The pandemic has hit the Italian cultural scene severely: Exhibitions were cancelled, projects postponed and the cultural sector is still not on the priority list for governmental subsidies. How is the young Italian art scene dealing with the pandemic?

Béton Bleu spoke with the curator IZABELA ANNA MOREN, co-founder of the art institute STUDIO RIZOMA, about the art scene in the Mediterranean area, the digital-first exhibition “Pandemos” and the general importance of art scenes in peripheries.

Béton Bleu: Studio Rizoma is a newly founded, international institute for culture and art in Palermo. What is your creative approach?

Izabela Anna: Studio Rizoma is a cultural studio with an international team coming from different social and artistic organizations, groups, and institutions. Palermo is our home base because it allows us to decentralise Europe, to articulate a new centrality for the Mediterranean and re-establish Europe’s rapport with Northern Africa.

BB: How do you do that?

IA: At a local level, Rizoma gives space to various local realities and ensures the social embeddedness of artistic action in Sicily. At an international level, Rizoma is a node for artistic and political institutions engaged in rethinking the way international art shows are conceived, implemented, and promoted. You know, the rhizome is a well-known philosophical concept by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: It comes from the botanical world, where it stands for a decentralised root system, able to propagate by multiplying underground and let flowers bloom on the surface.

BB: Palermo is at the center between North Africa and South Europe. How is the art scene different there compared to other cities?

IA: I would say in Palermo you have an “air of possibility”, that you might not always have in cities like London, Berlin, or Barcelona. The stage of urbanization and the market work differently here. You often find a moment of spacious “untouchedness” in peripheral places, which is beneficial to certain types of work. This isn’t to romanticise Sicily’s economic disadvantage even though it’s an island rich in natural and social resources. There are different materials available, and by material, I also mean the culture and the mentality as well as natural resources like a variety of rocks or plants. Palermo is definitely a place of collectivity.

BB: And if we look now at Palermo from a perspective of European relations: Which role do peripheries play?

IA: I think peripheries have a certain power, one that the centers have probably lost. On the one hand, they are important sites of industrial production – in Sicily for agriculture for example – but on the other hand, there is more freedom because not everything is controlled by or catered to the economical market. This combination makes it an incredibly potent place for constructing new ideas.

BB: Like how?

IA: The pace of life is different in peripheral places. Most people are not as consumed by their work - partly because unemployment is high and partly because it is not as common to have multiple jobs like people in big cities often do. They devote their time to other things. This helps to nurture an active cultural sphere that retains the possibility of surprise, experiments, and transformation. All that is more complicated to establish in the urbanized centers where time is a scarce asset. One question that we ask ourselves at Studio Rizoma is, how can one construct a transnational consciousness across peripheries, something like a support system? I believe that peripheries are our future. They are the places where we can create collectives, kinship, collaborations.

BB: One project where you reflect on the importance of the peripheries is “Pandemos” which reflects the pandemic in the cultural scene of Italy.

IA: During the first months of the global pandemic in Spring 2020, Studio Rizoma issued an open call to collect the first European artistic responses to the pandemic and its overcoming. Eleven Projects by seventeen international artists working in Sicily have been chosen by a selection committee on the merit of their proposals. In the brief, Lorenzo Marsili and I wrote: “The Covid-19 crisis represents one of the most significant interruptions of daily life and business-as-usual of recent times. We wanted to seize on these extraordinary developments and engage a new generation of artists, thinkers and writers in the creation of artworks that will remain as witnesses to the pandemic event of 2020, while providing a mythopoetic contribution to the transformation of our unhappy, unsustainable, and unjust ‘normality’.” Without government support for the cultural sector it seemed vital to give access to funding, however modestly.

BB: How does the government support for culture look like for the cultural scene in Italy?

IA: There is the decree “Cura Italia” but it has nowhere been consistent or sufficient for the cultural sector. In Germany there were specific grants and loans for artists, but Italy has yet to show such cultural policy structures. Freelancers were offered an income of up to EUR 600,- per month for two months and workers across the performing arts could apply for a one-time support sum. Most cultural activities are heavily reduced if not completely suspended for more than a year now. Studio Rizoma had available funding, hence we launched an open call and invited eleven artistic projects to formulate a vision beyond the pandemic.

BB: You are mostly funded by Northern cultural initiatives such as the German Allianz Kulturstiftung, the Swiss Gwärtler Stiftung and the Amsterdam-based European Cultural Foundation to fill the funding gap of the Italian government.

