A quotation placed at the beginning of a text may seem unoriginal, and I apologize for that, but for me these few lines represent a mantra, a sort of commandment, one of those truths that give meaning to many things. That is why I would like to quote Deleuze from his Abécédaire, in turn quoting Proust: “After all, what do you do when you travel? One always verifies something. One verifies that the colour one has dreamt of is actually there. The bad dreamer is someone who does not go and see if the colour he dreamt of is actually there. But a good dreamer knows that he has to go and check, to see if the colour is actually there.”
I have always believed that training, research and being an artist is not just a matter of transmitting concrete information, images or stories. Artists must be able to testify that a THERE exists, that going THERE to check makes sense and is a worthwhile undertaking. The problem lies in identifying where that place is for each of us, and what tools we need to get there and talk about it.
For decades we have been talking about rhizomes, borders, geographies, mapping, non-places, post-[everything], but in the end the question remains: where to go? Or rather, what does going actually mean? Ghirri, in support of his magnificent Atlante, states that “staying” or “going” (as exemplified in the family album and the map of the world) is an ongoing ethical issue, one which accompanies us throughout our lives. Today we might deduce that the map has won; the theme of travel has taken on a totalizing connotation: we are beings on the run from a center that we no longer know where to find.
On the other hand, theories are discussed that point to immobility as the only path, in the hope of breaking the rhythm, of reconnecting to something nearby and real, stepping off the treadmill that forces us to be everywhere and nowhere. The apparent stasis is proposed as if we were trees that rise motionlessly yet which cooperate underground; we are invited to stop running with our heads down, like animals with snouts thrust forward, but to look up and regain our faces, deploying the visual and visionary capacity that distinguishes us. Perhaps we might then accept simply being nature, like that which resists and knows, even attempting to “think like a mountain.”
Training becomes one of the possibilities to put this into practice. This is the context for projects such as Sentieri Creativi, where sixteen artists under the age of thirty, selected from among some seventy candidates at the open call, experienced a period of residency at Cà Matta, meeting artists, curators, historians, cultural operators, and naturalists. The request was to devise a permanent work for the municipalities of Dossena and Roncobello, which would host a selection of artists for a subsequent residency period to refine the projects in loco. It was clear right from the start that the real strength of the project, thanks also to the encouragement of the invited scholars and the proposed themes, was the internal confrontation between the artists, who once “out of this world” and largely disconnected—in a positive sense—really connected here, triggering fertile artistic relationships and sharing visions. Many of the projects proposed showed a genuine desire to investigate a participatory dimension with the communities across the Dossena and Roncobello territories, where the works—now proposed in the form of projects—will be installed.
The chance is that of the redefinition of certain ways of approaching education, but also a reflection on what sense art might have in mountain—and therefore apparently marginal—contexts, transforming these projects into a resource both for the villages in question and for the artistic discourse as a whole. Something very powerful came out of this meeting, and I am looking forward to seeing it take shape. In this sense, we have to bear in mind, today more than ever, that that There is not just a place, but a way of thinking and being in the world, which therefore also implies an ethical and political as well as an artistic commitment.
Francesco Pedrini
