Vajont 2015 – May the 2nd, Casso

Vajont 2015: territory, history, value of the cultural projects.
Interaction practices, survey methods, processes and perspectives.

Saturday May the 2nd 2015
from 2 PM
Nuovo Spazio di Casso

On Saturday May the 2nd, Dolomiti Contemporanee will host a day dedicated to culture and contemporary art. A talk, open to the public, is going to take place at the Nuovo Spazio di Casso, from 2 to 6 PM. Its title: Vajont 2015: territory, history, value of the cultural projects. Interaction practices, survey methods, processes and perspectives.

The talk will be divided in two sessions: in the first one, the International Artistic Contest Two Calls for Vajont will be presented. It was launched by Dolomiti Contemporanee in June 2014, and its realization was made possible by the collaboration with Enel and the patronage of numerous public administrations and authorities of the Friuli Venezia Giulia and Veneto regions, not to mention by the various relevant cultural partners (Mart Rovereto, Merz Foundation of Turin, CCC Strozzina Florence, Institut Francais, Pianoproject, Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation).

Some members of the Contest‘s Jury will take part in the event, as well as some of the artists who have participated, who will briefly present their project.
We would like to remind that the talk will take place only two days after the closing of the first phase of Twocalls (April the 30th), and that the winners will be declared by the end of May.
For the occasion, a selection of the projects in the final will be displayed at the Spazio di Casso during the weekends (Saturday and Sunday) of the 2nd/3rd, 9th/10th, 16th/17th of May from 1o AM to 12:30 PM and 2:30 PM to 7 PM.

During the second session of the conference-debate, will be presented some project that, in recent years, have involved the Vajont area, and the relationship of its landscape with its history, researching its cultural, social and antropological, landscape-related and aesthetic aspects, with the aim of framing new models which aren’t merely analytical, but that allow for partecipation as well.

Thus, the talk will have its focus on the historic and territorial peculiarity of the Vajont. The speakers-guests will present their own projects. These critical platforms work through interdisciplinarity, ideational strenght, research, the redefinition of the territorial and urban contexts, in particular the ones weighted on by strong criticality, displaying their shortcomings and potentiality. Each of the projects operates through practices which include porposeful, regenerative and creative processes and models.
Representatives of several authorities that work to give value ot the resources of the territory will intervene as well.

After the talk, the works of the artists Marta Allegri and Stefano Moras, realized in the context of the village of Casso. The record of Let’s make like a tree. And leaves, a relational artwork by Elisa Bertaglia.

From 6 PM to 3 AM of the following day, Stefano Moras will be busy with his performance Ritorno (senza soluzione di continuità).

Schedule

- From 2 PM to 6 PM
Vajont 2015: territory, history, value of the cultural projects.
Interaction practices, survey methods, processes and perspectives. Talk open to the public.

Speakers:

Frist session (Twocalls: 2 PM- 3:30 PM)
Luciano Pezzin, Mayor of Erto and Casso
Gianluca D’Incà Levis, curator of Dolomiti Contemporanee and Twocalls
Marcello Mazzucco, local historian
Cristiana Collu, member of the Twocalls Jury
Marcella Morandini, Secretary-General of the Dolomiti Unesco Foundation e member of the Twocalls Jury

Second session (Projects: 3.45 PM-6 PM)
Gianpaolo Arena – CALAMITA/À
Marta De Marchi and Fabio Vanin – Latitude
Luana Silveri – Oltreerto
Stefano Moras and Alan Luca Nan – VOCE
Marta Allegri – artist

Moderator: Petra Cason

- 6 PM 18.00
Break-happy hour

- from 6 PM to 3 AM
Performance Ritorno (senza soluzione di continuità), by Stefano Moras. The performance will take place in an old stable in Casso.

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Vajont 2015: territory, history, value of the cultural projects.
Interaction practices, survey methods, processes and perspectives. – starting point.

During the talk, which is going to be open to the public, some of the project and platforms that in recent years have involved the Vajont area will be presented. […] Thus, the talk will have its focus on the historic and territorial peculiarity of this location. The speakers-guests will present their own projects, some of which reach beyond the Vajont area as well. Generally speaking, they may be called critical platforms. […].

