The Game has a time and a space of its own, established by precise rules. It is not ordinary life; it is a metaphor for reality, for it takes reality to a different plane.
Children create their own games, using their imagination in the application and invention of rules they learn to follow.
[J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens, Einaudi, Torino 1946]
The Game, like Art, does not have a direct moral purpose: it is a tool of continuous dialogue between the virtual and the real, the dreamlike and the concrete, emotion and interaction, which becomes a poetic act when informed by awareness.
Terzo Paradiso, an exhibition-workshop by the Education Office of Cittadellarte, in collaboration with the Education Department of Castello di Rivoli and the CIAl – the National Consortium for the Recovery and Recycling of Aluminium. Presented at the Festivaletteratura (Mantova, 9/11 September 2005), at Exposcuola, the International Show comparing the educational offer of Europe and the Mediterranean (Salerno, 9/12 November 2005) and at ReMida Day (Villa Manin di Passariano, Codroipo (UD), 20/21 May 2006). The Workshops on aluminium recycling created a useful context in which to introduce children, teenagers and families to the concept of the Third Paradise, using the medium of art and creative experimentation as the vehicle of the important message of respect for nature and urban space, implicit in the theoretical structure of the entire “operaAction”.
ABI-TANTI, curated by Anna Pironti, Head of the Castello di Rivoli Contemporary Art Museum Department of EducationThrough ABI-TANTI (born from an idea of Manuela Corvino) the Castello di Rivoli Contemporary Art Museum Education Department with the Bay infants school of the multiethnic quarter of San Salvario, starts out from play to bring back into play the concepts of identity and difference, the meeting with otherness, the foreign as foreigner. The ABI-TANTI, realised on a wooden base and covered with an infinity of materials, colours, graphic signs and alphabets, in the horizontal dimension, so from the ground up, flow together in a grand collective play thought up for the piazza, once again intended as a meeting place for all the people.
CRIMINAL MOUSE, a project by Emilia Patruno, realised by the inmates of San Vittore.
Criminal Mouse is a board game born in the historic prison of San Vittore in Milan from an idea by Emilia Patruno, journalist and animator of the inmates of the editorial staff of the site www.ildue.it, to put us in the shoes of the inmates and simulate the tortuous path of the life of a convict: from the moment of arrest to that of freedom regained. In addition to being a game, Criminal Mouse is a cultural operation designed to bring the world of prison inmates closer to that of the free. On Friday the 23rd of June, at the inauguration of Art at the Centre of a Responsible Transformation of Society 2006, the public will have the opportunity of playing Criminal Mouse. The participants will be divided into game groups that also include a number of people who worked on the realisation of the game along with Emilia Patruno.
by Michael Aschauer (Austria), Maia Gusberti (Switzerland), Sepp Deinhofer (Austria), Nik Thoenen (Switzerland)
A net-art project developed by a team of 4 people, Logicaland is a global simulation program that can be controlled by an unlimited number of participants who, as opposed to what happens in scientific research centres, intervene in a public experiment. It can be defined as a simulation game that through the Web allows anyone in any part of the world to offer their own contribution to influencing the global situation, highlighting in this way how the economic, political, environmental and demographic processes of the entire world are closely connected and interdependent.
by Big Hope [(Miklòs Erhardt (Hungary), Dominic Hislop (Scotland) , Elske Rosenfeld (Germany)]
As opposed to the game of Monopoly it is inspired on, Commonopoly suggests a model for a system in which the resources are shared and all people are equally responsible: a form of alternative economy to the capitalist model based on the concepts of sharing, giving, exchange, collaboration, solidarity and mutual trust. The project itself foresees a shared creative platform, since the game itself grows thanks to the content the players themselves contribute
by Andreja Kuluncic (Serbia/Croatia)
The project is a targeted distribution of the theory of “distributive justice”, through a series of informative resources and, above all, a number of interactive games on the Internet that allow users to choose their own ideal society through questions based on the models by which power and goods are distributed. Through the game, that can be played in various languages (Croat, German, English and Italian), each player creates his personal distributive model and is immediately confronted with the consequences of their choices.
by Raphaelle De Groot (Canada)
From November 2003 to April 2004, at the Cerruti Mill in Biella, Raphaëlle de Groot conducted her project involving the workers in the factory in a very open artistic project. Along with the employees of the mill, the artist developed the rules of a “game” in which creativity and the value of people are brought to the centre of attention, and thus to the centre production process of the factory itself
by Beatrice Catanzaro (Italy) in collaboration with Michele Fontana (Italy)
A public art intervention focused on the public role of space, intended as the place for meeting and exchanging opinions and experiences: an important function, that the city itself has long known how to respond to, but that the contemporary metropolis can no longer satisfy. The game of “boule”, in this sense, is a pretext in that it represents a device for aggregation to create a space for human relations
“I found many of similarities between the rules of the original Monopoly board game, that has the scope of obtaining a monopoly over somebody or something, and those of the European Union for a person to gain access. I transformed a recognisable game into a labyrinth in which the pathways and procedures are never certain. In the game I reproduced the professions, differentiated according to prestige and social utility, practised by non-European citizens within the countries of the European Union. The scope of the game is to obtain European citizenship: the possibility of winning or losing is determined mostly by chance”
(D. Kaludjerovic)
by Emilio Fantin (Italy)
The installation is conceived as a device that “integrates”, as the name itself suggests, dreams and reality.
