The Open Care residence for artists and curators, organised by the FARE association, was started in 2010 and is based in the Frigoriferi Milanesi complex. It has launched various programmes that contribute to promoting mobility amongst artists and curators.
Guest artists
2010
Asim Waqif (India), artist and architect who lives and works in Delhi, where he taught at the School of Planning and Architecture. Working with various materials, both natural and artificial, the artist creates public projects that reflect on the eco-sustainability of contemporary society.
His residence programme involved an exploratory journey around Italy visiting several residences: Cittadellarte (Biella), Qwatz (Rome) and Fondazione Brodbeck (Catania). During the residence, Asim Waqif created ‘CONSUMPTION=EXHAUSTION’, a large installation composed of natural materials, mostly large bamboo canes, assembled in a majestic architectural structure.
Angela Serino (Holland) was winner of the RESIDENZAITALIA programme in 2010. The curator’s project was aimed at exploring and meeting with experts to discuss the manner in which public artworks come about. The idea was to start comparing countries that boast a tradition of such art, such as the Netherlands, or Italy, where it has been in development for years and is just now beginning to flourish. The programme, coordinated by the Nosadella.due (Bologna) residence, also involved Bivaccourbano (Turin) and Pastificio Cerere (Rome).
2011
Partnership with the Kaleidoscope magazine project space, which held a series of workshops aimed at offering opportunities to explore and share aspects of the creative process which usually have little visibility and are relevant to the diverse creative disciplines, such as visual arts, contemporary music, cinema, architecture and literature. The following artists took part in these workshops and were guests at the residence: Peter Friedl, Lara Favaretto, Simone Trabucchi, Simone Bertuzzi, Benjamin Valenza, Yann Chateignè, Xavier Garcia Bardon, Julia Cima and Alex Cecchetti.
Beatrice Catanzaro (Italy), and Rachela Abbate (Italy) were winners of the RESIDENZAITALIA programme in 2010 and thanks to the programme were able to spend some time at Nablus (Palestine) between winter 2010 and spring 2011. During the residence, the two artists organised a dinner to raise money for the Bait al Karama project, the first women’s centre in the heart of the old town of Nablus.
Bridget Backer (Africa) was the winner of the RESIDENZAITALIA programme in 2011. The programme was promoted by Nosadella.due (Bologna), Diogene Bivaccourbano (Turin), Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (Venice) and Pastificio Cerere (Rome). The artist researched Italian Colonialism in Eritrea between 1890 and 1947, working on several themes including contemporary Italian historiography, the history of modernist architecture in Eritrea, the construction of the railways in Eritrea, exploration of some genres of Italian cinema and documentation of the travel and despatch of Italian female figures in Africa under colonialism.
Collaboration with the Kunstverein collective of curators, aimed at experimenting with processes of cohabitation and interaction as tools of conviviality. The first outcome of this collaboration was the exhibition The Nervous System by Zbynek Baladràn (Czech Republic) and Jirì Kovanda (Czech Republic). The two Czech artists worked together on an experimental and intergenerational project using different artistic practises. Their work went to the limits of performance and language.
2012
Richard Cramp (England) and Egemen Demirci (Turkey) presented their artworks in the Making Space exhibition at the end of the residence. Cramp’s work researched how the Expo will influence infrastructure, the urban development of the city and the socio-environmental impact that it will actually cause. Using installations, sculptures and photographs, the artist compared architecture and landscape. Demirci created two video-installations that proposed the dual meaning of construction: the real, represented by the changes to Milan in preparation for Expo, and the abstract, connected to the potential of construction.
évolution de l’art, the gallery of immaterial artwork, curated by Kunstverein. Various artists presented their artworks and performances: : Paola Anziché, Herman Chong, Michelangelo Consani, Ivan Moudov, Daniele Maffeis, Ruth Sacks con Simon Gush, Alessandro Nassiri, Tabibzadeh, and Italo Zuffi.
As part of the AIR International Research Program – #1/Under Construction-Open Residency, the residence hosted artist and anthropologist Leone Contini (Florence), curator Valerio del Baglivo (Rome) and philosopher and architect Fares Chalabi (Beirut) who developed their research first in Beirut and then Milan, investigating the theme of the contemporary city as a place for production of the unreal, lifestyles and cultural models. Their respective projects: Trans-Orient Buffet, Inc., a tableau vivant by Leone Contini, Abstract Geographies, publication and lecture by Fares Chalabi and Maybe Not Art, temporary shop by Valerio Del Baglivo were presented in an exhibition at the end of the residence.
