Guests 2017

ATOMIC CULTURE

Is the joint cultural productions between Matthew Galindo and Malinda Galindo. Whose mission is to become a temporary geopolitical gesture-space where people from all backgrounds are encouraged to learn and experience art in its myriad forms. Atomic Culture is a curatorial platform that encourages dialogue around concepts of art and experimentation through open workshops, performance, publications, exhibitions, film and music series. By organizing and producing events that highlight both established and emerging contemporary Chicano/Latino/Indigenous/Southwestern artists whose work focuses on geopolitical issues and reclaiming of identity, history and/or space they question, how does our programming relate with the local communities.

Is an artist and a scientist. Andreco is also an environmental engineer PhD specialized in sustainability, he did a Post. Doc research on green technologies for urban sustainability collaborating with the School of Engineering and Architecture of the University of Bologna and the Columbia University of New York City. His artistic research is focused on the relation between humans and nature and between the built environment and the natural landscape. Since 2000 Andreco is researching on different topics as anatomy, environmental sustainability, urbanism, ecology and symbolism, on the base of this researchers he is creating new symbols. Andreco uses many techniques to represent his art, from public installations to videos or wall paintings and drawings. Andreco worked for several international festivals, museums and galleries.

Is a professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Zagreb. He is a member of the International Gramsci Society. Among all the articles and books he published, Praxis, History of a heretic magazine in the Tito’s Yugoslavia stands out.

Is a French-Algerian political militant. She is a spokeswoman for the Partito des Indigènes de la République (PIR). Her anti-racist militancy aims at hindering Islamophobia and all the forms of neocolonialism. In 2016 she published Les Blancs, les Juifs et nous. Vers une politique de l’amour révolutionnaire  (La Fabrique éditions).

Is a Sardinian artist born in 1961. He graduated at Sassari Academy of Art with a thesis called:”Voyage en Corse. L’utopiè “. Among the most recent solo exhibitions: Golden Zimmer curated by Micaela Deiana at MAN, Nuoro 2017, Umana Ambizione + Notre Siècle, Boscani + Bertozzi, Musée de la Corse, Corte, FR (2014), DNA-Disciplina Naturale dell’Antagonista 2, Boscani + Delogu, curated by Emanuela Falqui, Galleria S’Umbra, Cagliari (2014). Among the other exhibitions:  Par le Bleu, la « grande couleur,  curated by Anne Alessandri, FRAC-Corse, Bastion de France, Portovecchio, FR (2015), Civil Servants, curated by Micaela Deiana at MAN of Nuoro (2015), Love for risk at MSU-Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Zagabria, Croazia (2012). He collaborates with the collective Kollettivo Politikart (precarious art workers). He is working on the creation of a Rest House for artists.

Is an Italian director and screenwriter. Graduated in architecture in Milan, in 1976 he founded the Laboratory of Military Communication together with Paolo Rosa, Ettore Pasculli, Tullio Brunone and Claudio Guenzani. The experimental art collective’s activity was focused on the criticism of the language of power the language of the mass media and its repercussion on the social environment. Starting from the semiotic analysis of these languages, it came to show how the techniques of Communication could be used to hide repressive meanings. The collective remained active for about three years. From 1979 to 1999 Columbu worked at the Rai di Cagliari as a program director, realizing among others the documentaries Visos. Dreams, Signs, Alerts (1985), Cross Dialogs (1989) and Villages and Villages (1991, Prix Europa winner). His career as director culminated in his first feature film Arcipelaghi (2001). In 2012 he realized Su re, a feature-length film considered by many to be one of the best Italian films of the decade. From 2015 to 2017 he is chair of the Sardinian Action Party.

Now in his seventies, is making the most adventurous music of his life… incredibly rich and evocative, and as a live performance, it’s utterly flawless. Cooper takes live guitar processing and sampling as his raw material, using it to build something complex and substantive, full of ideas and surprises, not just abandoning it half-formed. (Jonathan Dean – Brainwashed.) For the past 50 years, he has been an international artistic explorer constantly pushing the boundaries. He plays lap steel guitar and sings, he is an improviser and composer, song-maker, a visual and installation artist; film and video maker and radio arts producer.

