{"id":3894,"date":"2025-07-29T15:55:36","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T13:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pensarecomeunamontagna.gamec.it\/?p=3894"},"modified":"2025-10-29T16:32:46","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T15:32:46","slug":"a-conversation-between-cecilia-guida-and-ilaria-gadenz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pensarecomeunamontagna.gamec.it\/en\/a-conversation-between-cecilia-guida-and-ilaria-gadenz\/","title":{"rendered":"A conversation between Cecilia Guida and Ilaria Gadenz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<section class=\"wp-block-evidenzio-columns\"><div class=\"container-fluid py-lg-5\"><div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-evidenzio-column col-12 col-md-12 col-lg-7 slider_row\">\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\"><em>Cara Montagna <\/em>(\u201cDear Mountain\u201d) is a form of correspondence. It\u2019s a conversation that seeks to offer reciprocity to the mountainside to which, for two years, we have directed our gaze and thoughts: among words and landscapes, among those who write about it and what inhabits it. It\u2019s about writing a letter in the knowledge that if a response ever comes, it will be in the form of the sliding of scree, the crunching of footsteps on the path, or the hidden gurgling of a spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\">While the second episode of this podcast series explored the relational tension that emerges between those who walk in the mountains and their environment, now the focus shifts to the material, affective, and political web that connects various communities. An ecological, political, post-human perspective that considers human beings as perpetually interconnected with animal and environmental agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\">Our correspondence is therefore also the corresponding, the mutual correspondence, it\u2019s reading the swirling present landscape through the reciprocal relationship between different elements, through the alliances that human, animal, and environmental bodies constitute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\"><em>Cara Montagna <\/em>will soon be online. While awaiting its launch, we now publish the transcript of the conversation between Ilaria Gadenz and Cecilia Guida, one of the voices from the third episode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><em>Cara Montagna (Dear Mountain) is a podcast produced by Ilaria Gadenz, created with Valentina Gervasoni.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">ILARIA GADENZ<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">I\u2019d like to start from your text <em>Community at the Center. Participatory Practices and Generative Spaces in Contemporary Art<\/em>. Following the etymology of the word, you write that what the community shares is not something more, but something less, a debt. Could you elaborate on this concept, also in light of the obligatory reciprocity of its root <em>munus<\/em>, and the idea of the gift\u2019s paradox, as Derrida writes about it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">CECILIA GUIDA<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">I\u2019m referring to an idea of community that comes from its Latin etymology, <em>communitas<\/em>, as analyzed by philosopher Roberto Esposito. In this perspective, the <em>munus<\/em> (at the root of the word) is not a free and disinterested gift but a particular gift: a gift-obligation, a gesture of opening to the other that creates a relationship, and that carries with it a debt to be repaid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The debt I\u2019m speaking about is not something negative but what binds individuals to each other, a reciprocal commitment that exposes them to one another. It\u2019s a \u201clacking\u201d of something, a void to be filled through building a connection, activating a continuous exchange that never ceases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">This shifts the notion of community from an identity or property-based level to a relational and processual one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The \u201cdebt\u201d however\u2014if we look at it in light of Derrida\u2014becomes complicated. Derrida, in fact, says the true gift is impossible because the moment you give, you create an obligation, a debt in other words, and this makes the gift something economic and calculable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">For Derrida, a true gift should be totally free, without return and without even the acknowledgement of having given. But this, in practice, is impossible and herein lies the paradox: in its capacity to simultaneously be something that is and also something that is not, being and not being at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">We could say that community is this living paradox: a place where the pure gift is impossible because giving belongs to all of us, but it\u2019s the very continuous exchange, the relational structure that holds people together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">ILARIA GADENZ<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Continuing along Derrida\u2019s line of thought, with the idea that the gift, as soon as it\u2019s intentional and there\u2019s recognition of it, becomes contaminated and enters into an economy, can we think of communal forms that exist outside calculation and economic logic, and how has (participatory) art worked on this boundary?