ALAgroup

The House of Commons
Micro Utopias Between Art and Education

BJCEM Mediterranea 18 Young Artists Biennale

Artistic direction Driant Zeneli
Literary Creation section curated by Maria Rosa Sossai and ALAgroup

Tirana – Durrës, 4th-9th May 2017

We are faced with an ever-changing world, undergoing continuous transformation. In particular, the strong geopolitical drive of Europe’s educational and creative policies merges the former East and the former West into a single tradition of knowledge, thereby erasing decades of pre-existing models. Today’s rapid spread of globalisation challenges militantism in art, the democratic transmission of knowledge, collaborative practices, and the experience of art from a collective point of view. Heading towards a future of personal, creative and autonomous interactions, free from the control of technocrats, means transforming different forms of art in vectors of social change within systems in a delicate balance. As Ivan Illich stated in his book Deschooling Society (1970), “the process of degradation is accelerated when nonmaterial needs are transformed into demands for commodities”. Experiences should then find unexpected reasons, while narratives should find resilience and flexibility.

Visual artists, photographers, sound artists, curators, writers, poets, pedagogues, teachers, students and philosophers are invited to present poems, literary texts and philosophical essays, projects, workshops, collective or individual performances, sound pieces, collective writing and reading, parades, choirs and instructions. They are called to epitomise a sense of idealism and to pursue new ways into the problematic of education and creativity, defying the limitations of bureaucratic pragmatism.
During the lifespan of the Mediterranea 18 Young Artist Biennale its key elements – History, Conflict, Dream, Failure, Home – will inspire radical pedagogical practices and alternative means of producing knowledge, including a new vocabulary and new negotiations between institutional and self-organized cultures.
The venue itself will become a living artwork, whose main role will be to create an inspiring learning environment through the shared knowledge of art, literary production, critical practice, education and process philosophy. Each place will embody a different approach to the aforementioned issues to create an educational and inspiring environment, works that involve local communities (i.e. students, retired people, teenagers, kids, etc.) and that will directly involve the public in sharing process of creation and cultural production will be privileged. It will be a common search for other languages and other modalities of knowledge production and diffusion, a pursuit of other modes of entering the problematic of “education”.
ALAgroup members will support and foster the relationship between the applicants and the city of Tirana to empower the projects and workshops dealing with the challenge of ‘inhabiting knowledge’.

Literary Creation Artists:

• Pablo Alonso, A mi madre y otros poemas, reading at the Libr’aria, the glass library on the lake
• Toby Campion, Prey, reading at the Libr’aria, the glass library on the lake
• Fabio Cavallari, Domestic Action, hostel in Tirana (Special Mention Turin Literary Creation)
• Rachelle Deguara, Replike/Eku, reading at the Libr’aria, the glass library on the lake
• Lisiana Demiraj, Three Canvas, three canvas, foyer of Metropolit Theatre
• Ilaria Genovesio, Untitled, phone call to the Clocktower during a travel to the borders of Albania (Special Mention Turin Literary Creation)
• Kristina Gvodzenovic, Fairy tales with positive role models, reading at the Libr’aria, the glass library on the lake
• Maja Hodoscek, The Dreamers, workshop with students at the Lincoln Center
• Valentina Lacinio, There’s no place like, video screening and talk at Metropolit Theatre
• Naida Mujik, A Short History of the Rose Haw, reading at the Libr’aria, the glass library on the lake
• Laura Perrone, Fascicolo, performance at the Pyramid
• Jonida Prifti, Radio Anarti, installation and radio performance at the Cloud Reja
• Thomas Tsalapatis, Chronos the wound the shelter, reading at the Libr’aria, the glass library on the lake

 

BJCEM