The first of the artist residencies organized as part of the European project ThisPLACED took place from 1st to 6th September at Villa Nappi, Polverigi, in Le Marche region of Italy.
The ThisPLACED project aims at creating and promoting peripheral and undervalued cultural imaginaries, typical of some little-known areas of Europe, with the purpose of enhancing a more authentic narrative of these locations, giving expression to these cultural imaginaries and also relating them to each other.
The European partners involved in ThisPLACED project are:
Co-financed by the European Union under the Creative Europe program, the project started in the summer of 2022 and will continue until September 2024, with the final creation of a traveling "Displaced" festival that will present the results of the artistic reworkings of cultural imaginaries in the four countries involved.
The experience of artistic residencies in Italy took place from 1st to 6th September 2023 and the 16 artists involved stayed at the suggestive Villa Nappi in Polverigi, a venue of excellence for artistic residencies in the Marche region, managed by "InTeatro" association. Among the international artists also 4 young artists from Le Marche took part in the residency: Giorgia Mascitti, Martina Gabrielli, Samuele Toppi and Simon Luca Barboni, who were selected with a public call by Fondazione Marche Cultura.
The artists, guided by the art tutor Masako Matsushita, experienced a few days of workshops based on the roadmap developed by FMC which is focused on Le Marche's historic theatres and the connection with intangibel heritage and the five senses. "Le Marche's scene of senses", this is the name of the project created by FMC together with GLEM (Gruppo di Lavoro Enti cultura Marche - Le Marche's Local Cultural Creative Hub), can be summarised as follows:
The goal is to ask the artists for a new vision, a new image made with new perspectives on the plurality of le Marches, as a stage for local culture. A scene of the senses which has the historic theater of le Marche as its ideal container, a symbol of plurality but at the same time of unity and from which we, with an abstraction that passes through the five senses, can reach the main immaterial aspects preserved around it.
Inside a theater the senses are used to perceive and understand what is being represented in multiple forms, so outside of them the senses become "search engines" through which reading the territory in its precious intangible declinations.
Inside a theater the senses are used to perceive and understand what is being represented in multiple forms, so outside of them the senses become "search engines" through which reading the territory in its precious intangible declinations.
This is the scene of the senses in the Marche region :
- HEARING – MUSIC: its epicenter is the Teatro Rossini in Pesaro, (UNESCO Music Creative City) the Conservatory, Gioachino Rossini, the ROF;
- TOUCH - CRAFTSMANSHIP: its epicenter is the Teatro Gentile di Fabriano, UNESCO Creative City, and papermaking;
- VIEW – ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE: its epicenter is the Teatro Ventidio Basso and the city of Ascoli Piceno with its travertine square and its towers;
- SMELL – NATURE: its epicenter is Teatro Lauro Rossi in Macerata and the nature and legends of the Sibillini Mountains;
- TASTE – FOOD AND WINE: which has the Teatro dell'Aquila as its epicenter and the specialties of the most typical Marche cuisine
From these epicenters, agglomerations of points of interest, cross-connecting the whole region, from north to south, sea and mountains, we create conceptual maps which combine the plurality of Marche know-how with the persistence of its tangible assets identified as its epicenter in the historical theatres. The artists will investigate these elements and will produce, in a free artistic form, a new vision that represents its uniqueness, the plurality and the characteristics most deeply rooted in the territory.
The artists also experienced a full-day cultural tour of some of the most symbolic tangible and intangible heritage of Le Marche region, from Urbino to Pesaro and Ascoli Piceno. Although, the main goal of an artists residency is not traveling but, on the contrary, taking the time to share personal artistic experiences inside a special location, where every artist is able to connect to the work of the others and together discuss about one's artistic perspective on the place and project, sharing common spaces and living a guided self-management experience of life and work.
Once the artists return home, they will bring with them the experiences lived in the community and the suggestions collected to re-elaborate, each through their own artistic language, a work of art. The works will then be exhibited during the traveling festival "Displaced" which will be organized in the spring in the four partner territories.
