Cubes in Motion: an example of Manydee collaboration

The intention of the Cubes in Motion – Embassy of Biella and Piedmont Territory project is to initiate a process of creative collaboration among the C.N.A. Confederazione Nazionale dell’Artigianato (National Confederation of Crafts), La Tavola dell’Orso, the craftsmen of Piedmont excellence and the artists of Manydee, the international network of former UNIDEE residents.
Aim: conceiving 8 cubes from international artists, realised from selected Piedmont artisans in order to promote the productive abilities of the Biella and Piedmont Territory, which are also used as display unit for the products of the Consortium La Tavola dell’Orso.
The project wants to propose as a model the idea that Biella and Piedmont crafting excellence embodies in products of the highest quality the district’s cultural and environmental values.
In this direction, in the Biella and Piedmont territory the quality of product will become quality of life.
In this vision there is a meaningful correspondence between the productive fabric and the life of the socio-cultural fabric.
The vitality of the social fabric is the fruit of the organic relationships between the various elements that make up the territory, on one hand, and the global dimension on the other.
This quality of life is founded on the concept of glocalisation, that complex economic and cultural system of reference originating from the fusion of local networks with the planetary weave.
The proposed concepts will have to be in the shape of a cube, the basic module of a variable, transformable, adaptable to different spaces.

Some images of the very first cubes realized for the project (May 2006, photos courtesy of Ruben Bena)

Artist: Juan Sandoval (Colombia) > Craftsman: aluminium – Fossati Marco >
Producer: Az. Agr. di Maria Chiara Reda – Cajanto wine

Artist: Margarita Vazquez Ponte (Scotland) > Craftsman: wood – Pigato Roberto > Producer: Liquorificio Rapa Giovanni Ratafià

Artist: Alejandro Vàsques Salinas (Colombia) >
Craftsman: marble and stone – Romanelli Marco > Producer: Caseificio Rosso

BiLUG – Biella’s Linux Users Group

BiLUG (Biella User Group) is a etherogeneous group of people that use open source for business or just for passion and spend their time to promote
its use in any destination. In spite the name, members of BiLUG don’t use only Linux but they are interested by the whole range of free software.
Focus of BiLUG activity is the mailing list, where all subscribers can meet themselves and exchange email messages to find a help. The web site is used to share news and to promote activities.
In 2007, thanks to the collaboration with Cittadellarte, the group has the opportunity to meet ourselves more often, every saturday afternoon. This is a good way to
meet interested people, to try to solve common issues, to give suggestion to everyone who need.
In particulary, BiLUG members offer their experience for installation and
configuration of most common operating systems (distributions) and free software
and, at the beginning of every month, in the evening, BiLUG people meet new members and discuss about activities for free software promotion, like Linux Day event, a yearly recorrence.

CITTADEL-ARTist Lecture Series 2007: Alain Verschueren

Alain Verschueren

October 12 2007

Lecture: Friday October 12, Pistoletto Basement Theater, 18.00
Studio Visits: Wednesday, September 26, 11–13.00, UNIDEE*
*Please sign up for one half-hour studio visit following the artist’s lecture

Alain Verschueren is an artist working in sculpture and performance. For the past
three years, he has carried glass greenhouses on his shoulders in different public
spaces in Belgium. Vershueren experiments with ideas about participation in the
world, walking on the street, always within a special structure where noise is less
aggressive and the perfume of plants brings comfort and relief against pollution.
Verschueren plans to bring his oases to different parts of the world as part of a
six month journey starting in 2009.

The Cittadel-Artist Lecture Series is part of the UNIDEE in Residence Program at the Pistoletto Foundation,
Biella, Italy. For more information, please contact Chelsea Tonelli Knight at chelsea@chelseaknight.com.

TRAILER 31 – fri 29 sept -> 2 oct 2007

Very welcome,

to camp with Trailer 31, in between Cittadellarte and Casa del Mago,
in Italia, Biella, near the mountains, nature, ….

In this extended weekend, we occupy institutionalized in between space, and turn private proprety into an open source environment !?!

Anyway, join the campsite during their stay!
Bring your tent, your thoughts and skills to Trailer 31!

