L’ “acte de création est un acte politique”. Les actions artistiques du groupe russe Voïna réitèr... more L’ “acte de création est un acte politique”. Les actions artistiques du groupe russe Voïna réitère de cette façon précise l’indissociabilité entre l’art et la politique sans pour cela se retrancher dans aucun sectarisme.
Des scénarios urbains où “produire des actions”, agir dans les lieux en modifiant le sens, celle-ci sont les incursions que Voïna éparpille dans les espaces publics en défiant toute précaution, ce sont des actions à observer et restent très difficiles à décrire.
Le geste et les actions doivent profaner, c’est-à-dire briser le mur du silence et l’interdiction qui caractérise les complicités de tout l’esthétisme contemporain.
Rogelio López Cuenca. Keep Reading, Giving Rise; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia of Madrid; curated by Manolo Borja Villel; (3 April - 26 August, 2019)., 2020
In 1965 the Operaist stance enters the Italian literary debate thanks to critic Alberto Asor Rosa... more In 1965 the Operaist stance enters the Italian literary debate thanks to critic Alberto Asor RosaÕs The Writer and the People. The bookÕs main targets, besides well-known literary critics of the time, encompass writers like Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italo Calvino, Vasco Pratolini, Cesare Pavese, and Elio Vittorini, whose works embodied the Communist PartyÕs hegemony over literary production Ð a hegemony based on the legacy of the Resistance on one hand, and on a populist political and cultural vision on the other. Asor RosaÕs main thesis, which he frames as an urgent political matter of his time, is a harsh critique of Antonio GramsciÕs concept of the Ònational-popular.Ó ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊFrom the unification of Italy in the nineteenth century to the postÐWorld War II period, Italian literature exhibited pronounced populist tendencies. This tendency steadily grew stronger throughout the pre-fascist and fascist periods, and finally became completely dominant in the wake of the wartime Italian resistance movement, in compliance with Communist PartyÕs cultural directives. In the 1960s, as Asor Rosa was writing his book, the populist literary genre was going into decline. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNow that populism is once again at the center of public debate, how can The Writer and the People be useful to us today? 1 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊSince Asor RosaÕs book was first published, the globe has changed radically, from the fall of the Soviet Union and globalization to the financialization of the economy and major shifts in the geopolitical balance of power. Furthermore, The Writer and the People was so deeply rooted in the authorÕs time that it got stuck; in order to be absolutely coherent, accurate, and polemically rigorous, Asor Rosa refused to write things that had a simplistically universal or trans-historical significance. But if outdatedness is the cornerstone of contemporaneity, then The Writer and the People may still have something important to teach the readers of today. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊOf course, some preliminary considerations are necessary: we should look beyond the limits of the historical debate that Asor RosaÕs work took part in; at the same time, we need to shift his concepts from the literary context to art criticism. Nevertheless, if we treat the word ÒpeopleÓ as an empty signifier, the essay can provide us with an interpretational diagram, a starting point for addressing issues that are critical to todayÕs debate on the relationship between art and populism. Furthermore, the Operaist matrix of the book clarifies the terms of another crucial debate that is far from being concluded, between what we could call heretical Marxism on one side, and leftist populism on the other.
By entering into this space today, you have entered Assembly not as a viewer but as a participant... more By entering into this space today, you have entered Assembly not as a viewer but as a participant and collaborator. Those who make the choice to look closer, feel more deeply, act more courageously, and communicate with vulnerability, will exit Assembly with enlightenment and a renewed sense of hope through movement, conversation, entertainment, stillness, and education. Being the Digital Griot, "A Word From Being," 2022 Rashaad Newsome's 2022 Assembly is a complex work; one could even see it as the culmination of a series of projects developed at least since 2016. It is divided into three parts: installation, class, and performance. The piece is focused on the politics of voguing 1 , on its queer liberation potential. 1 Voguing is a form of modern dance. Part of the drag ballroom culture (whose origins, according to Tim Lawrence, go back as far as the second half of the 19th century), it became popular in the 1980s in New York City's black and Latino queer scene. At that juncture, the different Houses (i.e., alternative households formed by LGBT youth seeking refuge from sexism and marginalization) regularly organized drag balls. This was the context that gave birth to Voguing. Lawrence writes: «Growing out of the drag queen ritual of throwing 'shade', or subtly insulting another queen, voguing emerged as a distinctive dance of first the houses and then, inevitably, the balls, where specific voguing categories were eventually introduced. 'It all started at an after hours club called Footsteps on 2nd Avenue and 14th Street,' says David DePino, an influential DJ for the voguing community. 