Works in the field of the new technologies applied to design.He is a teacher and co-founder of progettoborca, artistic and architecture residency and research space.

Is a dancer and choreographer. She studied dance, theatre, and music.She has worked in Sardinia,  in Paris and in the Netherland where she studied, among the others with Carolyn Carlson, Jean Gaudin, Peter Goss, Steve Paxton, Julien Hamilton, Simon Forti, David Zambrano and Mark Tompkins. In 1989 she graduated from “School for New Dance Development” in Amsterdam, where she started her professional path of production and multidisciplinary researchers with many film-makers, visual artists, actors, and musicians. She realized more than 20 years of artistic productions, events that claim innovative approaches and pedagogies. She is the artistic director of the art not for profit association Carovana S.M.I. where she produces contemporary performative projects involving artists from all around the world.  

Is a PhD in Cultural Systems Sciences. She graduated in Art History and she holds an MA in Curating and Museum Exhibitions. Her interests include curating, history of exhibitions and transformations of the contemporary art museum through new forms of radical curating. She is a member of the Museums Research Department at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy at the University of Leicester (United Kingdom), where she was a Visitor Scholar in 2015. She works as an independent curator since 2010, developing curatorial projects in collaboration with institutions and Non for profit art spaces. She regularly collaborates with several magazines, including The Art Journal and Flash Art.

Is a curator and writer based in Athens/Greece. She is the founding and artistic director of Kunsthalle Athena, which started as an experimental platform and is now taking its permanent form. Fokidis is also the Head of Artistic Office in Athens of Documenta14# and the founding and editorial director of South As a State of Mind, a biannual art and culture publication (since 2012). Furthermore, Marina Fokidis was one of the curators of the 3rd Thessaloniki Biennial (2011), the commissioner and the curator of the Greek Pavilion at the 51rst Venice Biennial (2003) and one of the curators of the 1rst Tirana Biennial (2001). She collaborates with different art magazines such as Frieze, Flash Art and Manifesta Journal.

Is a Chilean-born artist, architect and filmmaker who lives in New York City. He is mostly known as an installation artist, often incorporating photography and covering socio-political issues and war. The art of Alfredo Jaar is usually politically motivated, strategies of representation of real events, the faces of war or the globalized world. His work often questions the notion of geography and suggests that geographic boundaries are arbitrary divisions that serve to reinforce systems of power and exploitation. Alfredo Jaar’s work has been shown extensively around the world: Venice Biennal (1986; 2007; 2009; 2013), São Paulo (1985; 1987; 2010), as well as in the Documenta in Kassel (1987; 2002). Important solo exhibitions include The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York (1992), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1992).

CLAUDIA LOSI

Is an Italian artist. Her work finds the natural, anthropic environment, and attention to natural and humanistic sciences the sources of inspiration. Devoted to the historical and anthropological aspects of the environment we live in, she is interested in exploring the concept of narration through art and writing by creating, at times, new and temporary communities of human interaction and imaginary sharing. Recent personal exhibitions include Asking Shelter, Galleria Monica De Cardenas (2017), Milan; How can I imagine being there?, Maramotti Collection of Reggio Emilia; About Proximity, Weaving & We, Second Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, Hangzhou, China; What My Shape Says, The Arsenal Theater, Milan; W.Women in Italian Design, Triennale Design Museum, Milan (2016). In 2015 Concha de Amor, performance, in occasion of Livorno in Contemporanea, Livorno; I can reach you (from one to many): White-Valente, Claudia Losi and Valerio Rocco Orlando, Cultural Breakdown Association, Lucca. In 2012 and 2010 she exhibited at the La Maréchalerie of Versailles, at the MAXXI Museum in Rome and at MAGASIN in Grenoble, at the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation in Milan at the Royal Academy in London. Since 2004 she has developed the Balena Project project: the mythical tale of a common whale bird made of real-life fabric that traveled around the world involving people and imaginers at every step.