IA: The North-South stream of funding is an important cliché — but its success depends on the context in which one acts. The question is always, what are funds available for and what can they achieve? Studio Rizoma already has and continues to build transnational networks beyond Italy. By presenting the first artistic response to the pandemic from the South of Europe, “Pandemos” was an attempt to build bridges — between Northern and Southern Europe, the centers, and the peripheries. It is no coincidence that this choice has led important names on the international cultural scene such as European Alternatives and Allianz Kulturstiftung to divert their energies and resources to Palermo, participating in the establishment of Studio Rizoma.

BB: You invited seventeen Sicilian artists to develop a series of artworks related to the experience of the pandemic. What was the artistic focus of the “Pandemos” digital-first exhibition?

IA: In the eleven works proposed by the artists of the territory we return to culture as a heterogeneous resource from which one can learn and from which one can guide the formation of truly transnational alliances. “Pandemos” is a distinctly Sicilian and international project at the same time, conceived in an out-of-balance world in a period of extreme introspection and dissolution of time. It gathers neglected impulses and transforms the act of attention into resistance, imagination, and potential. Each project takes a specific point of view to think forward and to think beyond the pandemic: While it was a time that brought suffering, it was also a moment of stillness and introspection that we may not experience again. Interestingly, many artists were looking to initiate new dialogues with territories, species, and people.

BB: For example, in the research project Facciamo Il Bosco by Eliza Collin.

IA: Eliza Collin interviewed locals, researchers — and plants. Connecting electrodes to the plants’ surface, the artist collected extensive data on how these plants react to changes in soil humidity, air humidity, and heat. Transforming these frequencies into sound, she proposed a new language with which to listen to the small changes that make up the consequences of global warming. In a textual contribution, Luca Cinquemani, a plant cultivator, writer, and researcher, pointed out the desperate need for a different language, one not dominated by the human classification of the world. What would a dialogue started by a plant be like? What co-habitant could a plant be if we didn’t call it a plant?

IA: One of the projects is by Lina Issa who went to Campo Bello, one of the camps for migrant workers in agriculture. There’s a lot of “braccianti”, as they are called in Italy, undocumented workers who often pick fruits and vegetables. There are many of these camp sites all over Italy but especially in Sicily. Lina went there to understand their response to a new law, the amnesty or “sanatoria” formulated during the pandemic, a six-month temporary stay permit intended to allow you to work with a regular contract. The conditions to apply excluded many migrants from the get-go and the permit could only be extended with a proper work contract — which of course most workers don’t have, otherwise they wouldn’t be exploited. It’s obscene to think one’s presence can go from illegal to legal and back within six months.

BB: Studio Rizoma has an interdisciplinary approach and also initiated the project “Artsformation”. What is the focus there?

IA: Contemporary art and technology is changing people's lives everyday. With Artsformation we are exploring the intersections between arts, society, and technology. The last decade has seen a rapid growth of arts for social change initiatives as well as artistic practices that combine digital and social practices. In response, digital culture has come into the agenda of almost all cultural institutions. The work on research that Artsformation is implementing connects the artistic, technological, enterprise, and civil society spheres. It combines the digital and physical presence of the artists and researchers involved, and we are currently working on the launch of our first open call for participation and artistic residencies to co-create opportunities for artists and collectives. We will be using different participatory initiatives, such as online Arts-assemblies and residencies, to have more accessible spaces for artists.

BB: And beyond that: What’s next for Studio Rizoma?

IA: This spring we will announce Studio Rizoma’s forthcoming season with an extensive program based on three main pillars, the Mediterranean, Post-colonialism, and Feminism. If the pandemic allows it, the season will inaugurate in collaboration with Tunis’ Dream City Biennale in October. Room to Bloom, a project on postcolonial feminism, a training and peer learning programme that supports 100 young feminist artists with partner institutions all over Europe, will follow. We are working on a program for 2022 as well, but that’s too early to tell yet.

BB: Thank you for your time, Izabela.

Interview: Ana-Marija Cvitic

About Izabela Anna Moren:

Izabela Anna Moren is a German-Polish writer, curator, and communication strategist living between Berlin, Rome, and Palermo. She works on the intersection of art and politics and holds degrees in Curation and Critical Writing from the Royal College of Art. Her book “Living in the Desert” was published in 2018 by Phaidon. In 2019 she founded “Transhumance,” an exhibition series in the public sphere which inaugurated in collaboration with Transeuropa Festival and Biennale Arcipelago Mediterraneo 2019. She is the Digital Editor at Museo MACRO in Rome and communication director to NOMAD, the travelling showcase of contemporary art and design.

Find more information about Studio Rizoma here.

(C) 19/03/2021

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