Visible
where art leaves its own field and becomes part of something else

 

 

 

 


Visible
 – where art leaves its own field and becomes visible as part of something else is a research project in contemporary art that has been undertaken by Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto in collaboration with Fondazione Zegna, curated by Matteo Lucchetti e Judith Wielander.

Visible is developed through a publishing project and an Award, whose 2011 edition has been assessed to Helena Producciones, while for the 2013 edition has been assessed to Ahmet Öğüth for The Silent University after a public jury event at the Van Abbemuseum of Eindhoven.

Visible. On Display, in the within of “Arte al Centro 2013”, Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto from October 5, 2013.
Display design: Leftloft, Milan. Photo: Davide Calafà.
Visible. On Display at “Arte al Centro 2013” 


about

visible
 examines the spatial relationships within which different players, from different cultural backgrounds and with different temperaments, generate meaning and form alliances. The alliance between actors and spectators brings to life the space of action of cultural and social relationships.
visible brings to light and gives strength to artistic actions which have a real capacity to experiment and produce visions that can have impact on the social and cultural imagination of our contemporary world.
visible is based on an idea put forward by Michelangelo Pistoletto, which he originally expressed in 1994 through his Progetto Arte: “Art is the most sensitive and complete expression of thought and it is time for artists to take upon themselves the responsibility of ensuring communication between all other human activities, from the economy to politics, to science and religion, through education and behaviour. In other words, all aspects of the social fabric.”
visible analyses particular cultural and geographical contexts, clearly expressing their different forms of perception. It points to struggles in social power as a fundamental indicator for the development of society. […]

further information: www.visibleproject.org/about.php

book
The publishing project took shape between the spring of 2009 and 2010.
Nine curators were involved in researching for the book which is edited by Angelika Burtscher and Judith Wielander and published by Sternberg Press, Berlin.
The curators present recent artistic productions, all of which contain a critical observation of the social, cultural and political landscape they are part of and from which they draw inspiration.
The result of this process is a reconnaissance tour of forty-one artistic positions involved in building or rebuilding the imagination of the present.
The interdisciplinary ideas published in this volume consign to art the potential for acting and deciphering commonly acknowledged codes of the world, reinterpreting the events of history, and thus guiding their influence on our future.
The forty-one artistic processes described in this publication are ideal for building up hybrid, transversal, and open narratives.
9 curators: Cecilia Canziani, Anna Colin, Hu Fang, Emiliano Gandolfi, Julieta González, Raimundas Malašauskas, Mihnea Mircan, Gabi Ngcobo, and Elvira Dyangani Ose.
41 artists: Alterazioni Video, Maria Thereza Alves, Aspra.mente, Patrick Bernier and Olive Martin, Anna Best, Francisco Camacho, CAMP, Santiago Cirugeda (Recetas Urbanas), Teddy Cruz, Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska, Fadaiat, Cao Fei, Frente 3 de Fevereiro, Sou Fujimoto Architects, Goldin+Senneby, Gugulective, Zheng Guogu, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Alon Levin, Goddy Leye, Jill Magid, Darius Mikšys, Nástio Mosquito, Ciprian Muresan, Jesús Bubu Negrón, Offer and exchange, Progetto Diogene, Publink, Wanda Raimundi-Ortíz, Pedro Reyes, Anna Scalfi, Jonas Staal, Xu Tan, Javier Téllez, Tercerunquinto, Bert Theis, Ana Laura López de la Torre, Judi Werthein, Ming Wong, Mlu Zondi with an essay by Saskia Sassen.