 

 

PETER MAYO

Is Professor of Education Studies, Faculty of Education, University of Malta. He is currently a partner in the EU Tempus project, Lifelong Learning in Palestine, coordinated by the University of Glasgow.  Among all his books: Gramsci, Freire and Adult Education (Zed Books, 1999), Liberating Praxis (Praeger, 2004, Sense, 2008) which won a 2005 AESA award, Gramsci and Education (co-edited, Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), Learning and Social Difference (co-authored with C. Borg, Paradigm, 2006), Public Intellectuals, Radical Democracy and Social Movements. He co-edits the book series, Postcolonial Direction in Education for Palgrave-Macmillan.

LAZLO MOULTON

Is the editor in chief of The Lazlo Reader, a series of books dedicated to thematic  enquiry. A place of investigation through expression, a platform for debate and creativity.

She’s graduated in History of Modern Art at the University of Turin. She is the co-author of many publications and researchers, mainly focused on cultural politics, art system and territory. In 2013 she has been nominated as the cultural mediator for the candidacy of Matera European Capital of Culture. Within this framework, she mainly managed all the planning activities. From 2007 to 2014 she taught in the MA program on Management, marketing and multimedia for cultural heritages at Corep in Turin. Until 2010 she was a collaborator of the newspaper La Stampa, as contemporary art journalist. She is the co-founder of a.titolo. She actually works with the Fondazione Sardi for a series of artistic productions. Her first project is about the Turkish artist Fatma Bucak.

Born in Torre del Greco (Naples) in 1974, Valeria Parrella has gained a remarkable place in the Italian cultural landscape during the last decade. She made her debut as a writer with a collection of short stories, Mosca più balena (2003), for which she was awarded the Campiello Prize for best new writer and the Amelia Rosselli Prize, among others. More short stories appeared in the following years. The collection Per grazia ricevuta (2005) was shortlisted for the prestigious Strega Prize and won two awards: the Renato Fucini Prize and the Zerilli-Marimò Prize. In 2008 Parrella published her first and most successful novel, Lo spazio bianco, which explores the interconnectedness of a woman’s identity as both mother and daughter.  Other works by Parrella, Il verdetto (2007), Ciao maschio (2009), Ma quale amore (2010), which was awarded the Tomasi di Lampedusa Prize, and Lettera di dimissioni (2011) also deal with female protagonists at odds with cultural and social conventions. A significant part of Parrella’s literary production is devoted to the theatre for which she has written monologues and plays. Parrella also writes for a variety of newspapers and magazines, including La Repubblica, L’Espresso and Grazia.

Is an Italian artist based in Rome. He is also a curator and initiator of many collective projects and teaches at the Laboratorio delle Tecniche e delle Espressioni Artistiche, University of Venice (IUAV), and at The Art Institute of Boston. His art practice focuses on problematic and paradoxical situations that are hidden in common relationships or ordinary acts— thoughts that come to mind seemingly without a reason, small worries, quasi-obsessions—that are usually considered too insignificant to become a matter of discussion or of self-representation. Since 1977, he has exhibited in private and public spaces, in and out of the art world, in Italy and abroad. Currently, his work concentrates on the paradoxes that emerge from economic systems and social norms. For example, he has distributed almost 100,000 unique drawings for free, and also ingested banknotes at the end of an auction and then given them back to the successful bidder after their evacuation. He has also organized restaurants where the customers get paid for everything they consume, curated exhibitions where artworks are exchanged for the visitors’ ideas, and opened shops where the goods for sale are banknotes and the customer’s gaze is considered currency.