'Paris Dupree was there and a bunch of these black queens were throwing shade at each other. Paris had a Vogue magazine in her bag, and while she was dancing, she took it out, opened it up to a page where a model was posing, and then stopped in that pose on the beat. Then she turned to the next page and stopped in the new pose, again on the beat.' The provocation was returned in kind. 'Another queen came up and did another pose in front of Paris, and then Paris went in front of her and did another pose,' adds DePino. 'This was all shade-they were trying to make a prettier pose than each other-and it soon caught on at the balls. At first, they called it posing and then, because it started from Vogue magazine, they called it voguing.". An alternative account has it that voguing was first practiced by the black gay
Venezia, il caso della ventilata alienazione di Villa Heriot, di proprietà pubblica, è alla base ... more Venezia, il caso della ventilata alienazione di Villa Heriot, di proprietà pubblica, è alla base di una riflessione sui movimenti per il diritto alla città, tra nostalgia della polis e la necessità di costruire un nuovo diritto alla città globale
Se il populismo è un significante vuoto, cosa si può intendere con l'espressione "arte populista"... more Se il populismo è un significante vuoto, cosa si può intendere con l'espressione "arte populista". La tradizione del pensiero operaista fornisce una prima griglia di interpretazione che viene applicata al lavoro di alcuni artisti contemporanei. Tra arte populista e relazionale, l'articolo intende esplorare una terza tendenza, quella dell'alterinstitutional turn.
L’ “acte de création est un acte politique”. Les actions artistiques du groupe russe Voïna réitèr... more L’ “acte de création est un acte politique”. Les actions artistiques du groupe russe Voïna réitère de cette façon précise l’indissociabilité entre l’art et la politique sans pour cela se retrancher dans aucun sectarisme.
Des scénarios urbains où “produire des actions”, agir dans les lieux en modifiant le sens, celle-ci sont les incursions que Voïna éparpille dans les espaces publics en défiant toute précaution, ce sont des actions à observer et restent très difficiles à décrire.
Le geste et les actions doivent profaner, c’est-à-dire briser le mur du silence et l’interdiction qui caractérise les complicités de tout l’esthétisme contemporain.
Rogelio López Cuenca. Keep Reading, Giving Rise; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia of Madrid; curated by Manolo Borja Villel; (3 April - 26 August, 2019)., 2020
In 1965 the Operaist stance enters the Italian literary debate thanks to critic Alberto Asor Rosa... more In 1965 the Operaist stance enters the Italian literary debate thanks to critic Alberto Asor RosaÕs The Writer and the People. The bookÕs main targets, besides well-known literary critics of the time, encompass writers like Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italo Calvino, Vasco Pratolini, Cesare Pavese, and Elio Vittorini, whose works embodied the Communist PartyÕs hegemony over literary production Ð a hegemony based on the legacy of the Resistance on one hand, and on a populist political and cultural vision on the other. Asor RosaÕs main thesis, which he frames as an urgent political matter of his time, is a harsh critique of Antonio GramsciÕs concept of the Ònational-popular.Ó ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊFrom the unification of Italy in the nineteenth century to the postÐWorld War II period, Italian literature exhibited pronounced populist tendencies. This tendency steadily grew stronger throughout the pre-fascist and fascist periods, and finally became completely dominant in the wake of the wartime Italian resistance movement, in compliance with Communist PartyÕs cultural directives. In the 1960s, as Asor Rosa was writing his book, the populist literary genre was going into decline. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNow that populism is once again at the center of public debate, how can The Writer and the People be useful to us today? 1 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊSince Asor RosaÕs book was first published, the globe has changed radically, from the fall of the Soviet Union and globalization to the financialization of the economy and major shifts in the geopolitical balance of power. Furthermore, The Writer and the People was so deeply rooted in the authorÕs time that it got stuck; in order to be absolutely coherent, accurate, and polemically rigorous, Asor Rosa refused to write things that had a simplistically universal or trans-historical significance. But if outdatedness is the cornerstone of contemporaneity, then The Writer and the People may still have something important to teach the readers of today. ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊOf course, some preliminary considerations are necessary: we should look beyond the limits of the historical debate that Asor RosaÕs work took part in; at the same time, we need to shift his concepts from the literary context to art criticism. Nevertheless, if we treat the word ÒpeopleÓ as an empty signifier, the essay can provide us with an interpretational diagram, a starting point for addressing issues that are critical to todayÕs debate on the relationship between art and populism. Furthermore, the Operaist matrix of the book clarifies the terms of another crucial debate that is far from being concluded, between what we could call heretical Marxism on one side, and leftist populism on the other.