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">CECILIA GUIDA<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Yes, I believe we can think of communal forms situated outside the logic of calculation and the extractive economy, provided we recognize that this doesn\u2019t mean being \u201coutside\u201d the economy in an absolute sense\u2014social practices, while existing on the margins, are within the system; they\u2019re part of it. You can\u2019t really be outside, but you can act differently within the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">It\u2019s exactly on this boundary that the Indonesian collective ruangrupa worked with Documenta 15 (Kassel, 2022), proposing the idea of the <em>lumbung<\/em>\u2014the collective granary in Indonesian\u2014as an operative, affective, and political principle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The <em>lumbung<\/em> wasn\u2019t a mere metaphor but a concrete practice of redistributing surplus, co-decision making, and consequently care. In this sense, community wasn\u2019t seen as an instrument to increase symbolic capital but as a system of relationships that generates value in a non-linear, non-competitive, non-measurable and non-capitalizable way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The artists participating in Documenta were involved through networks of affinity, collaboration, and trust\u2014ruangrupa\u2019s approach was: \u201cMake Friends, Not Art\u201d\u2014according to a curatorial model that challenged traditional selection systems\u2014their selection wasn\u2019t hierarchical but rhizomatic, and took place through a network of \u201clumbung members,\u201d full co-curators, who in turn invited artists or groups. This selection shifted focus from monumental works for collectors or markets to building real relationships, lasting alliances. And so in Documenta 15 \u201cMake Friends, Not Art\u201d meant that art becomes a pretext\u2014not the ultimate end\u2014to weave communities, build bonds, and sustain shared practices. In this way, ruangrupa included in one of the most important artistic manifestations of this part of the world, showcasing practices from the global south that often remain outside canonical circuits because they don\u2019t \u201cperform\u201d in the economic or spectacular sense of the term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">So, to address your question directly, Documenta 15 operated on the boundary between the art economy and forms of radical mutualism, not to deny the economic context but to partially deactivate it, decenter the authorial function, and distribute curatorial power in a genuinely horizontal way. In the <em>ruruHaus<\/em>\u2014the curatorial team\u2019s operational and social headquarters\u2014one wall featured an enormous diagram showing all phases of building the exhibition, from the collective\u2019s appointment as artistic director through opening and beyond, along with the distributed funding model for \u201clumbung members\u201d (around $25,000 each) and a common fund for shared projects. This diagram was remarkable because for the first time in Documenta\u2019s history, the public could see the entire event budget and how, when, and where funds had been deployed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Documenta 15 was an experiment that generated strong institutional and political tensions but which, in my view, reopened the chance to think about community as a non-functional space, not evaluable according to an extractive logic, yet fully active on the cultural, social, and political level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">ILARIA GADENZ<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">In <em>Community at the Focus<\/em>, you write about those participatory projects that create common spaces of another kind, and here you use \u201ckind\u201d in the sense of generative, emancipatory projects, embracing Derrida and Ronell\u2019s notion that participation is not belonging. Could you explain this point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">CECILIA GUIDA<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">When I write about \u201ccommon spaces of another kind,\u201d I\u2019m referring to participatory projects that don\u2019t limit themselves to reproducing preexisting institutional or relational models, but that generate spaces founded on new forms of relationship, new ways of being together, often hybrid, open, informal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">I use \u201ckind\u201d not in a classificatory sense, but generatively\u2014inspired by Derrida and Ronell\u2019s idea, outlined in a 1980 <em>Critical Inquiry<\/em> article, that participation isn\u2019t founded on belonging to an identity, a fixed community, or a predetermined role, but on taking part, on being engaged. It\u2019s an important distinction: it\u2019s not about being part \u201cof\u201d something, but contributing to making it exist through the very act of participation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">In this sense, the participatory projects I refer to generate temporary communities that don\u2019t define themselves through exclusion or boundary, but through openness and shared practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">An example is <em>Victoria Square Project<\/em>, conceived by American artist Rick Lowe in response to the invitation to participate in Documenta 14, hosted in Athens in 2017. The project takes its name from the square of the same name that in 2015 became a camp for refugees and migrants arriving in the Greek capital, and therefore an urban symbol of themes related to hospitality, the coexistence of different cultures, and related social tensions. <em>Victoria Square Project<\/em> today is a space that exists and that is still operative, open to all inhabitants of the square, to organizations supporting immigrants and refugees, to cultural associations for getting to know each other and comparing experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">ILARIA GADENZ<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Many questions emerge from your book, I\u2019ll pose two: how should the relationship between artist and community be reframed? And what responsibility do artists have toward the communities they involve?