Art for smart sustainable cities
5 - 24 October 2015, Palais des Nations, Geneva
 
5 – 24 October 2015
Palais des Nations, Geneva, Swiss
Hall in front of Delegates Lounge, Third Floor
 
Exhibition
“Art for smart sustainable cities”
 
curated by Juan E. Sandoval (Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto)
research project by STEALTH.unlimited (Ana Dzokic and Marc Neelen)
in collaboration with United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Housing and Land Management Unit
 
The exhibition objective is to communicate challenges to sustainable urban development and inform on examples of solutions by artists to address those challenges.
 
On World Habitat Day, 5 October 2015, the UNECE Housing and Land Management Unit, in collaboration with Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto, opens the Art for Smart Sustainable Cities exhibition. It will be open for Palais des Nations visitors from 5 to 24 October.
The closing day of the exhibition coincides with the inauguration day of the The Rebirth a huge installation by Michelangelo Pistoletto and Cittadellarte, at the Ariana Park, created for the 70th Anniversary of the United Nations.
 
Art and city according to Cittadellarte research are in a never-ending and inseparable relationship. City is a place where the various cultures and economies meet and collide. The city is the living mirror of human cultures and its values. The exhibition will introduce visitors to the concrete works and research on the urban experiences and relationship between culture and art. It will present a range of practical experimentations executed in very different urban contexts with the photos, posters, installations and other examples of how art and culture can re-define and reinvent a city and life of its citizens shall it be such aspects as housing, economy, resources, i.e. food and energy, or the politics of the city.
 
 
"Cittadellarte researches into current experiences of innovative ways of tackling the most urgent challenges cities are (going to) deal with, focussing on artistic practices engaged in urban transformation and co-living in the third millennium.
This exhibition gives account of the variety and relevance of artistic practices as enzymes of urban change, as engines for the activation of participation of the individual in the community. In this travelling, light and flexible exhibition set-up that will follow Habitat III workings around the world, we bring forward some of the breathtaking, daring, sometimes provoking, and always imaginative cases originated, sparked or inspired by artists and activists in communities that can trigger us to understand how we can take action ourselves. Action to re-define our city, in terms of how we live (housing), how we produce (economy), the resources we have at hand (food, energy, water), the new civitas (citizens action), and the politics of the city (collective decision making) – with likely more to come."
(Paolo Naldini, Director of Cittadellarte)
 
The exhibition incorporates some of the research Cittadellarte invited STEALTH.unlimited to contribute with in the past years and that formed essential part of the activities Cittadellarte devoted to these issues developing a program of study and research, intervention and onsite experimentations, sharing and presentation throughout the world.
Among many others, the following cases will be presented:
• Public spaces (Rebirth, the sculpture by Pistoletto, in the garden of the Palais des Nations)
• Food, energy (R-Urban project in Colombes, one of Paris suburb, initiated by AAA focusing on urban food production)
• Collective decision making (Better Reykjavik platform, adopted by the Reykjavik’s mayor and involving citizens in proposing what is next to be done by the city).
 
 
Installation by Juan E. Sandoval, artoffice Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto 
 
Project Row Houses, Rick Lowe
 
Our bows, our arrows, our shields (el narativo de Tupac), William Cordova, 2014
 

Rebirth installation, from 24 October at Ariana Park

 
Programme of the opening:
Monday 5 October 2015, 1.00 pm
• Opening remarks by the Master of Ceremonies Mr. Marco Keiner, Acting Director, UNECE Forests, Land and Housing Division
• Welcome speech by Ms. Charlotte Warakaulle (Director, UNOG Library), welcome speech by Mr. Christian Friis Bach (UNECE Executive Secretary), welcome speech by Paolo Naldini (Director of Cittadellarte)
• Dance performance by the “Dansons comme Noureev” Dancing School (Geneva)
 
 
This is going to be a mobile exhibition, which would be possible to assemble and disassemble easily in different spaces.
The exhibition is planned to be run on:
• 14-16 December 2015 in Rome during the UNECE intergovernmental Committee on Housing and Land Management Committee session and the smart city workshop
• 16-21 March 2016 in Prague (Czech Republic), during the European HABITAT III Regional Consultation
• 17-25 October 2016  in Quito (Ecuador), during the HABITAT III Conference
 
 
Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto
Fondazione Pistoletto has a twenty-year-long experience running a workshop on art and politics at Cittadellarte that brings two essential elements together: art as creative faculty and politics as the art of government that involves all sectors of social life.
At this time of momentous change in society worldwide, an activity in which art and politics work together has become essential in order to develop a prospect of sustainability on a global scale. Art and politics are, in fact, two elements that can be united to produce a third element, one that constitutes a completely new reality for which the whole world is waiting. This is the meaning of the word demopraxis that calls for a direct engagements of the faculty of creation into the structures and forms of our life together.
 
UNECE Housing and Land Management Unit
Housing and Land Management Unit is a part of United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Forests Land and Housing Division. Its main objectives are to promote sustainable housing and urban development in all the 56 member States of the UNECE region.
 
 
 
HABITAT III: www.habitat3.org
 
World Habitat Day: http://urbanoctober.org