Each  of these projects and platforms, although widely different from one another, shares points of contact and convergence, on general and particular aspects: the will to act in a constructive manner on the contemporary landscape; the intention of avoiding the branding of a territory as “fossil” of a static past, and of considering, instead, the gaze, the action, the practices linked to permanence and the cultural practices themselves, as parts of a general, integrated, possible discussion, which could establish itself as a non-descriptive and actively participative practice, in regards of the dynamic and changeable, plastic and continuous process of the making of history, and of the renovation, within history itself, of the human spirit, inhabitant and maker of its own space; again, the awareness and attention placed on the need and importance of the processes, instead of mere facts (or, even, of the so-called artworks), of the constant, non-stop, organic making of the human identity, as well as the one of the places.

We would like to hereby propose an interpretation of the concepts of place and space, distinguishing and charging them, arbitrarily, of two different and opposed meanings; we would like thus to mean the concept of space as a charged space in its own value, thanks to the conscious action of the human who, through its own research and experimentation, acts history, putting its significance back into play […] instead of merely enduring its outcomes.
In this critical meaning, the space is thus the place participating in itself, the place that has been given back power through reflection, the place that, through the actions of the human, finds itself again, where it had been lost before. It’s clear that this definition makes sense in contexts characterized by a strong criticality. […]

In the Vajont area, in this place so horribly marked by the Tragedy of 1963, it seems like today, 52 after the happening, the people show in some measure the will to know and act, to dare to be there and show themselves, we could perhaps say, bringing their own gaze, through culture, intended as a responsible instrument of interaction with the state of being of things and with the being of the humans, directly connected with the place itself, to make of it, once again, a space, giving value back to its meaning, putting back into motion the energy, that hadn’t disappeared, but had been blocked.

The talk doesn’t, hence, mean to present itself as an exposition of analytical practices, or a gathering of descriptive aesthetics essays, and even less as a declaration of overcoming of the traumatic dimension of this history. […]
Instead, the confrontation between the different projects will attempt to put into light a, perhaps, shared attitude, which could almost seem to be the prelude, or even the beginning, of a purposeful phase, in which the desolated land of the tragedy may become, once again, space of the human. […]
We would also like to remind the definition that  Edoardo Gellner gave of the landscape, that is to say a “summary of natural environment and the work of the human”.
And here we find ourselves in a place where the natural landscape, through the action of the human, has morphed into the landscape of the tragedy, ruling out, by that point, the human from itself (privative scission), which now wants to get back into it (making space for itself; re-making the landscape). We’d also like to point at the title  of the conference that has taken place last August in Forni di Sopra, in which Marc Augé and Gianluca D’Incà Levis have traded points of view on some aspects of the contemporary landscapes and some destructive contemporaneity and on the value of the practices that offer or force  regenerative elements to the territories or contects weighted on by criticality, closure, inertia: the title of that meeting was The human is the territory: anthropology of places (not of the spaces).

In regards of what has been said until now: the presence of Dolomiti Contemporanee in Casso, ever since its inception, with the reopening of the former school of the hamlet, and then with the handling of activities for the two following years, until the creation of the International Artistic Contest Twocalls, and has all been set out to make space. To reflect on the value and meaning of this action, with which we’ve wanted to, indeed, come to open up a location that had been closed down for more than half a century, closed by the tragedy, to morph it into a territorial engine, a purposeful centre, a projective space. […]

Actually, this is the role that art and culture have, or should have. Opening, starting, building laboratories and spaces for confrontation. Making art means being drastically action-oriented, open to confrontation, to cognitive analysis, to re-evaluative proposals. Making art, culture, research, is the opposite of standing still, of giving up, of hopelessly losing […] and that is why Dolomiti Contemporanee is a project of contemporary art. Certainly not to host exhibits. To be there, in a reflective way. Some of the artistic projects – whatever the meaning one may want to give to this expression- developed in these years in Casso, have challenged the processes, the creativity, and the analysis of what came before. Artworks, thus, not as completed objects, but as opening perspectives, in a space that has (had) to curate itself in a dark closure for a long time.

Gianluca D’Incà Levis, curator of Dolomiti Contemporanee, director of the Nuovo Spazio di Casso.

On May the 2^nd, the outcomes of some recent artistic researches, carried out by the artists Marta Allegri, Stefano Moras and Elisa Bertaglia will be displayed. The artworks will be realized inside old houses and stables in Casso, and will relate to the specific culture of the place and the history of the territory. The performance presented in this occasion by Moras is part of VOCE, project-platform with which the artist has taken part in the Two Calls for Vajont Contest.

All the cultural and artistic activities hereby scheduled are promoted by the Erto and Casso Municipality, and financed thanks to the contribution of GAL Montagna Leader.
The activities, created and developed by Dolomiti Contemporanee, are realized with the coordination of the Mazarol Cooperative.

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