PROGRAM OF EVENTS

 

Tabula Rasa

Programme of Events

 

v      Alumix / Ex-Alumix / next Alumix: What’s the future of the building?

Thoughts on conservation, contemporary cities and public needs. With: David Adjaye, Nikolaus Hirsch, Michel Müller, Jorge Otero-Pailos, Reinhard Kropf, Siv Helene Stangeland.

Friday, July 18, 5pm

v      The Miracle Metal – Memories of Aluminium

Jeffrey T. Schnapp, Milan

The Alumix Factory is closely connected with the history of Aluminium production in Italy. Jeffrey Schnapp explores the political and cultural resonances of Aluminium, which was once considered to be the miracle metal of modern Italy.

Saturday, July 19, 5pm

v      The Pirate as Archivist - Tools and Materials

Jan Gerber and Sebastian Lütgert

This workshop is an initiative against an art form that has become proprietary. Today, the dream of cinema no longer consists purely of images, but of the abstract rights that it claims to these images: infinite intellectual properties and their universal protection. In consequence, the single, most interesting tendency in cinema today - and the only one that holds a future - is piracy: the digital reproduction and redistribution of the entire history of cinema. It is organised spontaneously and on a world-wide level. This workshop is not only an attempt to increase the number and quality of movies in circulation, but also to increase the amount and quality of self-esteem among the individuals and organisations participating in various ways in this circulation.

Sunday, July 20 and Monday, July 21 at 5pm

v      In the Greenhouse

A nursery exhibition by Martina Schullian, Bolzano / Bozen

Tuesday, July 22 to Sunday, July 27

v      Informal Tabula Rasa

A workshop in “after-architecture” animated by Eugenio Tibaldi, Naples

Eugenio Tibaldi, an artist based in Naples, is interested in the practice, common in Southern Italy, of “regularising” informal and illegal constructions by drawing up retrospective architectural plans. This practice could be considered a form of “para-design,” or “after-architecture.” In Informal Tabula Rasa, Tibaldi invites the people working in the ex-Alumix factory during the exhibition – guards, ushers, guides and ticket staff – to build a construction parallel to the long table in Room 124, using unwanted objects and materials from their homes. This construction is then rendered as a drawing, as a collective exercise in “after-architecture”. The drawing is exhibited along with the improvised, built form.

Monday, July 28, to Saturday, August 2

v      Guestbook: Mind-mapping The Rest of Now

Open Anonymous Society, Berlin

Open Anonymous Society (OAS) is a temporary, heterogeneous constellation of artists based in Berlin. It regards the responses of ordinary visitors to art events, usually private and unexpressed, as the “residue” of contemporary art exhibitions. Guestbook: Mind-mapping The Rest of Now will solicit responses from visitors to The Rest of Now in the form of annotations, comments, thoughts, drawings and diagrams, which will be displayed on a “Mind Map” – a chart of conceptual links and associated interpretations – to be exhibited in Room 124.

Sunday, August 3 to Saturday, August 9

v      Radio Symphony: listening to global radio with local short-wave enthusiasts

A “radio symphony” is an accidental orchestral form created by simultaneously tuning-in to several radio stations. Twenty-four transistor radios will be arranged on the table, each tuned by a local, short-wave radio enthusiast, to the frequency of a radio station somewhere in the world. A fresh list of stations will be drawn up for each of the five days of the Radio Symphony event. The experience of walking along the table will be like listening to the turning dial of a giant radio. The visitor will be immersed in a constantly changing concert of sounds, voices, languages, music, static and radio-silence from all around the globe.

Wednesday, August 13, to Sunday, August 17

v      Industrial Ballads: an archive of abandoned industrial buildings

By Botto e Bruno, artists, Turin

Monday, August 18 to Sunday, August 24

v      Come faccio vivere Oetzi?

Tools and conservation techniques for one of the better preserved natural mummies in the world, by Marco Samadelli, Bolzano / Bozen.

Monday, August 25, 6 pm

v      Commodore 64 slam

Organisation and sound installation by Enrico Spanu, Bolzano / Bozen

Thursday, August 28 to Sunday, August 31

v      Summer Drafts, by Paolo Plotegher, Bolzano / Bozen and London, in collaboration with Lungomare, Bolzano / Bozen

Public presentation of the outcome of the Summer Drafts project, a series of workshop and intercultural events exploring informal meeting spaces and forms of sociality which are transversal to the different cultural identities of the local territory.

Thursday, September 4, 8 pm

v      Naključni osebni pogovori - Random Private Conversations

Milena Kosec, Career Contemporary artist, Ljubljana

The artist talks with randomly chosen visitors on a free subject, however, the discussion usually focuses on the person’s life activities.

Friday, September 5 to Sunday, September 7

v      Interpretation Laboratory I

By Monipodio, a cartoonists’ collective, Bolzano / Bozen

A group of cartoonists respond to The Rest of Now.

