Valerio Rocco Orlando. South of Imagination | Launch of the digital platform
3 June 2021
Valerio Rocco Orlando, South of Imagination, 2021
Valerio Rocco Orlando, South of Imagination, 2021
Valerio Rocco Orlando, South of Imagination, 2021
Valerio Rocco Orlando, South of Imagination, 2021
Riccardo Musatti, “Viaggio ai Sassi di Matera,” Comunità IV, no. 9, (1950). Courtesy: Fondazione Adriano Olivetti, Rome. Photo: Marjory Collins
southofimagination.org
On June 3, 2021, a digital platform committed to the relationship between art and education will go online. This platform is the first stage of a project conceived as an educational experiment; encounters, conversations, and audiovisual productions tell the development of Valerio Rocco Orlando's research. The artistic process starts from a discussion on Boaventura de Sousa Santos' Epistemologies of the South, and the engagement of initiatives founded by international artists in decentralized territories.
South of Imagination is a participatory artwork proposed by Nomas Foundation and curated by Raffaella Frascarelli, in partnership with Lia Fassari, DiSSE-Sapienza University of Rome, within the Italian Council (9th Edition, 2020), program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.
The different communities involved in the project will dialogue through a series of online and in-presence workshops. The goal is to bring together a network of students, artists, educators, researchers, and activists to generate a process of knowledge based on active and intersubjective listening.
South of Imagination will be developed in different phases, resulting in the production of a multi-channel video installation for the collections of the Museo del Novecento in Milan. In 2022 will be produced: a symposium at Parsons The New School, New York, a solo exhibition at Nomas Foundation, Rome, and a publication. The process-based dimension of the research, is aimed at the creation of a new school of the arts, independent, international, and transdisciplinary. The school will be founded by the artist, renovating a state property granted to him by the Municipality of Matera for thirty years.
Cultural partners
Accademia di Brera, Milan; Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille; Al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary, Jerusalem; Arab Image Foundation, Beirut; Art House, Shkodër; Casco Art Institute, Utrecht; CCA, Derry〜Londonderry; CCA, Tel Aviv; Centex, Centro de Extensiòn del Ministerio de las Culturas, las Artes y el Patrimonio, Valparaiso; Istituto Italiano di Cultura al Cairo, Cairo; Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah; MSSA Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Santiago; Museo del Novecento, Comune di Milano, Milan; Museu Nacional—Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro; MUSMA Museo della Scultura Contemporanea di Matera, Matera; New Art Exchange, Nottingham; PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea Milano, Milan; Parsons The New School, New York; PDP Miroslaw Balka Studio of Spatial Activities, Warsaw; Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome; Think Tanger, Tangier.
Valerio Rocco Orlando (Italy, 1978) is an artist and professor of Multimedia Dramaturgy at the Brera Academy, Milan. Through practices ranging from workshops to video installations, he conceives art as a process of mutual knowledge and understanding. At the heart of his research is the exploration of the osmosis among institutions, museums, academia, and the social sphere.