By entering into this space today, you have entered Assembly not as a viewer but as a participant... more By entering into this space today, you have entered Assembly not as a viewer but as a participant and collaborator. Those who make the choice to look closer, feel more deeply, act more courageously, and communicate with vulnerability, will exit Assembly with enlightenment and a renewed sense of hope through movement, conversation, entertainment, stillness, and education. Being the Digital Griot, "A Word From Being," 2022 Rashaad Newsome's 2022 Assembly is a complex work; one could even see it as the culmination of a series of projects developed at least since 2016. It is divided into three parts: installation, class, and performance. The piece is focused on the politics of voguing 1 , on its queer liberation potential. 1 Voguing is a form of modern dance. Part of the drag ballroom culture (whose origins, according to Tim Lawrence, go back as far as the second half of the 19th century), it became popular in the 1980s in New York City's black and Latino queer scene. At that juncture, the different Houses (i.e., alternative households formed by LGBT youth seeking refuge from sexism and marginalization) regularly organized drag balls. This was the context that gave birth to Voguing. Lawrence writes: «Growing out of the drag queen ritual of throwing 'shade', or subtly insulting another queen, voguing emerged as a distinctive dance of first the houses and then, inevitably, the balls, where specific voguing categories were eventually introduced. 'It all started at an after hours club called Footsteps on 2nd Avenue and 14th Street,' says David DePino, an influential DJ for the voguing community. 'Paris Dupree was there and a bunch of these black queens were throwing shade at each other. Paris had a Vogue magazine in her bag, and while she was dancing, she took it out, opened it up to a page where a model was posing, and then stopped in that pose on the beat. Then she turned to the next page and stopped in the new pose, again on the beat.' The provocation was returned in kind. 'Another queen came up and did another pose in front of Paris, and then Paris went in front of her and did another pose,' adds DePino. 'This was all shade-they were trying to make a prettier pose than each other-and it soon caught on at the balls. At first, they called it posing and then, because it started from Vogue magazine, they called it voguing.". An alternative account has it that voguing was first practiced by the black gay
Venezia, il caso della ventilata alienazione di Villa Heriot, di proprietà pubblica, è alla base ... more Venezia, il caso della ventilata alienazione di Villa Heriot, di proprietà pubblica, è alla base di una riflessione sui movimenti per il diritto alla città, tra nostalgia della polis e la necessità di costruire un nuovo diritto alla città globale
Se il populismo è un significante vuoto, cosa si può intendere con l'espressione "arte populista"... more Se il populismo è un significante vuoto, cosa si può intendere con l'espressione "arte populista". La tradizione del pensiero operaista fornisce una prima griglia di interpretazione che viene applicata al lavoro di alcuni artisti contemporanei. Tra arte populista e relazionale, l'articolo intende esplorare una terza tendenza, quella dell'alterinstitutional turn.
The interest around the topic of institutions is not a recent phenomenon in the field of contempo... more The interest around the topic of institutions is not a recent phenomenon in the field of contemporary art. Since the establishment of institutional critique, this field has been periodically probed and recently it has started to inspire several artists and collectives.
The neoliberal agenda has long ago embedded terms like art and creativity, for example mobilizing... more The neoliberal agenda has long ago embedded terms like art and creativity, for example mobilizing the artist as a model to explain the evolution of labour in general. This paper aims at questioning the effects of this phenomenon by unveiling some devices through which the neoliberal logic operates the valorisation of art. The paper begins with an overview of the critical literature on cultural labour and then empirically discusses the enactment of and the resistance to some of these very devices through the case of S.a.L.E-Docks, an independent art space occupied in Venice in 2007. First, we focus on the micro-scale of the subjectivation of the cultural worker: the experience of S.a.L.E-Docks is helpful in order to highlight concrete art practices that go in the direction of the creation of alternative models of cultural production: " Open " , for example, a participatory exhibition process (deconstructing traditional art roles) that becomes a tool for a collective investigation of the urban space. Second,we shift in scale and focus on the city level, again thanks to the description of another project, scrutinizing the connection between art and real estate rent in Venice. The paper ends with an open problem. If, as the two projects show, we already own tools to react to he neoliberal use of art on the level of the cultural worker's subjectivation processes and on that of the city, we still miss a key to tackle a wider (at least continental) dimension of the organization of the creative labour, as for example the discourses carried out in the European Programs for Culture.
