Project Proposal

➝ What do you want to make?

I want to provide a set of tools, local infrastructures and physical spaces (in the form of an art residency) in order to promote creative production within small scale environments such as rural and remote areas, to respond to their need for cultural revitalization, intending to resonate with their resilience, cultural heritage and local traditions as an important chance for understanding the present. An " artistic dispositif which lends itself to some form of response or interaction.", while braiding in the specific pre-existent and micro-territorial context, helping to define and target new possibilities for cultural and social development, both on a personal and territorial layer.

"Living itself exists in forms that must be questioned, rearranged, mobilized, and undone."
N. Thompson, Living as a Form, 2012

• On a theoretical level: Understand the local conditions, define strategies and potential impact of ultra-territorial publishing practices on remote and small-scaled areas.
• On a practical level: Shape and provide the set of local tools and infrastructures for knowledge sharing, relations making and ultra-territorial publishing, as a way to bridge the local cultural environment with the world.

➝ How do you plan to make it?

My intention is to bring different methodologies, local services and publishing practices into action. First, by working on the idea of Archive, which inevitably brings the question of how to collect and archive material from the past, while sustaining the collecting process of what is being "produced" during the residency. Maybe by

"inventing new systems of image description and categorisation; inventing new interfaces to image collections; inventing new kinds of images which go beyond such familiar types as a still photograph or a digital video; approaching the new super-human scale of visual data available"

as important creative opportunities to unfold e re-organize past, present, and future contents.

Then, will be necessary to layout a web platform as a bridge between the local dimension with the wider public. For instance, the online radio will work both for live broadcasting and as an archive for past podcasts and interviews centred on residents experiences and remote collaborators.

For these specified purposes, I will create my own local system of infrastructures, based on Raspberry Pi computers, which could be used first to:

1. set up a local/offline server with file upload/download
2. host collective-based tools such as Etherpad → Ether2html
3. build and organize the Archive (What then would/could be accessible from the outside? Being accessible only locally could be also a statement)
4. running in another RPi a web server?

1. ---Knowing more about OBS for video streaming---

The idea is to implement policies and measures that could be appropriate for the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural heritage, creative expression and supporting the spring of new values in the specific territory.

➝ What is your timetable?

November - December

• Research: creative communities;
• Organize material
• Start setup the Raspberry and Etherpad (Workshop with Mika on 6th Nov. @Zine Camp)
• Finalise graduate proposal and thesis outline: 19 November - Graduate Proposal Deadline
• 19 November - Thesis Outline Deadline
• Think about what to bring in the next AQUARIUM.
• First draft of first thesis chapter
• 3 Dec - Deadline First Chapter

January

• Still Research - defining the potential impact of ultra-territorial publishing on remote areas;
• Start building the local and online platform for archiving and sharing processes.
• Finalizing thesis first chapter

February

• Still Research - defining the potential impact of ultra-territorial publishing on remote areas;
• Process the research
• 18 Feb - Deadline First Draft Thesis

March

• Finalizing thesis second draft 18 March - Deadline Second Draft thesis (texts to 2nd readers)

April

• 1 April - Deadlines Second readers' comments
• Finalizing thesis, 14 April - DEADLINE THESIS

May

• Finishing touches. I hope.
• Prepare the final presentation
• Printed publication?

June

• Work on graduation show

➝ Why do you want to make it?

Artistic practice can no longer revolve around the construction of objects to be consumed by a passive bystander. Instead, there must be an an art of action, interfacing with reality, taking steps-however small-to repair the social bond.
N. Thompson, Living as a Form

A slow and inevitable process of depopulation is affecting internal areas and remote villages in Italy. Started with the Industrial boom in the 70s, it's related to the seek for better and apparently more stable working opportunities, which were provided by the major urban centres with their industrial capacity and development plans. The result is a huge, forgotten heritage that could be estimated to be more than 6000 ghost villages, just in Italy.

Now that we may have some concerns or doubts about the industrial developments and the consumeristic drifts bring by them, together with the re-evaluation of the spaces we inhabit and the natural resources we try to control, could it be the moment to re-think and re-imagine ways for living and working together? Maybe by thinking of the future as a constellation of small, almost self-sustainable communities, which could easily organize themself around urgent issues and real needs? Working in a smaller scale helps us to try out, engaging directly with the local people and heritage, receiving direct feedbacks to move instantly forward to the next step.

Defying the process of depopulation. Challenging and resonating local traditions and heritage.

➝ Who can help you and how?

Michael Murtaugh, Manetta Berends, Clara Balaguer, Vo Ezn, Federico Poni
To be continued...

➝ Relation to previous practice

On a personal level, that means for me to directly link design and publishing practices to a survival layer. It becomes a meant for surviving because I see most of my practices and approaches as potentially fully involved in the making of this project. Starting from the identity and content creation, organizing events in relation to a public which is both local and global, offering social and artistic opportunities, which creates contents that need to be collected and organised. Moving from a printed matter approach to an enlarged view of publishing, which of course need new tools and strategies which I'm going to share as Habitat.

Habitat is working for me as a life experimentation playground, which gives me the possibility to think simultaneously to urgent needs in terms of changes of life conditions, but also the opportunity we have to act within the limits of specific places. This environment lets me think about a virtuous sharing circle for essential goods as much as for knowledge, while giving the chance to experience the conviviality of the place weaved in a pitched-down version of time perception. While doing that, I'm doing steps forward in relation to the tools I've learned last year: from Etherpad 2 HTML, handling a website started from scratch, Online broadcasting, but also the idea of creating my own environment. ...

➝ Relation to a larger context

"The small scale intervention has become the basic unit of contemporary art."
Jeroen Boomgard – One Year In The Wild

Publishing and designing, in general, need to step back, with the consciousness that we can't overload the already saturated world with more objects. By placing a new, cultural space in an unconventional area, Habitat wants to reflect on community needs and fragilities by making cultural opportunities possible right there. Away from big institutions and museums, Habitat re-activated an old village in the Appennines in order to build an open, mountain harbour. Situating the research within the local boundaries, Habitat aims to be an engine for publishing as a range of cultural responses to current social and political conditions, on the local and possibly on a larger scale. While bringing the small-scale reality as a model for larger, social change, it is defining new creative roots for the territory, promoting participatory practices for cultural development and emphasizing collaboration between artists and local community.

➝ References/bibliography

• GLOBAL TOOLS 1973 – 1975, Valerio Borgonuovo e Silvia Franceschini
• Living As Form. Socially engaged art from 1991-2011, Nato Thompson, Creative Time Books
• How Do We Make Art Of Databases? Making art of databases - Anne Nigten, p.8
• Metadating the Image – Making art of databases – Lev Manovich, p.14
• You Need Art When You Build a City, Hanne Hagenaars, https://laps-rietveld.nl/?p=552
• New Creative Community, The Art of Cultural Development – Arlene Goldbard
• One Year In The Wild, Jeroen Boomgaard – Gerry Rietveld Academy
• Aesthetic Separation, Aesthetic Community: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art, Jacques Rancière