V_AIR Vimercate Art in Residence

We are happy to be the technical partner of V_AIR Vimercate Art In Residence, curated by Maria Paola Zedda, the annual artist residency program. From June 27 to July 18, 2021, six artists selected through the public call issued by the Municipality of Vimercate spend a residency period inspired by the theme “DIALOGHI CON LA CATASTROFE. Riflessioni, pratiche e visioni per la rinascita.”

This is an exploratory journey where the artists are invited to reflect on the historical period we are experiencing. Starting from the etymology of the word catastrophe (katà strefein, overturn, flip), they will consider strategies and imaginaries related to how to emerge from catastrophe and the tools to react, imagining a possible rebirth. By activating dialogues and moments of listening with the territory, the artists reconstruct new imaginaries, consolidate alliances, and design new futures together.

Each artist is assigned a studio at the museum headquarters to create their works and is immersed in a study process that includes a school of practice, where artists and theorists hold lectures and masterclasses to deepen the project. In this context, Jacopo Miliani (artist), Enrico Monacelli, and Claudio Kulesko, co-authors of Demonologia Rivoluzionaria (NOT – NERO Edizioni), participate. The museum thus becomes a production site, a cultural factory, a space for creation, meeting, and community. The artists' studios are open to the public at scheduled times and become places of encounter and listening with residents, curators, scholars, and artists.

SILVIA AMANCEI AND BOGDAN ARMANU (Romania), SABA'S LOOK ON THE FUTURE. Amancei and Armanu’s artistic practice revolves around utopian imaginaries, working with concepts sometimes seemingly opposed such as work/immaterial work, design/speculation, future/history/ideology, all under the umbrella of a critical deconstruction aimed at overexciting the ability to look beyond capitalism and create the future as a common good. A plurality of worlds to come is interrogated through scripts, scenarios, stories, narratives mediated by a diverse range of artistic means, from text to drawing, photography, and film. Two characters will stage the future of capitalism and its symptoms by combining elements of performance with historical avant-gardes and late ‘70s-‘80s performance practices in Eastern Europe.

LENA CHEN in collaboration with MICHAEL NEUMANN (USA) – RIPOSO. A performance about powerlessness, withdrawing from the imperative of hyperproduction in culture and economy today. The Chinese-American artist meditates and sleeps for a period in a public space, inviting people to experience rest practices as a response to the catastrophic acceleration of capitalism. Riposo is a site-specific installation exploring relaxation as a politically subversive antidote to the current production system, located in Piazza Roma in Vimercate, surrounded by banks and commercial services. Riposo interrupts this profit system with the installation of a hammock where the public is invited to lie down, meditate, and sleep. The hammock is designed with fabric digitally manipulated to present Piazza Roma as a surreal dream strip. During the residency, the artists will practice techniques to improve the quality of rest and guide the public in group relaxation sessions using breath and visualization.

“Resting is a way to make our existences receptive to our wisdom and to spiritually strengthen ourselves with the goal of creating a fairer future.”

IRENE DIONISIO (Italy) – DA TOGLIERE IL FIATO. The artist collects and reworks audio-testimonies from Vimercate citizens for a collective restitution connected to public spaces through “sound walks.” She explores the issue of space, distance regulation, and the consequences on social life and people’s psychology, entrusting the air — a medium for sound diffusion but also an immaterial and metaphorical space perceived in recent months as contaminated — with the practice of listening to pandemic testimonies in Vimercate. Through a participatory process of description, reworking, and staging of “what is missing,” the aim is to build a physical and emotional path of communal catharsis. The sound installation Da togliere il fiato will be realized through performative walks and the production of a vinyl record collecting spatial and affective memory.

RUGGERO FRANCESCHINI AND ZELDA SOUSSAN (Italy, France) – USERS' GUIDE FOR THE PLANETH EARTH. This project investigates the possibility of public space becoming a common good. It does so together with those who inhabit and care for it, through shared responsibilities and reimagining daily life. By combining public participation with cultural and community mapping techniques, a site-responsive performance will be created as a result of dialogue with the specific context. A survival guide booklet for the future Vimercate will be produced, imagining the territory in new places and functions.

HAYRO MOHAMED HUTOMO (Indonesia) – MICROSCOPIC POWER: ZOOM IN AN INVISIBLE REALITIES. Microscopic Powers: Zoom in An Invisible Realities reflects on the relationship between food, environment, and climate change through a critical and intersectional approach investigating health, culture, politics, society, and food biopolitics practices on local and international scales. Through workshops with citizens for DNA extraction from foods, the project reflects on possible future food scenarios after climate change.

SMIRNA KULENOVIC (Bosnia) – TAROT OF POSTCAPITALIST DESIRE. This interactive art project aims to use participatory design to create an innovative Tarot card deck imagining future elements and active characters of the post-pandemic “Utopia,” seen from the perspective of a group of local youth and visualized by a neural network (artificial intelligence). The Tarot transforms from a mystical practice to a deeply political interactive tool. The collaboratively designed symbols are meant to question, interpret, and understand the culture and values of the society we live in. They provide space for critiques and narratives that interrogate the dominant ideologies of unsustainable exploitation of human and natural resources, leaving to chance the possibility of encountering unexpected futures.

V_AIR 2021 is a project realized with the contribution of Regione Lombardia.

Discover the full program here.