StayWithMe , Art in turbulent times in Collaboration with the MAD Murate Art District
2020-12-11
Stay with Me was imagined as a series of actions and reflections around art in turbulent times, a project proposed by curator Renata Summo-O'Connell to a group of artists, curators and scholars in Spring 2019. This stage of the project joins forces with the MAD Murate Art District, sharing a common strong interest and commitment towards art in the public space and collaborative art in the context of the MAD's Progetto RIVA ( see below in section v).
i. Summo 'Connell used the term turbulence referring to the problematic relationship between cultural policies and the threatened survival of artistic practice, to the value of cultural and artistic policies in a natural environment that is collapsing, to the crisis of the somewhat superficial notion of “artworld” that overlooks the evident multiplicity of the existing “artworlds”.
Nobody would have ever imagined the ensuing pandemic, where the concept of turbulence acquired a completely different dimension.
During what was evidently a tentacular and viral time in fact, where people are only apparently isolated in fragmented and separate spaces, a deep inter-connection has emerged, despite individual creative practices.
ii. Stay with Me has then become a process more than a project, a varied and complex journey between intimately personal and more public realms.
The invitation to each participant has been to explore our being uncontainable, as art is the uncontainable other (1). At the same time, we are in a multiverse, as Jalal Toufic says, where art makes visible what would otherwise be invisible (2).
Becoming aware of this, from March 2020 this international and diverse group has dedicated a series of actions to this moment, but not only, to bear witness to their presence within it, Part of the experience has been the dedication of their actions to a different point of view: to a willingness to build a positive and vital reality rather than reacting to uncertainty, fear and death.
iii. The various artistic actions, the collaborations and the texts have converged into an online platform, www.stay-with-me.org, where they are susceptible to a continuous transformation by their authors.
The reflections, images, artworks produced so far within
StayWithMe now inhabit within spaces on a platform (
www.stay-with-me.org)
javascript:void(0);/*1607702254976*/ that have been symbolically called
rooms. Rooms, because it was from their rooms that the participants met and spoke online, although each in distant and different locations.
iv. The various contributions are susceptible to transformation as they may be reviewed and changed according to the progress their authors will bring about in time.
Launching this platform, the group is ready to share what has emerged so far in a process that is ongoing, that we perceive as unfinished.
The collective effort that has connected this international group of authors, amongst whom visual artists, composers, poets, curators, critics, has highlighted and continues to explore a dimension of reciprocity that allows for a serene interest in the others’ work as well as for each author own’s creative work.
v. In this stage of the project, Stay With Me collaborates with the MAD , www.murateartdistrict.it, in the context of the Progetto RIVA ( https://www.murateartdistrict.it/en/progetto-riva/ ) articulating the public space and collaborative aspects shared by the two projects. This reciprocity dimension, characteristic of AILAE’s mission and of the Artegiro project, suggests a greater complexity than what the word may suggest. Reciprocity is as captivating a concept as unexplored and not only in the cultural context.
Doing culture, building content, meaning and exploring creativity has all to do with reciprocity and cultivating it.
For this reason this platform is an invitation to audiences to get to know the work produced in these months, to explore its contents, to openly discuss with the authors their work and continue this dialogue.
Join the conversation on @ArtegiroContemporaryArt instafeed,.