A bit of planning:

In that weekend – I heard – there will be a party on friday?
Hope so, Where? maybe in Casa Del Mago… !
Hopefully the streaming works: Watch UNI-TUBE!

Saturday, we will do a test run of ubliActie: (dutch only)
Wablief? What? Everybody who is interested in chaos, politics, networks, tools, technology, open source design tools and how to publish in university of ideas… (Recipy)
Art, archive, produse! with pancakes?
Join us at 14:30

Monday, Uni-topia or CITTADEL-ARTist Lecture Series 2007,
the visitors of Cittadellarte will give an informal presentation.

Tuesday, some more…

On the program “on going”: experiments in renewable-energy, self-sustaining, inflatable shelters, mesh environments, …

in collaboration with www.ooooo.be code31.lahaag.org www.bilug.it

(we provide shower, electricity supply, wireless network, wood and recycle workshop)

photo diary: visit to Serralunga company

Serralunga is a company in Biella with a 170 years long tradition, nowadays leader in the production of Italian Style plastic flower pot.
The industrial concept is to “revisit” the traditional flower pot with the choice of new materials and with a costant creative reserach, which lead to the production of pottery, lamps and furniture realized by famous designers. Serralunga exports its product in 52 different countries all over the world.

Marco Serralunga, head of Serralunga company

Marco Serralunga takes UNIDEE resident in a tour of the factory in Biella

The big plastic pots of Serralunga, ready to be distributed

A sight of Serralunga’s machinery

Colors in Serralunga

How to participate in UNI-TOPIA

UNI-TOPIA logo

Uni-topia is an open program of exchange between Unidee Residents; Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto staff; Visiting Artists, Curators, and Guests; and the Public.
A lecture, workshop, screening, field-trip, or demonstration in 20, 40, or 60 minute blocks can be proposed by anyone usually who would is interested in sharing their knowledge, skill, or experience with the larger community.

To reduce email clutter please send your proposed program to one or all of the following address the day before the program is scheduled. It will be compiled with the other proposals for the day, translated into italian, and placed on the website. One email per day is sent out to the community with the list of events to help facilitate people’s scheduling for the day.

Send email the day Before with proposal to:
jasonhwaite@gmail.com, prowi_zorka@poczta.onet.pl , lieven.paelinck@gmail.com
Include in Proposal
Title
Your full name
Time: 20, 40, or 60 min.
Location
Short Description

Thank you for your participation.
Staff of Information Ministry of Unidee 2007

Photo diary: deBuren meeting

Together the Flemish and Dutch government have taken the initiative to establish the Vlaams-Nederlands Huis as a cultural institution and as a centre for debate and reflection. The mission of the Huis is to provide a Dutch-Flemish forum for debate on cultural diversity, society and politics in Europe.
The Huis is a logical continuation of a close association between Flanders and the Netherlands over a period of decades. In 1980 both governments decided to set this language co-operation down in the Dutch Language Union Treaty. Fifteen years later they signed a broader cultural treaty which resulted in the Flanders-Netherlands Cultural Treaty. Now that the European Union is becoming increasingly important, they have chosen Brussels as the site for Flanders and the Netherlands to present themselves as a single region linked by language and culture within the cultural diversity of Europe.
In view of the social importance of this cultural diversity, it is important for European countries to inform one another about their culture and for these cultures to meet. The main task of the Huis is to provide a platform for debate on Europe and for different target groups to come together, to provide European citizens with information in presentations and talks and, finally, to distribute information (digitally or otherwise). The Huis hopes by means of its activities to focus on intermediary target groups as well as on the public at large.

In Cittadellarte, deBuren director Dorian van der Brempt and exhibitions and programming manager Klaartje Brouns explained origin and mission of the centre and illustrated deBuren 2007 program.

The cover of 2007 deBuren brochure

A moment of the meeting with UNIDEE residents

Dorian van der Brempt, deBuren director

Klaartje Brouns, deBuren exhibitions and programming manager

The hypermedia project 0rhizone: UNIDEE meet the authors

Interdisciplinary artists and researchers Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson came to talk to UNIDEE residents about their ongoing hypermedia project 0rhizone which takes as its starting point the thirty books selected for the Letterature di svolta/Living library exhibition initially held at Cittadellarte in 2004 and currently on show again at the foundation.

