Paolo Mele – Director at Ramdom, Cultural Project Manager

rs548049170_1_69869_TT (The Other Shapes of Me) "Ideas, Hypotheses, Assumptions and Objects"

Posted on June 28, 2020 by admin

A project by Emilio Vavarella

Curated and produced by Ramdom

31 July – 13 September 2020

From Wednesday until Sunday, 7pm – 10pm

Gagliano del Capo (Le), Italy, Via Margherita di Savoia, 78

www.ramdom.net

www.theothershapesofme.ramdom.net

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rs548049170_1_69869_TT (The Other Shapes of Me), winner of the 6^th Edition of Italian Council, program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, is a new project by artist Emilio Vavarella, curated and produced by Ramdom

The title refers to the first line of text resulting from the genotyping of Vavarella’s DNA. The work is based on the translation of his genetic code in a large fabric, through the labour of his mother, using one of the first modern computational machines: the Jacquard loom. The result is a monumental work composed of a fabric, a loom and a video, that will become part of the permanent collection of MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna – in autumn 2020.

The exhibition in Gagliano del Capo (Lecce, Italy), which opens on July 31 and closes on September 13, 2020, is the first of a series of international exhibitions and presentations that revolve around this work. The exhibition focus will be on the artistic process and research that underlies the project. Visitors will have the opportunity to browse an archive of ideas, hypotheses, errors, assumptions, objects and images: a physical network of artifacts in which the objects and ideas that inform Vavarella’s work are put in dialogue with one another.

A particular focus of the exhibition will be the relation between artistic research, weaving, information technologies, labour and media developments. Industrial machines, punched cards, codes, sound recordings and newspaper clippings will be at the heart of the physical exhibition. The artisanal dimension and the training of textile workers will emerge from a set of school books, notebooks and handmade technical drawings from the historical Castiglioni laboratory in Busto Arsizio (Varese, Italy). The exhibition includes a new video work by Vavarella focused on the production process of his artwork, along with textile materials, artifacts and other objects that announce and refer to the completed project.

Guided tours to the exhibition and Tessitura Giaquinto, where the fabric that is part of the final work was produced, will be offered every Friday from 7pm.

Finally, a book dedicated to the project and published by MOUSSE will be presented during the opening of the exhibition. The book, edited by Emilio Vavarella, Claudio Zecchi and Paolo Mele, highlights and extends the scope of the project through the contributions of fifteen thinkers and practitioners from the fields of art, philoso

phy, bioengineering, media theory, and the history of science and technology, among which: Lorenzo Balbi, George M. Church, Francesco Giaquinto, Ellen Harlizius-Klück, Sabine Himmelsbach, Stephen Monteiro, Carla Petrocelli, Davide Quadrio, Eugene Thacker, Ed Regis, Devin Wangert and Ursula Wolz.

Cultural reconnaissance: dialogues and perspectives for new models of change

Posted on May 25, 2020 by admin

Elena Coco of Nesta Italia interviewed me about Ramdom's work and the importance of making cultural production in the extreme lands

https://www.nestaitalia.org/blog/ricognizioni-culturali-ramdom/?fbclid=IwAR2NtGZbQcnl_Hj09X5rIE1jyMb_xjnsj-dJdZJGtu9eJ8hipE3P5nmfa_A

TALK Prospects for economic sustainability in the independent universe

Posted on April 30, 2020 by admin

https://radiopapesse.org/frontend/index.php?path=it/archivio/lectures/portafortuna

With Anna Dormio (Kunstschau, Lecce), Francesca Finotti (Brace Brace, Milan), Paolo Mele (Ramdom, Gagliano del Capo), Rebecca Moccia (FEA Lisboa), Matteo Mottin (Treti Galaxie, Turin), Incurva, Michele Bertolino (Il Coloricifio, Milan), Stefano Giuri (TOAST Project Space). Moderator: Gabriele Tosi

The state of the art

Posted on April 21, 2020 by admin

A chat with Mino Vicenti, for Agoradio, in the fifteenth episode of #ambaradan. We talked about contemporary art, mobility, European capitals of culture and the solidarity initiative I have a gift. Have a good listen!