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">CECILIA GUIDA<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">When we speak of \u201ccommunity-based art,\u201d we\u2019re not referring to a pre-packaged format, to a repeating model, but rather to a theoretical category and \u201ccritical\u201d practice where the levels and nature of participation differ depending on the interweaving of material aspects with immaterial ones (for example, stories and memories, both personal and collective), interweavings that occur in the context where the artist operates. Social practice is insistently local in its scope, and relationships are consolidated in person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The artist\u2019s role within a community extends far beyond traditional authorship\u2014their responsibilities multiply: their ability to relate, their empathy allows them to respond (and here I mean responsibility as the ability to respond) to contexts where they\u2019ve been invited to work, sensing and recognizing a community\u2019s desires and critical issues\u2014so listening becomes crucial\u2014while also serving as a facilitator-mediator committed to challenging dominant narratives and co-creating with community situations that may become self-sustaining over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Authorship becomes decentralized and the artist turns into a weaver of connections. This defines their responsibility\u2014I\u2019m reminded of Maria Lai and her collective happening of 1981, <em>Legarsi alla montagna<\/em> (Binding to the Mountain), when, after learning of a local oral legend, she invited people to \u201cbind together\u201d the houses of Ulassai, and the entire community participated in what became the first relational performance in art history. The artist thus becomes a connector, building worlds through dialogue, plurality, and concrete action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Moreover, an artist\u2019s responsibility toward a community is ongoing and enduring\u2014it doesn\u2019t end when the work is presented, but includes caring for the social effects the work produces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Many projects can serve as examples, including the landmark \u201cCulture in Action: New Public Art in Chicago,\u201d curated by Mary Jane Jacob\u2014a foundational exhibition that essentially established the field of public space art practices. This took place in 1993 with preparatory work that had begun two years earlier. The ten invited artists came into contact with specific city communities, deemed uninterested in art (women, workers, adolescents, the sick), confronting them at length about what they felt they needed or desired, and art\u2019s potential to think about and address problems from a different perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Among the processual interventions undertaken, artist and theorist Suzanne Lacy\u2014author of the expression \u201cnew genre public art,\u201d in response to minimalist art placed in public spaces as if they were open-air museums\u2014formed a temporary committee of women, named \u201cA Coalition of Chicago Women,\u201d which over two years met formally and informally, arriving at the decision to celebrate one hundred women who had stood out for their contribution to society (in a city where there were no monuments dedicated to women), through one hundred stone boulders with bronze plaques bearing the names of the chosen women, scattered throughout the city. I\u00f1igo Manglano-Ovalle instead collaborated with the network of high school educational organizations operating in his predominantly Latino neighborhood to create <em>Street-Level Video<\/em>: a permanent video workshop conceived to enable groups of adolescents to create videos that represented their lives and interests more realistically and thoroughly than the rhetorical content and clich\u00e9s conveyed by mainstream media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">A more recent community-based project that I followed is Serena Crocco\u2019s, titled <em>Via del Ricordo<\/em>, initiated during the residency I curated at Casa degli Artisti in Milan between 2022 and last year. Serena chose to work in the Crescenzago neighborhood in the city\u2019s northeastern outskirts, focusing on an extraordinary space: the former cemetery on Via del Ricordo, abandoned for sixty years, with a project aimed at reconstructing its memory and enabling a gradual, organic reopening for the benefit of the neighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Through convivial moments (there was also a Sunday lunch in front of the former cemetery entrance), workshops, occasions for exchange and collecting memories, articles and photographs, the artist involved elderly neighborhood residents (who are the site\u2019s historical memory) and children from an elementary school (who have no memory but imaginative power) in a repositioning of the collective gaze on this forgotten city space and in a profound collective reflection\u2014one still ongoing\u2014on the relationship between places of life and those of death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">ILARIA GADENZ<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">How does community work change, or how does the work of artists who relate to the idea of community change, faced with the now consolidated idea that we cannot speak only of human community but must necessarily expand the field to include everything that is non-human?