award
The visible Award is an international production award of 25000 euros devoted to art work in the social sphere.
The visible Award is for art projects – which have not yet been realised or are in their initial phases – that lead to involvement and interaction with particular urban or rural communities.
These are projects that share an awareness of artistic production as an active element and agency in contemporary society, and with critical and future oriented aspirations. Projects with artistic approaches that, in a radical and proactive way, reconsider different models of economic development and the allocation of resources, access to information, and ecological and environmental needs, as well as experimenting with participatory and democratic political models. These processes create areas for reflection and mobilization, acting as a field of action within the public domain, in favor of a reading of participation that considers the social body as a potential power for bringing about responsible change.
The curators’ planning for the first visible award began in the early months of 2011, when the curators assembled an advisory board for the award.
The board is composed by 17 international curators, including: 16 beaver group (Rene Gabri and Ayreen Anastas), Anna Colin, Alfredo Cramerotti, Hu Fang, Luigi Fassi, Emiliano Gandolfi, Julieta Gonzales, Heejin Kim, Anders Kreuger, Raimundas Malasauskas, Gabi Ncgobo, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Sarah Rifky, Simon Sheikh, Gregory Sholette, Sandra Terdjman, and WHW.
Visible in Cittadellarte
Visible has been on show in Cittadellarte in the within of “Arte al Centro 2010” and “Arte al Centro 2013”.

The visible installation at Arte al Centro 2010
The Silent University
Visible Award 2013 

International production award devoted to socially engaged artistic practices in a global context
 

Tuesday 20th May 2014, 3pm to 7.30pm at Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford
Wednesday 21st May 2014, 6pm to 9pm at The Showroom, London

On the 14th of December 2013 the second edition of the Visible Award was awarded to The Silent University, a knowledge exchange platorm initiated by the artist Ahmet Öğüt and led by a group of asylum seekers, refugees and migrants. 
The jury, chaired by Charles Esche – Director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and curator of the upcoming Sao Paolo Biennial – assessed the ten shortlisted projects and the criteria for their evaluation before an audience who gathered at the Van Abbemuseum to join the lively discussion and express their preference in the final round of votes.



The invited members of the jury were Tania Bruguera (artist, New York), Jeanne Van Heeswijk (artist, Rotterdam), Koyo Kouho (curator, Artistic Director of Raw Material Company, Dakar), Nikos Papastergiadis (University of Melbourne, Sydney), and Michelangelo Pistoletto (artist, and Artistic Director of Cittadellarte, Biella). 
The 25,000 euros prize will go towards the existing branches of the University in London, Stockholm, and Paris, and will work to strengthen the infrastructure through which The Silent University and its members operate.
 
The London branch of the Silent University will produce a two-­day event, on the 20th and 21st of May, in collaboration with the Oxford Migration Studies Society and the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford, and with the contemporary art space The Showroom, London. 
These two events will focus on drawing together members of the London Silent University in dialogue with artists, curators and theoreticians who are working on projects that deal with migration issues in the legal framework of Western democracies. 
The Visible Award, which in its mission is looking for art that “leave its own field and becomes visible as part of something else”, is proud to accompany The Silent University in its encounter with the academic realm outside of the space of art.

The 2013 Visible Award official ceremony will take place as part of the event at the University of Oxford, where Paolo Naldini and Andrea Zegna – representatives of Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto and Fondazione Zegna – will present the award to Ahmet Öğüt
Öğüt, a Kurdish artist from Turkey, is the second recipient of the Visible Award after the Colombian collective Helena Producciones were awarded the prize in 2011 at a ceremony held at the Serpentine Gallery, London for the 8th edition of the Festival de Performance de Cali, which was realized with great success in the Autumn of 2012.
 
The Silent University is an autonomous knowledge exchange platform led by refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. 
Silent University members have had a professional life and academic training in their home countries, but are unable to use their skills or professional training due to a variety of reasons related to their status. Acting as a group of lecturers, consultants and research fellows, each group is contributing to the programme in different ways, which include developing courses connected to their qualifications, specific research on key themes as well as personal reflections on what it means to be a refugee and asylum seeker. 
The Silent University wants to address and reactivate the knowledge of the participants and make the exchange process mutually beneficial. The Silent University’s aim is to challenge the idea of silence as a passive state, and explore its powerful potential through group reflection to make apparent the systemic failure and the loss of skills and knowledge experienced through the silencing process of people seeking asylum.
The Silent University started in London in 2012 in collaboration with Delfina Foundation and Tate and was later hosted by The Showroom. It is currently being established in Sweden in collaboration with Tensta Konsthall and ABF Stockholm, and in France, at Le 116 in Montreuil, Greater Paris region.