ON AIR: Mnemoscopio, a project by Emilio Vavarella, curated and produced by Ramdom

Posted on February 12, 2020 by admin

Mnemoscope is a project by artist Emilio Vavarella, curated and produced by Ramdom with the support of MiBACT and SIAE, as part of the “Per Chi Crea – New Works” programme. The programme includes the creation and production of new works.
The work questions the topic of collective memory, creating a “cartography of memories”: this concept is linked to the idea of “home”, starting with those who left from Gagliano del Capo – the place where Ramdom actively operates – and then returning.

After having worked for years on the re-emergence of memories on the web (MNEMOGRAFO, commissioned by Villa Manin), on the cartographic potential of collective memories of Italians who emigrated to New York (MEMORYSCAPES, currently within the Fabbri Foundation collection), on the weight of their family memories (The Sicilian Family), and on the role that memory plays in the development of drones and artificial intelligence (MNEMODRONE), the artist proposes a new project linked to the mnemonic and cartographic stratification.

Mnemoscope is a site-specific work that consists of a cartographic device in which the physical reality of the place, where the work will be installed, is overlapped and merged with a virtual map composed of maps of all those places called “home”, over a lifetime, by the people the artist interviewed. The cartography that visually translates the layering of mnemonic traces will be made visible through a technological device of new conception: an apparatus of “mixed realty” for the stereoscopic vision and the 360° virtual exploration of a new cartographic space, produced by cartographically interweaving places, memories, and present and past dwellings.

More info: www.ramdom.net // https://mnemoscopio.ramdom.net/

ON AIR: The other shape of Me, a project by Emilio Vavarella, curated and produced by Ramdom

Posted on February 12, 2020 by admin

Winner of the VI edition of Italian Council (2019), program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, rs548049170_1_69869_TT (The Other Shapes of Me) is a new project launched by artist Emilio Vavarella. The work focuses on the translation of the genetic code of the artist into a textile, using one of the first computing machines of modernity. By July 2020, this project will lead to the creation of a monumental work of art that will become part of the permanent collection of MAMbo – Museum of Modern Art in Bologna. The work will be the result of a performative and research process that sees the artist and his mother, tailor and embroiderer, working in a textile laboratory. The title, rs548049170_1_69869_TT, refers to the first line of text resulting from the genotyping of the artist’s DNA. The genotyping was carried out in a laboratory in Mountain View, California, but the final work will be made entirely in Italy at a historic weaving mill in Southern Italy. The project also includes an interdisciplinary round-table at Harvard University (USA) and a residence in New Delhi (India).

The work consists of three elements: a large fabric, a Jacquard loom and a video of the production process of the fabric. The fabric, which represents the artist’s genetic code point by point, is made with a 19th century Jacquard loom (the first industrial binary technology) that will be operated by the mother of the artist. The final tapestry translates visually the genetic code that “gives shape” to the artist. The Jacquard loom will be modified to accommodate a video documentation of the entire production process, portraying the mother of the artist at work.

In addition to the production of the fabric, which will take place entirely at Tessitura Giaquinto in Gagliano del Capo (LE) in Southern Italy, the project also includes workshops, exhibitions, presentations and screenings on the local and national territory. The work will be presented for the first time in its entirety at MAMbo – Museum of Modern Art in Bologna.

The Film Study Center will host a roundtable with international professionals (philosophers, curators, theorists, researchers). The result of this discussion, together with the research that underlies the production of the work, will culminate in the final catalogue.

Arthub Asia will host the artist and the curators during a period of residence in New Delhi where they will study alternative possibilities of rendering the artist’s genetic code, as they relate to alternative techniques of weaving and data visualization. In addition, an exhibition will be held at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, focusing on this work’s technical processes.

