Spazi di Relazione

Introduced and moderated by Marta Ferrara

As part of the exhibition Tanz auf dem Vulkan. Tales from the Morra Greco Collection II and the EDI Global Forum project, the day entitled Spazi di relazione. Incontri e racconti di strada, arte e comunità (Spaces of Relationship. Encounters and tales of roads, art and community) was set out to dialogue and bring to light some art practices with and for the territory that have found a home and roots in Campania’s geography in recent years, in a consciously rhizomatic, porous and unintentional landscape: southern.

In a cultural Italy that we could call archipelago, there are numerous project realities, houses, and spaces managed and born from the creative fecundity of some groups, formal or informal, composed of artists, curators and creatives, in an attempt to make art in the public interest.

From the desire to work in direct and indirect relationship with the landscape and the urban dimension of the city, meteors are born of which it is difficult to keep track, characterized by dialogue and conversation and sometimes by confrontation with citizenships and inhabitants of specific places. The territory often becomes a construction site and gymnasium for generations of artists who need spaces and fields of experimentation outside the gilded tower of the private gallery and the marble one of the museum, bypassing those limits of formats and formats, stifling for creative and research freedom. How to narrate artistic practices that make relationship and experience the main channel of experimentation?

This day is part of the relationship activities with its reference territory that Fondazione Morra Greco also carries out thanks to EDI Global Forum, an event that creates a direct dialogue between the cultural context of the city of Naples and the entire Campania Region with the international one, presenting its particularities and best practices.

Program

The day was divided into two events, both hosted at Fondazione Morra Greco.

11:00 | OhAhSi! Sul fiume fuori rotta

Screening of the documentary L’oasi del futuro and conversation with Maria Giovanna Abbate and Francesco Capasso, artists and curators of the OhAhSi! project, Ivan Forastiere, filmmaker, and Chiara Pirozzi, independent curator and lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples.

OhAhSi! Sul fiume fuori rotta is a landscape drift project conceived by artists Maria Giovanna Abbate and Francesco Capasso. Involving about 20 artists, OhAhSi! has been, for the past two years, a vehicle for crossing and rediscovering a Campania section of the Volturno River and its local and non-local communities through contemporary art practices.

The project sees the exploration of the river, strictly on foot, starting from its mouth, on which the Oasi dei Variconi insists, and going upstream against the current in an attempt to reach the Oasi di Caricchiano, without ever straying from the visual imprint of the water. In the path of exploration, the artists involved meet the ”people of the River”: the historical inhabitants, repositories of tradition and knowledge, the young and the foreign population. The actions planned by the participating artists take place there, in situ, and show in some cases a participatory dimension.

Ivan Forastiere’s documentary narrates in images some of the actions of redrawing psychogeographical boundaries in dialogue with the inhabitant communities.

17:00 | Viale delle Metamorfosi – L’arte si fa strada

Presentation of the project book, published by ShowDesk ODV, and conversation with Sveva Ventre and Gianluca Sensale, Collettivo Zero, Edoardo Aruta, artist, Tiziano Manna, ShowDesk ODV and Nicola Laieta, Maestri di Strada.

Viale delle Metamorfosi – L’arte si fa strada is the permanent festival of contemporary arts in public space curated by Collettivo Zero.

Created to investigate the theme of metamorphosis through a collective and integrated design approach, aimed at the community and young people of the Ponticelli neighborhood, it has seen the participation of both local and in-residence artists, brought into relation with the urban and social landscape, thanks also to the collaboration established with the large network of local associations.

In this volume, published by Show Desk, its curatorial methodology put in place by Collettivo Zero is analyzed, which in the texts edited by it recounts intentions and practices.

Part of the Public Program of Fondazione Morra Greco

The focus of the project Spazi di relazione. Incontri e racconti di strada, arte e comunità, with its case studies of activities on the ground, connects to a strand of the currently ongoing exhibition – Tanz auf dem Vulkan. Tales from the Morra Greco Collection II – aimed at investigating collaborative approaches, community practices, and “alternative” aggregation through art. The proposal for a day of in-depth study and dialogue around practices developed in tune with the Campania Region and the communities that inhabit it is linked to the action of social impact and regeneration pursued by Fondazione Morra Greco since its inception.

From the collective to the nonprofit space, from the private foundation to the regional museum, it is possible to reflect on different methodologies, institutional and non-institutional, of co-production and dialogue of art with differentiated social realities, simultaneously observing the transition and contamination between artistic and curatorial practices. By proposing a dialogue around experimental models of cooperation between artists, art collectives, and curatorship with local communities, the intention is to resonate different nuances of social cooperation through cultural production.

Dividing the day into two parts, the program explores the possible exchange (or its impossibility) between art and social infrastructure, constituted now by local, regional governments, or state bodies, now by the residents of a given place, neighborhood, or area, along with its diasporic communities, even tourists. Keeping in mind pioneers in this field, such as Tim Rollins and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival), a collective formed by artist Tim Rollins together with a group of young people from the South Bronx in New York, the day aims to bring the reflection on art and community back into the present, in dialogue with the territorial contexts of Naples and Campania in which Fondazione Morra Greco is located and operates.

Browse the Gallery

Foto 1 – 3, OhAhSi! Sul fiume fuori rotta: Fondazione Morra Greco

Foto 4 – 6, Viale delle Metamorfosi – L’arte si fa strada: Federica Guglielmi, Collettivo Zero