INHEPI (International Network of Human Encounters in Performance and Installation), an international group of independent artists that support and develop research and the production of installations and performance based on interaction with the public all over the world. The artists presented SENS at the residence, the first of an annual workshop organised in Italy.
‘Bureau For Art Nerds’, curated by Valentina Sansone, a series of events at the Milan headquarters of the Swiss Institute and other public spaces managed by the city, which created new circuits for contemporary art and experimented with non-happening.
S.A.V.E. Milan, a new episode of S.A.V.E., an artwork in constant evolution, created by Ambra Pittoni (Germany) and Paul-Flavien Enriquez-Sarano –Ze Coeupel (Germany), which is structured around various phases and curated by That’s Contemporary in collaboration with FARE, Museo del Novecento, Careof DOCVA Viafarini and Lucie Fontaine.
S.A.V.E. is a research agency with temporary headquarters that was started in Berlin in 2009. It devises strategic solutions used to tackle the fundamental historical shift that the world is going through. The agency acts as a consultant or urban planning company, established as a simulation of reality and, through associated structures, this work develops and branches out as various actions, reflections, testimonies and interaction.
Angela Serino (Holland) and artists Paola Anziché (Italy), Maja Bekan (Holland) and Rory Pilgrim (Holland) as part of the PAY ATTENTION, please project, an exchange born out of collaboration between FARE and Kunsthuis SYB, promoted by the Municipality of Milan. ‘PAY ATTENTION, please’ began as a reflection on the role of residence programmes as places for isolation and concentration, and took inspiration from recent projects ‘ON Residency: or an (in)visible production’, curated by Angela Serino for Kunsthuis SYB, and ‘Decompressione Gathering Summer Camp’, a project co-curated by Valerio Del Baglivo and Radical Intention at the Corniolo Art Platform in Tuscany. The project was structured around a series of public gatherings at the Sala delle Colonne, Fabbrica del Vapore and Kunsthuis SYB from late October to December as part of Angela Serino’s residence at FARE and Valerio Del Baglivo’s at Kunsthuis SYB.
First edition of Night Spaghetti Screenings – When life meets fiction, a project curated by Valerio Del Baglivo (Italy), which organises midnight spaghetti feasts accompanied by screenings, with the idea of showing a large part, or even the entirety, of the filmography of individual video artists. In the homely context of the residence, the Night Spaghetti Screenings aimed to investigate the relationship between film image and daily context, combining documentary forms that are developed through linear narrative systems with fictional images of an introspective nature.
For the first edition, Angela Marzullo (Switzerland) showed her video Performing, which featured her two daughters in a partly playful, partly serious reverse journey through the history of contemporary performance; in Kindergarten Show 1991-2009, Alessandra Messali (Italy) led her former primary-school friends in reliving a specific moment from their school days; and in a weave of narration and photographic imagery, Giulio Squillacciotti (Italy) traced the probable story of an ordinary family with his video ‘Far, from where we came’.
Carla Filipe (Portugal), a Portuguese artist visiting Italy for the first time. During her residence, she presented As primas da Bulgária, curated by Kunstverein. The first part of the long term project was presented in an exclusive preview in Milan. Carla Filipe is one of the most interesting current Portuguese artists, whose work is gaining international recognition, in some part thanks to her participation in important events such as Manifesta 8 (2010).
‘Grand Tour 2012’, a European project by the Civic Virtue collective of artists (Holland), following Hinterconti (Hamburg), After-the-Butcher (Berlin), Flatform (Bijlmer) and Lettergieterij (Amsterdam), which took place in Milan for its Italian tour and was curated by Kunstverein.
At the end of their residence, Civic Virtue presented the results of their research in Milan and the work they had made in situ – which was still in progress -, as well as a preview of the ‘Grand Tour movie’ with a musical score by Natalia Dominguez, which will be presented in full, along with all the material collected and edited for it, during the grand final event planned for 2013 at the Centro W139 in Amsterdam.