The events are curated by The Silent University team in collaboration with Visible curators – Matteo Lucchetti and Judith Wielander – and Catherine L. Crooke (Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford) and Louise Shelley (The Showroom, London).
 
Program

Oxford, 20th of May 2014
Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford
3 Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3TB

•  3.00 pm -­ 4.00 pm ceremony
•  4.00 pm -­ 4.30 pm lecturers presentations
•  4:30 pm ­‐ 5.00 pm consultants discussion
•  5.00 pm ­‐ 5.30 pm break
•  5.30 pm - 6.30 pm open discussion
•  6.30 pm ­‐ 7.30 pm reception

Invited guests: 
Emily Fahlen (The Silent University, Stockholm), Jonas Staal (artist, Rotterdam); Aaron Cezar (Delfina Foundation founding director, London)
 
London, 21st of May 2014
The Showroom
63 Penfold Street London NW8 8PQ

•  6.00 ­‐ 7.00 pm lecturers presentations
•  7.00 -­ 8.00 pm consultants presentations
•  8.00 ‐ 8.15 pm break
•  8.15 -­ 9.00 pm open discussion

Invited guests: 
Emily Fahlen (The Silent University, Stockholm), Jonas Staal (artist, Rotterdam), Aaron Cezar (Delfina Foundation founding director, London).
 

Both events are open to the public but seat are limited, so please RSVP here: http://goo.gl/j5g5d9
Visible award 2011

The long list for the visible Award 2011 was selected by the curators from the 27 projects submitted by 27 of the 32 invited artists.
From the long list of 15 proposals, after an intense and long debate, the jurors Ute Meta Bauer - Associate Professor and Director of the Visual Arts Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge), Hans Ulrich Obrist - Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery, Okwui Enwezor - Director of German art museum Haus der Kunst in Munich, Michelangelo Pistoletto for Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto and Andrea Zegna for Fondazione Zegna, selected a shortlist icluding the following project proposals: Helena Producciones: "8 Festival de la Performance di Cali" further information Nastio Mosquito: "Santa Claus is Going to Become an Immigrant" further information Marinella Senatore: "Jammin' Drama Project" further information Yangjiang Group: "Progressing from Invisible to Unnoticed" further information Focusing and debating on the shortlist, the jurors awarded the prize to the project "8 Festival de la Performance di Cali" by Helena Producciones.


Michelangelo Pistoletto with Ana María Millán (of the collective Helena Producciones), 
and co-organisers Andrea and Anna Zegna.

Motivation of the award: 
The realization of a festival, in the specific context of Cali, in Colombia, conceived and run by artists, is a project built on a strong and precise transformative potential, which bases its action on an articulated relationship with the civic society of a local community. The activities will foster a sustainable relationship between international artistic practices, local needs and public demands, in that spirit of collective production of knowledge that the format of the festival can facilitate. The festival of performance is read as a long-term laboratory to experiment a diversity of models of civic imagination, where art is able to empower everyday life.

The winning project of the visible Award 2011 was presented on the 11th of January 2012 at the Serpentine Gallery, in London.
 
read an article about the award: www.theartnewspaper.com
 
2013 Visible Award
public jury at the Van Abbemuseum
Van Abbemuseum - Eindhoven, 14th December 2013
 
The winner of the 2013 Visibile Award 2013 is Ahmet Ögüt with "The Silent University".
 
 

2013 Visible Award: the jury as a public event
 
The 2013 Visible Award, on the occasion of its second edition, evolves its format, seeking an innovative approach that passes through a more transparent methodology around its jury session, which in this edition will take the form of a public event at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. 
The jury session will not only be a debate between experts, in order to select an exemplary socially engaged art project, but rather a moment for sharing knowledge and collective learning, that in the process of assessing the winning project, will hopefully create an opportunity to put at work the vast network of professionals existing around the Visible project, that so far connects 45 curators, over 200 artists and 30 independent art spaces across the globe.
 
