in the project.

This book contains a documentation of the organized events, together with a series of theoretical contributions by professionals in diverse fields (Carlos Basualdo, Andreas Broeckmann, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Riccardo Held, Agnes Kohlmeyer, Geert Lovink, Elisa Ottaviani, Pier Luigi Sacco, and Harald Szeemann).