Six people will be invited to sit inside the installation in such a way as to be invisible to each other. They will be able to talk to each other but their voices will be altered by a special acoustic device. In this way six individuals will be able to meet, get to know each other and exchange various kinds of input, but without being able to concentrate on perceptive aspects and the visibility of the other.
There will be two moments of conversation inside the installation: one in the morning, one in the morning when each person will recount their memories of the night and how their dreams related to the reality of the previous day, the other in the evening, recounting how these nocturnal images conditioned their day.
The main aim was that of creating Territorial work sites in Italy, activating new synergies between enterprise, territory, and the Persons living, working and visiting them.
It is precisely on the capacity to create, intended as the capacity to bring into communication, that we feel the project has to be based: to create a network of experience, production methods, cultural values that bring together and stimulate the creativity of territories and the places they are rooted in.
An ambitious project, because the world of production is now taking stock of its immense complexity, and the significant problems it is facing: pollution, scarce resources, depersonalization, global competition.
From here, the intuition of having to start from the very act of consumption, criticizing it not to destroy it but to “bring it closer” to people. How?
By tackling its critical points: meaning, the almost total lack we have today of contact with the materials that products are made of, the lack of tools that allow us to recognize the qualitative and instrumental elements of a product, consumption that consumes and cancels out the resources of the planet.
And, from there, to manage to share the new prospects of consumption: like putting the person at the center, along with a shared mental attitude that leads us to choose products capable of answering the questions: what is it? How is it made? Where is it from? Where will it end up?
Finally, the exceptional combination that art, as the initial and authentic place of creation, and enterprise as the place of doing, can generate, through value points: landscape; working motivation; inventive and entrepreneurial capacity; productive fabric; valorization of difference; ethics, aesthetics, excellence of product, family circle; the person – the workshop of the human being.
From this comes the need for a product guide, which we are working on that tells of the products, that brings production closer to consumption in an aware manner, a chance to explore our Country in all its capacity for innovation and cultural integration.
Through 2007 the project diversified both in a spatial sense (articulated on the basis of Regional Contacts Local Developers) and in terms of the variety of person-alized approaches and proposals in the territories we have interacted with.
In Udine, Friuli, we started a research project with the University into the “value-points” expressed in the Art and Enterprise manifesto. This project allowed us to outline the methodology we were looking for and translate it into a Master course in cultural and sustainable development, which was begun in Biella along with the Città Studi and the Turin Academy of Fine Arts.
An exciting moment was also had on the Itinerary in Irpinia organized by Antonella Annecchiarico and Gennaro Castellano, along with A.titolo, the Castello di Rivoli Education Department, Gabi Scardi, Massimo Simonetta (Ancitel Lombardy), Mario Piazza (46xy graphics studio), Michelangelo Pistoletto, Armin Linke, Olivo Barbieri, Claudia Losi.
They were asked to extract the elements comprising the identity or identities of Irpinia through its places, people and capacities, to give this territory a new position that connects it inside and outside its confines. The adventure continues, as a project composing itself step by step of learning, experimenting, bringing together the companies, the places, the Persons and the many skills necessary for creating a shared network.
As Michelangelo Pistoletto has taught us, starting from creativity to attempt to modulate the social phenomenon in a different way is one of the most wonderful adventures that can be undertaken today.
(Emanuele Enria, coordinator of the Italia in Persona project)
Every territory should seek to rediscover its own distinctive traits and to expand them into potentials for change.
Some time ago Cittadellarte began to develop the project, Italy in Person, with just this goal in mind. An element key to the success of this project is the presence in the territory of a body capable of meeting the challenge and participating in the change. From 2006 in Friuli Venezia Giulia a partnership has been struck with Modidi, the local representative of the ReMida project, an established and recognized activity in which Cittadellarte is already involved.
The workshops held in Trieste and Udine with the goal of establishing a local group of creative individuals to imagine the future in keeping with the basic ideas of Italy in Person have given rise to simulations of creative projects.
By seeking the cultural and social roots of products and traditions, an attempt has been made to re-focus public attention on the importance of investing in culture as a means of re-launching the territory and its social fabric, the true humus of development.
The project simulations that have been worked out have highlighted the existence of a strong cultural identity and of a demand for innovation and change in Friuli, represented by the rise of a new generation of residents and by the decline of certain Friulan business sectors.
The basic idea of In Trieste You Can …: Postcards from Trieste, is to break with the territory’s cultural isolation by inviting creative individuals from around the world to be nonviolent, conditioning agents of change.
The movement, Sintinsi: Mechanisms of Return (which takes its name from the Friulan dialect expression meaning let’s keep in touch, but also let’s sit down) instead aspires to capitalize on the experiences of Friulans abroad, to transform the collective imagination by enriching it with the vision of the emigrant who returns, sometimes after generations, to his place of origin.
(Francesco Bernabei, Responsible of economicsoffice)
