Dal Cielo Alle Strade.

Dal Cielo Alle Strade: Una parata svolazzante del quartiere Isola by  Ruggero Asnago with Teatro in scatola  and Isola Libri with the support of Isola Art Center. 

This year for the 4th birthday of Isola Pepe Verde,  we organised a parade with majestical bird marionettes in the Isola neigbhourhood. The project is by artist Ruggero Asnago,  Elena from the local bookshop Isola Libri and I assisted him in the workshops held every weekend of April at Isola Pepe Verde. The workshops were open to the public - young and old.  It was a beautiful experience working with so many people and getting to know the children of the neighbourhood, and the parade? Well, that was just magical. Just look at the video and see for yourself. Let's do it again next year!

Video by Emanuel Balbinot.



To read more about the events we held on the 14th, see here.

To see more photos, click here.

Workshop, Middelburg,South Africa.

I am currently leading a workshop in Mlhuzi, the township attached to Middelburg (Mpumalanga) the town I grew up in. I worked with a new NGO Uprising Youth Movement. These young guys from Mhluzi started this to empower the youth there. 

I have to confess that it is my first time in Mhluzi (and a township) even though I grew up right here in Middelburg. I realized I still had a ton of misconceptions about this township and it was good to have them all shattered.

Uprising Youth Movement are great hosts and the guys in the workshop are really making it so much fun for me. The participants of the workshop are between 19 and 22. They all came based on their interest in artistic fields. They are really a wide group; aspiring poets, dancers, actors and visual artists. 

I introduced them to some of my work and mainly to the things we do at Isola Art Center; introducing the ideas of collective work, Fight-specific art, using your art within your neighborhood and working with small or no-budgets.  

I have to say the outcome of the workshop surpassed my expectations.My original plan was to create a fictional newspaper with them that interpreted their battles in their town  into illustrated stories but it has developed based on the interests of these participants into a theater piece that they now wish to carry on and develop even after this one week workshop.

The starting point of the workshop to talk about their local fights in the community. They mentioned a few things, also mentioning the struggle of learning and developing as artists when they are isolated from main art scenes and do not have access to formal educations. I am wondering how one can introduce support into small towns so that these youths can have more access and contact?

The one issue that came out as their biggest fight was the fight against the drug Nyaope which has led to the death of many of their peers, but is also a large source of violence and crime in the neighborhood. It also seems that there is a lot corruption and under the table deals between authorities and drug dealers.The guys decided to take on this for their project and is now writing script and thinking about how to perform it. They also told me that they hope to continue doing projects with each other after the workshop which is I think the best outcome one can hope for. 

Thank you to all the guys participating, Uprising Youth Movement and the church that gave us the venue to work in.  More pics to come at the end of the week.  Most of the pics below were taken by the participants themselves using my canon 350 D. 

Silkscreen workshop * Ongoing Fight-Specific Isola in Venice *

    
      Photograph by Leah Corra Messersmith.

In Sardinia

Sulcis Oddity 

5 Years of Cherimus at MACC, Calasetta

Isa Griese, Rainbow, Caro Giacomo 2009. Photo Credit: Béatrice Bailet

Fondazione MACC would like to invite you to the retrospective Sulcis Oddity, curated by Emiliana Sabiu. 

The exhibition documents the first five years of activities of Cherimus, an association active in the Sulcis-Iglesiente region of Sardinia, engaged in the diffusion of a form of territorial development linked to the realisation of contemporary art projects.

The exhibition recounts the reality of an association; one of its kind in Sardinia, that is able to work with artists from all over the world while actively engaging with the local fabric of Sulcis. The works exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Calasetta, describe the development of a special relationship between Cherimus and the territory it is active in: a place, Sulcis, which, from its marginalised position is transformed into an ideal centre for the development of new projects, defining, time after time new relational scenarios and possible new horizons. The retrospective intends to trace an implicit portrait of Sulcis-Iglesiente: through a selection of works designed and made exclusively for this territory, allowing for its distinguishing contradictions and complexities to be read. 

Sulcis Oddity. 5 anni di Cherimus

Opening Friday 2 August 2013, 19:00 – 22:00 

From 3 August to 29 September 2013

Museum of Contemporary Art, Calasetta 

Via Savoia, 2 

09011 Calasetta (CI) 

Opening hours:

Tuesday to Sunday, 18 – 21 

Closed on Monday

History in the making - Something I forgot to post months ago

History in the making was a workshop we did with the Austrian artist Peter Friedl. Not aimed at being an exhibition but more a play with images and the histories we invent or associate with them. You can read an article he wrote on the topic of history with the same title on E-flux.

My poster for History in the making. I wanted to make something that draws on my personal history but then also within a European context is something exotic, so I created a poster that is a little bit like decorative  tourist postcard or print with a recipe on it.

  Edith Porier

 Wei-Ning Yang

Leah Messersmith

Jess Rucinque