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">CECILIA GUIDA<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">I\u2019ll answer thatby discussing workshops, because they represent a central element in relational and participatory projects as they offer a fluid way for artists and communities to connect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The workshop centers on the process rather than the product and creates conditions for reciprocal learning. It\u2019s not just an operational tool, but an environment of possibilities where participatory art can exercise its transformative function.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Recently, together with curators Giorgina Bertolino, Francesca Comisso, and Alessandra Pioselli, I worked on the first monograph of the artists Caretto\/Spagna\u2014who accompanied us in editing the volume titled <em>Bright Ecologies<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">In my text, I reflect particularly on their workshop production, which is vast and often gives rise to works, as well as being considered work itself\u2014for Caretto\/Spagna, in fact, workshops are collective works that involve people and develop with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Speaking of participatory practices and non-human communities, in Italy one cannot fail to consider Caretto\/Spagna who, in their research and artistic practice, challenge the illusion we have as human beings of separation from nature, and invite exploration, movement in the world\u2014inhabiting is one of their research lines\u2014and experimenting with various ways of perceiving living beings, human and non-human, animate and inanimate things that inhabit it. In their workshops, a cognitive process occurs whereby things are perceived \u201cbefore\u201d in one way and \u201cafter\u201d in another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">ILARIA GADENZ<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Caretto and Spagna\u2019s work seems to embrace both these poles. In the introduction to their catalogue, they write: \u201cif the being exists only in a relationship, then everything is ecological and every artwork is always collective.\u201d How would you define the relationships established in their projects?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">CECILIA GUIDA<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Caretto\/Spagna are philosophically close to the hierarchical ontology of Deleuzian matrix that affirms differences without any hierarchy or totalization: for them, life is a system of relationships, an energy flow that incessantly transforms matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">So in their projects, relationship is the generative force that shapes the work and transforms those who participate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">In other words, as you just said and they write in the introduction to the volume <em>Bright Ecologies<\/em>, \u201cif being exists only in relationship, then every work is inevitably ecological and collective\u201d: in their works, authorship is distributed among participants; relationships are situated in specific contexts and times; the work is not a product but an event open to new configurations, to continuous transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">ILARIA GADENZ<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">What is meant by artists as \u201cmorphogenetic agents\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">CECILIA GUIDA<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">This is a definition by Caretto\/Spagna who describe themselves not so much as authors in the traditional sense but as agents within a system of material, living, environmental relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">As artists they \u201ctake part in\u201d an ecological and transformative network that places human and non-human elements, biological processes, perceptual dynamics, geological components etc. into dialogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Caretto\/Spagna anticipated by two decades approaches and questions today considered essential and fundamental for an inclusive vision of perception and interaction with the world, closer to post-humanist philosophy than to critical debate on participatory and socially engaged art, which still remains inscribed in the twentieth-century humanistic paradigm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">ILARIA GADENZ<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">In the preface to the updated version of <em>Artificial Hells<\/em> by Claire Bishop, which you translated, there\u2019s an attempt to explain the reasons for the disappearance of the concept of participation in critical discourse over the last twelve\u2013thirteen years. We speak of participation and how it\u2019s been replaced by terms from other epistemologies, other urgencies: care, healing, ritual&#8230; What happened to the word \u201ccommunity\u201d? Is there total overlap between participation and community or can distinctions be made?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">CECILIA GUIDA<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">In the introduction to the new updated edition of <em>Artificial Hells<\/em>, published last year by Luca Sossella, Claire Bishop mentions the fact that over the last twelve\u2013thirteen years, the word \u201cparticipation\u201d has lost centrality in critical discourse, and has been partly replaced by terms like \u201ccare,\u201d \u201chealing,\u201d \u201crepair,\u201d and \u201critual.