Saturday, September 6 to Sunday, September 14

v      Interpretation Laboratory II

Oral review on Manifesta 7 by 10 curators, moderated by Elvira Vannini, Bologna

After a private conversation, 10 young Italian curators will present to the public a review on Manifesta 7.

Wednesday, September 10, 6pm

v      How to stabilize a wobbly table, or the Bolzano Theorem.

A mathematics performance illustrating the Bolzano theorem and its peculiar applications, by Andrea Caranti, Trento.

Thursday, September 11, 6pm

v      Building Instruments: The Bolzano / Bozen Sessions

With Espen Sommer Eide, Bergen

Espen Sommer Eide, an artist, musician and philosopher based in Bergen, has designed a method for the collective building of improvised instruments for electronic music, using gramophone records, turntables, bits of amplifiers, sub-woofers, etc. The process of making the instruments continues into the making of the music itself. In The Bolzano / Bozen Sessions, Sommer Eide teams up with friends, acoustic hobbyists and local electronic music enthusiasts to build instruments and make music on, and around, the long table.

Friday, September 12

v      Floating Territories: Book Presentation

Presentation of a book edited by Nico Dockx, Germana Jaulin and Chiara Parisi based on a logbook of conversations between Nico Dockx, Yona Friedman, Helena Sidiropoulos and Jochem Vanden Ecker, arising from their work on the Floating Territories project.

Saturday, September 13, 6pm

v      Building Transmissions: Sound Performance

A live sound performance by Kris Delacourt, Nico Dockx and Krist Torfs, and the release of a 12” vinyl record connected to the TEUFELSgroup installation in The Rest of Now.

Saturday, September 13, 9pm

v      Rosarot und Himmelblau I

Object collections from Bolzano / Bozen, curated by Lisa Trockner, Bolzano / Bozen

Sunday, September 14 to Friday, September 19

v      Dictionary of War

A collaborative platform for discussing concepts about war, to be invented, arranged and presented by scientists, artists, theorists and activists at a public, two-day event. The aim is to pinpoint key concepts that play a significant role in current discussions about war, as well as those that have been neglected, or have yet to be created. Over the past two years, 125 key concepts have been produced in previous editions of the Dictionary of War, developed in Frankfurt, Munich, Graz, Berlin and Novi Sad. The sixth edition, to be developed at Manifesta 7, will be a remix of concepts from former editions, as well as an exhibition of a number of newly created concepts and their live presentations. (www.dictionaryofwar.org)

Platform: Saturday, September 20 and Sunday, September 21

Exhibition: Monday, September 22 to Thursday, September 25

v      Art Magazines: What Now?

Panel discussion on editing, publishing and writing for independent and emerging Italian art magazines, broadsheets and occasional publications. In collaboration with Undo.net, an independent online art network.

Friday, September 26

v      Residual Hopes: Table-Top Theatre Weekend

Theatre performances on the table, curated by Il Funambolo, cultural producers, Trento

Saturday, September 27 and Sunday, September 28

v      Table-Top Music Weekend

Music performances on the table, curated by Andrea Polato, Bolzano / Bozen

Saturday, October 4 and Sunday, October 5

v      Free Ads

Free distribution of historical ads from Radio Tandem FM98.4, Bolzano / Bozen

Monday, October 6 to Friday, October 10

v      Table-Top Poetry Weekend

Poetry slam-and-performance on the table, moderated by Markus Koehle, in German.

Sunday, October 12

v      TV Effects on Super 8

By Sara Rossi, Milan

This exhibition celebrates the art of creating animated graphic transitions (popularly called ‘TV Effects’) on Super 8 film, almost a lost art. Sara Rossi, a filmmaker and artist, presents her personal collection of Super 8 Effects in a specially curated projection program. 

Monday, October 13 to Sunday, October 19       

v      Handheld Objects

An exhibition of handheld wooden objects by Davide De Paoli, Bolzano / Bozen

Tuesday, October 21 to Sunday, October 26

v      Rosarot und Himmelblau II

Sterbebildchen: the Luis Müller collection of remembrance cards, curated by Lisa Trockner Bolzano / Bozen

Monday, October 27 to Sunday, November 2

PRESS RELEASE FIRST EVENTS - MANIFESTA 7 INAUGURAL WEEKEND

Tabula Rasa: 30 events for 111 days on a long table

 

Ex- Alumix building

A project by Denis Isaia, in conversation with Raqs Media Collective.

 

For the Manifesta 7 opening weekend, Tabula Rasa proposes three events that explore in depth some of the key concepts addressed by the exhibition The Rest of Now.

 

On occasion of the press preview on Friday 18 July, from 5 pm will take place the conference/debate Alumix/ Ex-Alumix / Next Alumix: What’s the Future of the building?

