by Claudia Zanfi, artistic director aMAZElab (www.amaze.it)
Atlante Mediterraneo is a collective project, designed to create a network of theoretical and artistic research among the countries that look onto the Mediterranean. An international and multi-disciplinary exchange space, a crossroads of different ideas, theoretical reflections and contemporary artistic practices. Atlante Mediterraneo has prepared a series of activities, theoretical debates, and “exhibitions as expeditions”. Starting out from a reflection structured and shared among the various partners on the concept of mobility, society and politics within the Mediterranean area, aMAZElab and its partners held a series of territorial workshops in various cities.
The project started off with the round table “Cyprus Day. Art rebuild society”, a study day dedicated to the realities of Cyprus, the relationship between creativity and society, in one of the last divided city of Europe.
The starting and finishing points of this round tour – Barcelona and Istanbul, developed studies on the transformation of the two cities: migration; flows of people; gentrification; tourism.
A garden for all (Alexandria, Egypt), is a sharing workshop - an experience with “Gudran Association for Art and Development”- on the implementation of a rural area near Alexandria: El Max, a semi-abandoned fishing village.
Transcrossing Memories (Nicosia, Cyprus), is a territorial lab involving both local communities (turkish-cypriot and greek-cypriot), through a mobile device: The Memory Box a public space open to everybody, which is a sort of library that gathers together people’s memories, arts projects, readings, video projections, music and performances.
Floating Symmetry (Tel Aviv, Israel). A multiple video projection, documenting the journey undertaken by the artists Ofri Cnaani and Jenny Vogel, covering the land-sea distance that divides the island of Cyprus from the waterfront city of Tel Aviv: a path through geopolitical and human symmetries bridging Nicosia and Jerusalem.
Going Public Atlas (Modena, Italy). Bringing this first Mediterranean voyage to a close, the experience and the research carried out in the six cities were collected first in Modena (Italy), at an international meeting for young artists, which aims to facilitate a genuine exchange between different cultures through artistic production.
New City-Territory (Venice, Italy) is the conclusion of this first long journey around the Mediterranean. The workshop, of an open and experimental nature, uses the towns as enormous “project room”. All projects presented were carried out dealing with the territory and its inhabitants.
Partners, artists, theoreticians, students form different universities and background, are invited all together to share their experiences on the subject. Art and theory as cultural practice: exhibition, workshop, debate at International Venice Biennial/ IUAV, Art and Architecture University.
Beirut, Istanbul, Nicosia, Cairo
2 responses so far
Peter Lang // Jul 18, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Participation and Conflict
One of the most critical aspects of working in the world of “participation” art, architecture, and other multimedia disciplines is the difficulty of the subjects themselves. Already one of the residual aftereffects of the aMAZE symposium in Venice were the encounters with participants who were for the most part from countries frequently in conflict with one another, this being the Mediterranean after all.
But precisely this initial condition, where Israelis were sitting next to Lebanese, Greek Cypriots next to Turks, Americans (sic) next to Palestinians… became the first of a series of inter-negotiations that took time to resolve but that gradually opened new networks and interdisciplinary opportunities for everyone involved.
But the main issue remains the difficulty of the work we have all chosen to engage in, interacting with communities inside specific territorial contexts that may benefit on one hand from our presence, our attention and our exchanges, but on the other the limits such encounters have on actually reaching the large scale problems that often shadow these local experiences.
This is a kind of novel stress, visible among many of the participants at the symposium, whereby our deep passion and will towards engagement nonetheless has only limited impact on the broader political, economic and cultural picture. This is lived as a frustration, an irresolvable dilemma that brings us in direct confrontation with subjects we recognize living through real hardships, and yet our efforts bear only minimal though clearly important results. Here in the symposium, these frustrations become often the underlying subtext of the general discussions, prompting at times responses that need to address these personal problems rather than equally important issues such as working practices and methodologies, exhibition and display or communications, and post-production.
The most fruitful aspect nonetheless is that we are all together and we are openly discussing among ourselves, and we are able to move towards more concrete practices… developing our own histories, stories metanarratives and hopefully long-term networks.
July 12, 2007.
Peter Lang, Ph.D., Architect Assistant Professor, Texas A&M Santa Chiara
Markus Miessen // Sep 6, 2007 at 2:24 pm
By Markus Miessen - studiomiessen@gmx.net
“In contrast to cooperation, collaboration is driven by complex realities rather than romantic notions of a common ground or commonality. It is an ambivalent process constituted by a set of paradoxical relationships between co-producers who affect each other.”
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