\u201d These are words that respond to different urgencies, and in this scenario, the word \u201ccommunity\u201d hasn\u2019t disappeared but has been subjected to a semantic shift. Today we speak less of community as unitary subject and more often in terms of situated multiplicities, temporary alliances, relational ecologies. Community is no longer \u201cthe public\u201d to be involved, as in the \u201990s and 2000s, but a fluid condition within which participatory artistic practices, gestures of care, and forms of resistance are articulated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">So I\u2019d say the word hasn\u2019t disappeared but rather Claire Bishop references it in a more complex, more cautious, perhaps more responsible way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Regarding the overlap between participation and community, I\u2019d say there\u2019s no complete overlap\u2014it\u2019s better to distinguish between them. The meaning we give to \u201cparticipation\u201d is certainly important: as I mentioned, by participating I don\u2019t mean being part of something (I can participate in or collaborate on something without feeling part of the community) but rather taking part in creating something, building a community. It\u2019s an ongoing process where participation must be actively practiced in order to generate open and porous communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">ILARIA GADENZ<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">What are the main risks that Claire Bishop identifies in artistic practices relating to communities?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">CECILIA GUIDA<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">According to Bishop, one of the main risks in relational and participatory artistic practices involving communities is an excessive emphasis on ethics at the expense of aesthetics. That is, a work\u2019s value often gets measured in terms of good intentions and inclusivity, while overlooking the symbolic force, critical edge, and formal power of the artistic intervention\u2014participatory art is not just social activity but also symbolic production, existing within the world while maintaining distance from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Another risk is the instrumentalization of communities\u2014a form of extractivism where participation becomes merely a pretext to legitimize a project or generate consensus around the artist or the sponsoring institution. In such cases, people\u2019s involvement fails to be truly transformative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Bishop also warns against the aestheticization of social issues\u2014when real conflicts are made visible only to be contemplated, without generating change or genuine shifts in perspective. This creates the risk of \u201crepresenting\u201d marginality without questioning its structural conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Finally, there\u2019s a broader political risk: participation as a soft form of governance, where the artists finds themselves playing a social operator\/mediator role, absorbing public functions left uncovered by institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">In this way, art risks becoming a symbolic \u201cband-aid\u201d placed on systemic problems. In chapter six of <em>Artificial Hells<\/em>, Bishop speaks precisely about this, with provocative intent, through analysis of those artistic innovations that flourished in the United Kingdom in the \u201980s, under Margaret Thatcher\u2019s conservative government (1979\u20131992), called \u201cCommunity Arts Movement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">So according to Bishop, in the relationship with communities, critical awareness must be maintained, as well as attention toward the work\u2019s disturbing power and formal tension\u2014avoiding participation becoming an end in itself or a reassuring label\u2014and the works, projects, and performances that Bishop describes in the book were chosen with these very aspects in mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">ILARIA GADENZ<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">I\u2019m collecting definitions of community. Could you tell me yours?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">CECILIA GUIDA<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">I\u2019ll respond through literature. There\u2019s a Raymond Carver story called <em>Cathedral<\/em> that I always recommend to students at the beginning of my course at the Brera Academy, because it explores the very dimension of sharing that I consider central when discussing community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">In <em>Cathedral<\/em>, the protagonist\u2014a man closed off from others, incapable of empathy\u2014finds himself hosting his wife\u2019s blind friend. Initially uncomfortable, everything changes when the two begin drawing a cathedral together: they do it jointly, the protagonist guiding the blind man\u2019s hand with his own eyes closed. Through this simple gesture, the man sees for the first time through relationship, which transforms him: an epiphany occurs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">This story beautifully captures the sense of opening to others, the shift from \u201cI\u201d to \u201cwe\u201d built through gesture, through shared experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">For me, community exists\u2014or rather, happens. \u201cHappens\u201d feels more accurate because it frees community from the constraint of lasting time and connects its creation to events. Community occurs in a place\u2014be it symbolic, physical, or digital\u2014where people experience life together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/section>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories-ideas"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A conversation between Cecilia Guida and Ilaria Gadenz - Pensare come una montagna<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pensarecomeunamontagna.gamec.it\/en\/a-conversation-between-cecilia-guida-and-ilaria-gadenz\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A conversation between Cecilia Guida and Ilaria Gadenz - 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