Visible. On Display, Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto, from October 5th 2013
 
On the 14th of December 2013 a prestigious, interdisciplinary jury, chaired by Charles Esche and composed of a group of intellectuals operating in different fields of culture, will gather together in order to assess the merits of the artistic projects and select the winner of the 2013 Visible Award
The invited members of the jury are:
Tania Bruguera (artist, New York), Joseph Grima (architect, writer, former editor of Domus, Milan), Jeanne Van Heeswijk (artist, Rotterdam), Koyo Kouho (curator, Artistic Director of Raw Material Company, Dakar), Nikos Papastergiadis (contemporary social-cultural studies professor, Sydney) and Michelangelo Pistoletto (artist, Artistic Director of Cittadellarte, Biella). A sixth member of the jury will be represented by the vote of the audience who will gather at the Van Abbemuseum for the event.

To take part in the event please make your reservation on the Van Abbemuseum website
 
The ten projects that will be assessed have been shortlisted among a list of 34 art projects nominated by the 2013 Visible advisory board and the 48 projects received, for the first time, through an open call.
The ten shortlisted projects are:
Sammy BalojiKumbuka (Congo); Beta LocalFrom-­Tool‐to-­Tool! (Puerto Rico); Mabe BethonicoMuseum of Public Concerns (Brazil); Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center, One Dollar (Cambodia); Beatrice CatanzaroBait Al Karama, (Palestine); Fernando García ‐ DoryPaese Nuovo / New Country – Borgate (Italy); Inkanyiso (Zanele Muholi)Oui Twenty/20 (South Africa); Ahmet ÖgütThe Silent University (Turkey); The Propeller GroupChrist the King of Bling (Vietnam); RuangrupaThe Gerobak Bioskop (Cinema Cart) Network (Indonesia).
 
The long-listed projects will be made available on the Visible website www.visibleproject.org. The list features projects by the following artists and collectives: Arteam, Beyond Pressure (Moe Satt), Caminul Cultural, Futurefarmers, Thierry Geoffroy / Colonel, Marlon Griffith, Dor Guez, Honf . House of Natural Fibers, Suresh Kumar G, Iconoclasistas, Les Palettes du Kamer, Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis, Amina Menia, Mosireen, Maria Papadimitriou, Rafani collective, Rigo 23, Meir Tati, Temporary Occupations, Teatro de Operacoes, Bert Theis, Yeh Wei--]li, Siren Eun Young Jung, and Arseniy Zhilyaev. The Visible team would like to express its gratitude to all of them for sharing their work with our network.
 
The Visible Award
The Visible Award is an international production award of 25,000 euros devoted to art work in the social sphere that aims to produce innovative artistic projects that are able to become visible in fields other than the artistic one.
 
 
Programme of the 14th December 2013:
 10.00 a.m.  Welcome by Charles Esche Introduction of the jury and voting system
 10.30 a.m.   Introduction of the 10 shortlisted projects by Visible curators Matteo Lucchetti and Judith Wielander 
 1.30 p.m.  Lunch break
 3.00 p.m.  Statements from the jurors about socially engaged artistic practices, moderated by Charles Esche
 4.30 p.m  Summary of the 10 shortlisted project by Charles Esche
 5.00 p.m.  Jurors speak about the reasons why to vote for their chosen projects
 6.00 p.m.  Coffee break
 6.45 p.m.  Announcement of the Top 3, compiled by jurors / Q&A between the jurors and audience
 7.30 p.m.  Public vote
 8.30 p.m.  Drinks
 9.00 p.m.  Announcement of the winner of 2013 Visible Award by Michelangelo Pistoletto and Andrea Zegna
 
 
Visible. On Display
Where art leaves its own field and becomes visible as part of something else
 
project curated by:
Matteo Lucchetti and Judith Wielander
exhibition format:
Leftloft
 
Visible. On Display. Traveling exhibition project. Visible is a production prize and a research project dedicated to the artistic practices engaged in the social sphere in a global context. 
In collaboration with Fondazione Zegna.