UNIDEE2007 is over!

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

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)

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

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

Uni-Topia 2007

Uni-topia is an organic series of lectures and workshops organized, facilitated, and produced by… you. The goal of Uni-topia is to ‘widen the field of discussion’ and interaction among the UNIDEE residents, staff, and the public at large through open sessions that can be attended throughout the day.

The program of workshops and meetings of Uni-Topia 2007 is regularly updated and available on-line .