David Adjaye, Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Müller, Jorge Otero-Pailos, Reinhard Kropf and Siv Helene Stangeland propose a reflection on contemporary city-planning and public needs, starting from a study on the meaning of conservation and protection of the architectural heritage in contemporary societies. Main object of debate will be the ex-Alumix case, with an analysis of the project by John Norman and Leslie Oldridge, winner of the competition to transform the building into a state-of-the-art Institute for Innovative Technologies.

The industrial building ex-Alumix, and its surrounding area - important for its architecture as well as for the collective memory of the Bolzano / Bozen citizenship and history – will frame the debate, which will pose questions on the conservation and future of this icon of modernism.

David Ajaye (London): leading UK architect.

Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Müller (Frankfurt): architects, designers for cultural spaces, and architecture theorists.

Jorge Otero-Pailos (New York): architect and theoretician specialized in experimental forms of conservation.

Reinhard Kropf and Siv Helene Stangeland (Stavanger): architects specialized in methods of alternative production, integrating local resources.

 

The Alumix Factory is closely linked to the history of Aluminium production in Italy, and to the imaginary connected to it. Saturday 19 July, at 5 pm, Tabula Rasa will host The Miracle Metal – Memories of Aluminium. Jeffrey T. Schnapp proposes an analysis of the political and cultural resonances of Aluminium, once considered the miracle metal of modern Italy. This miracle can be studied in the light of the fascist rhetoric of autarchy, which, conjugated with the futuristic and modernist ideas of functionality, speed and technics, finds an iconic example in the Moka Bialetti.

Jeffrey T. Schnapp (London / Milan): Historian and Theoretician of culture, translator and curator.

 

Sunday 20 and Monday 21 July, from 5 pm, Jan Gerber and Sebastian Lütgert will extend the analysis of media and knowledge distribution, proposed by The Rest of Now, through The Pirate as Archivist- Tools and Materials, a workshop reflecting on the liberalisation and distribution of culture through the web.

Today, the dream of cinema no longer consists purely of images, but of the abstract rights that it claims to these images: infinite intellectual properties and their universal protection. In consequence, the single, most interesting tendency in cinema today - and the only one that holds a future - is piracy: the digital reproduction and redistribution of the entire history of cinema. It is organised spontaneously and on a world-wide level. This workshop is not only an attempt to increase the number and quality of movies in circulation, but also to increase the amount and quality of self-esteem among the individuals and organisations participating in various ways in this circulation.

PRESS RELEASE

Tabula Rasa: 30 events for 111 days on a long table

A project by Denis Isaia, in conversation with Raqs Media Collective.

How does the exhibition The Rest of Now remain alive throughout the duration of Manifesta 7, and beyond? How does it engage with the territory and dialogue with the citizens of Bolzano / Bozen and the region?

Tabula Rasa, a special project of Manifesta 7, part of the exhibition The Rest of Now, is a series of events unfolding over 111 days in the frame of the ex- Alumix industrial building.

 

A long white table – tabula rasa – especially designed by Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Müller and produced by local artisans – serves as a container of events. Exhibitions and table-top performances will alternate with sound installations, theatre, film screenings, workshops, panel discussions, talks, book presentations, gardening, and the occasional banquet, in a continuous flux of ephemeral events, disappearing one after the other, leaving behind nothing but a trace impressed in the memory of the participants.

Tabula Rasa represents an element of continuous evolution and change within the exhibition, It also offers a platform for self-reflection, criticism and debate on the concepts raised by The Rest of Now. The project will host symposia, workshops, exhibitions and book presentations featuring  critics, theorists, writers and young curators. These events will be open to the public. They are designed to be occasions for reflecting together on The Rest of Now, as well as on the current contemporary art scene in Italy and internationally.

Tabula Rasa will give a voice not only to established art professionals, but also to cultural producers in the wider sense, reflecting the complexity of the contemporary art discourse, to include theatre, experimental music, comics, poetry, radio, socio-political debates. Tabula Rasa thus becomes a space where diverse modes of aggregation and confrontation can debate, share, observe and create collectively.

Tabula Rasa serves, in fact, as a strong link between The Rest of Now and the locality: thanks to its democratic free access, and characterized by longer opening hours, it aims to offer a meeting space for new interactions and conversations, not only for the residents of Bolzano / Bozen, but also to visitors from the region, and beyond.

 

A large percentage of the events establish a dialogue with Alumix and the city, by involving the exhibition visitors as well as all members of staff, or by triggering a debate on the future of the building, providing an analysis of its history and function. Also featured are studies of the history of aluminium production that profoundly changed the cultural identity of Bolzano and an archive of visual memories of industrial buildings.

 

This dialogue with the locality is key to Manifesta 7: a number of people from Bolzano or the region have been invited to host events, or to actively participate. Radio Tandem, a popular local radio station is a media partner of Tabula Rasa. This represents a further link with the local audience.

 

Bolzano-based Denis Isaia works as independent curator and is the assistant curator to Raqs Media Collective for ‘The Rest of Now’.