Reading Room #8 | Vladivostok
Thursday, April 14th, 2011 from 6.00pm to 9.00pm
Nomas Foundation, viale Somalia 33, Rome
Nomas Foundation’s Reading Room this year focuses its attention on initiatives established by artists for artists. The entire month of April is dedicated to projects initiated in Italy, that represent a practical answer to the working necessity of every artist: dialogue, research, documentation, distribution, residency projects, legal advice.
Reading Room voll.7-10 is a programme declined in four appointments, that each time take a different shape, depending on the diverse ways the single projects intend presenting themselves.
Founded in the beginning of 2010, the group Vladivostok is currently formed by artists Ettore Favini Alessandro Nassiri, Chiara Camoni, Luca Bertolo, Linda Fregni, Antonio Rovaldi, Maddalena Fragnito.
In April 2010 the group wrote a document that summarizes the situation of Italian contemporary art and that could act as a basis for possible changes.
The dialogue dialogue with Anna Detheridge founder of Connecting Cultures, Alessandra Donati and Gianmaria Ajani, promoters during the mounths of May 2010 in Turin, of the meeting called DAC, Contemporary Art Rights, lead to the formulation of a Manifesto for the Rights of Contemporary Art, presented on the 6th of May 2010 at the GAM of Turin.
In the past months Vladivostok completed the translation of the forms used by German artists and is currently adapting them to the Italian system with the help of Gianmaria Ajani, Professor of Comparative Private Law, Dean of the Faculty of Law of the University of Turin and of Alessandra Donati, Professor of Comparative Law of Contracts, Law Faculty, University of Milano Bicocca.
The presentation at Nomas Foundation represents a moment of dialogue and outreach and the occasion to discuss together the guiding principles of the Manifesto, initiate new collaborations and create the basis for common good practices.
Contemporary art contributes to represent our social and cultural identity. Law represents and defines the rules through which social relations are managed. Even if the two fields seem far and potentially in conflict with each other, between the principle of expression of freedom of the artist and the limits posed by the law - expression of the “public moral” - law constitutes an important element in support of contemporary art.
Increasingly art and culture are brought back to individual fruition, rather than encouraging their real potential as a place mediation and dialogue for a current complex society.
The Manifesto for the Rights of Contemporary Art reaffirms basic principles with the intention to re-establish and re-generate the balance between the social parts, in order to encourage a better understanding of the role of the arts vis a vis the public sphere.
(Excerpt of the Manifesto for the Rights of Contemporary Art)