More info: www.ramdom.net // https://theothershapesofme.ramdom.net

MAT-AIR 2019

Posted on November 5, 2019 by admin

Artistic residencies currently represent one of the main instruments of investigation, research and artistic production. A constellation of entities that offers a picture of a lively artistic milieu, strongly rooted to its home territory. The activities carried out during artistic residencies, while rarely recognized and adequately supported by the local institutions, play an important role in the regeneration process of under-developed territories and in improving accessibility to the word of contemporary art.

This two-days event held in Matera offers a moment of introduction, dialogue, confrontation and analysis of models and manners of the management of artistic residencies in Basilicata, in Italy and in Europe. In such a fundamental year for culture, Matera and the whole South of Italy invite cultural professionals, artists, public and private institution to start a discussion the role and the cultural, social and artistic relevance of residencies.

The conference will feature: curators of artistic residencies from Matera 2019, from Italy and from abroad, private and public institutions and international networks.

Sino alla fine del Mare: the book

Posted on June 15, 2019 by admin

Ramdom is pleased to announce the book Sino alla Fine del Mare. Investigation on the extreme lands is now in distribution. The book is project by Ramdom, published by Viaindustriae.

Until the end of the Sea, tries to answer these questions narrating some stages of interdisciplinary research known under the name of Investigation of the Extreme Lands launched by Ramdom in 2014.

What are Extreme Lands? Extreme compared to what? How can we narrate them? What happens when the vision of the locals everyday’s life mingle with that of the artists coming from other places? Can we consider the extreme lands, or more generally what is peripheral and marginal, a methodology per se? The extreme lands invited us to investigate a state of infinite and complex relationships in which marginality becomes a parameter capable of questioning and rethinking the notion of the center both as a geographical place and as a place of artistic or cultural production.

Until the end of the Sea, aims to focus on a five-year long-term research on the theme of the so-called Extreme Lands of which Ramdom has become over time a privileged observatory. The book is a sort of database and a tool for investigating and spreading the results so far obtained through the intervention of professionals in different disciplines whose goal is to build a new cognitive mapping of the land’s end.

Starting from the specific case of Gagliano del Capo and Basso Salento, the book becomes a universal device capable of creating an ideal bridge with similar geo-anthropological situations. In addition to the artists involved – Elena Mazzi e Rosario Sorbello; Romina De Novellis; Lia Cecchin; Riccardo Giacconi e Carolina Valencia Caicedo– who translated the theme through the tools of visual language, the book can count on the contribution Paolo Mele, Claudio Zecchi, Radical Intention, Massimo Carozzi, Domenico Licchelli, Luca Coclite, Alessandro Carboni, Heba Amin e Francesca Girelli, Carlos Casas e Alessandra Pioselli. This diversification brings a dual function: on the one hand narrate the theme of the Extreme Lands from different perspectives, on the other indicate the multi-disciplinary methodology with which Ramdom has always approached the work creating relations capable of multiplying the plans of access and deepening.

A project by Ramdom

Book published by Viaindustriae, Foligno, 2019, pag. 144, 15 €

Edited by Paolo Mele, Annapaola Presta, Claudio Zecchi

Texts by: Paolo Mele, Claudio Zecchi, Radical Intention, Massimo Carozzi, Domenico Licchelli, Luca Coclite, Alessandro Carboni, Heba Amin e Francesca Girelli, Carlos Casas. Alessandra PioselliElena Mazzi e Rosario Sorbello; Romina De Novellis; Lia Cecchin; Riccardo Giacconi e Carolina Valencia Caicedo

La pubblicazione si è resa possibile grazie al supporto del bando / The publication has been possible thanks to the support by SIAE | Sillumina Copia privata per i giovani, per la cultura e MiBAC e Regione Puglia Dipartimento turismo, economia della cultura e valorizzazione del territorio. Sezione economia della cultura.