Is a PhD in social anthropology and a researcher associated with IIAC / LAIOS at EHESS in Paris. He is a specialist in gender issues, masculinity and sexuality among men in Morocco. It has been the subject of his doctoral dissertation and on whom he has written several articles for many international journals. He is a member of the editorial committee of the Marxist Période magazine and of the communist critic Contretemps. He has published articles on Gramsci as Culture, hégémonie et subjectivités. Traductions de Gramsci dans les sciences sociales anglophones for the journal Actuel Marx (2015/1 No. 57) and État intégral, bloc Historique et homonationalism en France: A collection of Période, 2017. More recently, he conducts research into political anthropology on politicization and new forms of engagement and struggle in the Social queer movements in Europe.

IRIT ROGOFF

Is a writer, teacher, curator, and organizer working at the intersection of contemporary art, critical theory, and emergent political manifestations. She is Professor of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, where she heads the PhD in Curatorial/Knowledge program and the MA in Global Arts program. Her practice deals with geography, globalization, and contemporary participatory practices in the expanded field of art. Her current work focuses on new practices of knowledge production and their impact on modes of research, under the title The Way We Work Now. As part of the collective freethought, Rogoff was one of the artistic directors of the Bergen Assembly, Bergen, 2016. In addition to contributing to numerous anthologies and catalogs, her publications include Looking Away—Participating Singularities, Ontological Communities (2013); Visual  Cultures as Seriousness (2013) (with Gavin Butt); Unbounded: Limits’ Possibilities (2012); and Terra Infirma: Geography’s Visual Culture (2000). She has also published in periodicals such as Art Journal, e-flux journal, and Third Text.

Is a dancer, choreographer and singer currently based in Cagliari. He is considered one of the exponents of Italian dance music. After training in the ’80s with Merce Cunningham and several experiences with New York’s avant-garde, he began his own original and esoteric choreographic path since the’ 90s. Back in Sardinia, Saiu addressed the interaction between folk and contemporary traditions, between dance and singing languages, thanks to artistic closeness with musician Giorgio Tedde and artistic collaborations including those with dancer Cornelia Wildisen and later with Maria Lai, Aldo Tilocca, Claudio Morganti, Fernando Grillo, Enrico Pau, and many others. In 2010, Saiu also moved to Berlin, Brussels and Mexico. In his performances, he interlaces folk tradition and contemporary art, music, dance and vocal experimentation, in a visionary and stylized aesthetic tension. Among the creations: Arab Death, Pan-seminar for a mistake and Calimero.

Is an artist, responsible for the Art Office of Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto since 2002. He’s one of the cofounders of the collective el puente_lab. Along with Filippo Fabbrica, he has curated the two editions of Methods. Research project on art society relations, the exhibition Geographies of Change at Cittadellarte (2004-2005), the two workshops of shared interdisciplinary projection Art City Society: new visions and perspectives for Venice in 2005, and From some things come other things… what to co-operate on? in 2006 in Gorizia. Since 1994 he has exhibited internationally.

Edits e-flux journal with Julieta Aranda, Anton Vidokle and Brian Kuan Wood. His work has appeared in or around Artforum, Frieze, Monthly Review, Jacobin, n+1 and in the catalog for the Museum of Capitalism, recently opened in Oakland, California. He is a founding member of New York experimental theatre company Woodshed Collective and counselor of Martha Rosler.

Philosopher and translator, he is one of the most influential queer activist and theorist in Italy. He translated into Italian prominent works on queer thought, notably by Judith Butler Butler (The Psychic Life of Power; Undoing Gender; Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly) and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Epistemology of the Closet). His last book is Il genere tra neoliberismo e neofondamentalismo [Gender between Neoliberalism and Neofundamentalism] (ed., Ombre Corte 2016). At the moment, he is working on the texts of Mieli, Rich, Wittig, Delphy, Sedgwick and Butler with the aim to reconstruct the genealogy of the queer trans-feminism, with the upcoming exit, Le dita e la luna. Sovversioni dell’eterosessualità [The Fingers and the Moon. Subversions of Heterosexuality].