A lively discussion touched on such matters as Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome in relation to web and hypertext practice, the question of the multiple, Pierre Lèvy’s idea of ‘virtualization’ (going from a ‘solution’ to mapping the  problematic field which constitutes it at all levels) as well as Guy Debord’s analysis of spectacular alienation and the need to rethink it – in light of the web’s ‘call’ to interactivity – beyond the absolute separation between self and commodified image.

Following on from this was a reflection on attempts, such as those of new media theorist Gregory Ulmer (who coined the term ‘electracy’ to describe the cognitive attitudes and approaches that are currently emerging) to create alternative discursive and rhetorical models that can simultaneously bring into play the different aspects of the subject which are involved in web practice and interaction (their rational and fantasy investments in the information grids – from home to school to entertainment discourse – across which their singularities are distributed).

Questions raised by the residents included the dangers of adaptation (however subversive the intent) to dominant corporate information channels and flows and software tools and rethinking the meaning of ‘resistance’ and ‘communication’ in light of the technological advances of new media. The discussion widened to issues related to alternative forms of education, the need for irony in art and philosophy, performativity,  the ideology of privatization and ‘universalised’ intellectual property, capitalism’s reterritorialization of past strategies of emancipation, the influence of theory (positive and negative) on contemporary art practices and the role of information grids in identity construction.   

The day concluded with a look at a part of the 0rhizone hypertext, based around Mike Davis’s book City of Quartz, and an invitation to the residents to develop their own projects, of whatever type, beginning from a book selected from the Living library.  

A symbolic image of the theoric process of 0rhizone project

Graeme Thomson

Silvia Maglioni

photo diary: ILO students visit UNIDEE residents

UNIDEE rsidents received the visit of the students of the Master “Cultural Projects for Developement”, which takes place into the International Training Centre of the ILO in Turin.
The Centre works to enhance the capacity of governments, employers’ organizations, workers’ organizations and other social and economic actors to play an effective role in the economic and social development of their countries and regions.
Professor Walter Santagata, Director of the Master “Cultural Projects for Development”, came with the students and took a brief common lecture around Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Mediterranean Table.

Professor Santagata and the students of the Master “Cultural Projects for Development” meet UNIDEE residents in Cittadellarte

A moment of the meeting around the Mediterranean Table

Professor Walter Santagata

Students of the master “Cultural Projects for Development” visited Cittadellarte’s exhibitions

Forget about biodiesel.

Following Francesco Bernabey’s ‘Hydrogen Toy Care Failure and Why?’
I recieved this in my mailbox.
The described mr Olaf is a friend of mine.
The website: www.uniwerf.be seems to be temporarly unavailable
Lieven

Short translation:
In fat:
Vegetal oil replaces dieseloil.
Forget the environmentally unfriendly biodiesel.
If it depends on engineer Olaf Deschoenmaeker (34) from Temse, every diesel car runs on pure vegetal oil without any adjustments carried out onto the actual motor. He is been working for 8 years on this green fuel, which is even that clean you can drink it. Olaf Deschoenmaeker currently negotiates with investors to commercialise his fuel.

Small text mentiones:
2 Years ago Olaf presented a car on recycled frying oil.
After a test phase he is now presenting a new fuel of 70% recycled frying oil, and another 30% of a mixture of 4 different vegetal oils, that provides a good viscosity to pour it right into your gas tank and start the (diesel)engine. He proves on the spot the fuel is drinkable. The exhaust gas smells like a neigbourhood’s barbeque.
To be clear: this is no bio-diesel: that fuel contains methanol and is still environmentaly-unfriendly.
(And you better don’t drink it.)
This green fuel can also be used for warming the house, having a warm shower and producing electricity.
The fuel currently costs 0,65 euro/L (tax incl.)

In the frame:
Nowadays (in Belgium) you need a permit from customs to have your car running on another than the regular fuels available. That costs up to 0,36 euro/L and this rate is due to rapid changes. If you cannot show this permit upon request you are taking the risk of a huge fine.

Buono fine desettimana, Lieven