La critica di concetti quali “Classe creativa” o “creative city” non è una novità. La visione o... more La critica di concetti quali “Classe creativa” o “creative city” non è una novità. La visione ottimistica di uno studioso come Richard Florida, anche prima dell'avvento della crisi globale, rivelava la propria natura di costrutto ideologico del neoliberismo, una superficiale descrizione della trasformazione del lavoro sotto il primato delle produzioni immateriali. E la retorica della creatività non ha risparmiato la città. La “creative city” è diventata un efficace dispositivo per espropriare gli operatori e i cittadini dei commons culturali di cui le metropoli sono il più grande catalizzatore globale. Rendita immobiliare e arte vanno spesso a braccetto, investimenti milionari e endemica precarietà del lavoro culturale sono il paradossale pane quotidiano delle città ad alta densità culturale....
Art For Radical Ecologies (Manifesto); Venice; Bruno; 2024, 2024
Art for Radical Ecologies is a platform impulsed by Institute of Radical Imagination that brings ... more Art for Radical Ecologies is a platform impulsed by Institute of Radical Imagination that brings together art workers and eco-activists to discuss the role art can play in the creation of new radical ecologies. The Art for Radical Ecologies Manifesto is the initial result of this collective writing, to reflect on the positioning and role of art within the interconnected struggles for climate and ecological justice. The essays in the book expand on the main points presented in the 16 articles of the Manifesto: the need to intertwine new materialisms and historical materialism; the specification of who the subjects of the struggles are in a more-than-human perspective; the setting of possible strategies against censorship and artwashing, and a radical critique of extractivism and colonialism.
Art For Ubi (Manifesto); Bruno, Venice, 2022, 2022
Art for UBI (manifesto) was born as an international platform of artists and activists who came t... more Art for UBI (manifesto) was born as an international platform of artists and activists who came together in winter 2019-2020 around the topics of income, social justice and economic sustainability. Those were the months of the first lockdowns in China, Italy, Europe and soon all over the world. At that time, the Institute of Radical Imagination, as an international coalition active in the field of commoning of artistic practices, launched an online self-training space called the School of Mutation. In this open school, various discussions and research lines-iterations-began to arise, involving intellectuals, activists, artists, researchers and scholars of various origins and backgrounds. Art for UBI is one of those iterations, which soon took the form of a political platform, participated by collectives and individuals from several European and non-European countries. The collectives and the individual participants who joined in the Art for UBI (manifesto) had different approaches: some brought precise demands addressed to government policies in their countries, some focused on art sector unions, some focused on self-organization of alternative and autonomous economic spaces based on the refusal of work and mutualism. Among them there were precarious artists, cultural managers and operators with very heterogeneous income. The collective discussion led to a common proposal: the time has come for a transnational positioning of the art workers world to strongly demand a universal and unconditional income for society as a whole. Many of the collectives to which we belong, come from years of mobilization and activism on this ground, and we are well aware of the richness of art workers struggles, artistic coalitions, guilds, trade unions and militant art, and has its roots in history for generations. In the discussions of Art for UBI (manifesto) we believe two important dimensions emerged: on the one hand, the point Art for UBI (manifesto)
In questo volume artisti, critici e attivisti politici si interrogano sul mondo dell'arte contemp... more In questo volume artisti, critici e attivisti politici si interrogano sul mondo dell'arte contemporanea e sulle contraddizioni che lo attraversano tra libertà e profitto, creatività e mercato. La creazione artistica è ancora in grado di sovvertire linguaggi e forme di vita? Di scardinare regole e gerarchie? E come? Frutto di un lavoro seminariale cui hanno partecipato intellettuali, critici e militanti provenienti da diversi paesi, questo libro affronta le condizioni del lavoro creativo in un'epoca di generale mercificazione in cui la massima libertà di espressione si scontra con il tentativo di mettere a profitto ogni creatività individuale e collettiva. Alla discussione di questa tematica si accompagna un'attenta ricognizione delle soggettività che abitano la "fabbrica della cultura".
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Des scénarios urbains où “produire des actions”, agir dans les lieux en modifiant le sens, celle-ci sont les incursions que Voïna éparpille dans les espaces publics en défiant toute précaution, ce sont des actions à observer et restent très difficiles à décrire.
Le geste et les actions doivent profaner, c’est-à-dire briser le mur du silence et l’interdiction qui caractérise les complicités de tout l’esthétisme contemporain.
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Des scénarios urbains où “produire des actions”, agir dans les lieux en modifiant le sens, celle-ci sont les incursions que Voïna éparpille dans les espaces publics en défiant toute précaution, ce sont des actions à observer et restent très difficiles à décrire.
Le geste et les actions doivent profaner, c’est-à-dire briser le mur du silence et l’interdiction qui caractérise les complicités de tout l’esthétisme contemporain.