The installation will be inaugurated on Wednesday, Nov. 30, in the presence of the artist. The project, winner of the 5th edition of the Italian Council, will be discussed in depth through a discussion with the artist together with Raffaella Frascarelli, scientific director of Nomas Foundation, promoter of the project, and Letteria Grazia Fassari, professor at La Sapienza University in Rome.
Filippo Berta's One By One is a project realized by Nomas Foundation, Giorgia Calò, Francesca Ceccherini in collaboration with Sapienza University of Rome, GAMeC Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo and Tools for Culture, made possible thanks to the support of the Fifth Edition Italian Council MiBACT Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity and Urban Regeneration.
The aesthetic, sociocultural and political action of One By One reworks the sociocultural and historical imagery of geo-ideological barriers and territorial borders made and/or implemented in Europe, Asia, North America after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Beginning with a series of journeys begun in 2019, the artist maps these new borders by inviting local populations to perform the performance of counting the thorns that make up such barbed wires, one by one, each in their own language.
Where the politics of the border risks turning the other into a stranger, the counting of the endless thorns of the barbed wires installed in Europe (Hungary, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Turkey, North Macedonia, Greece, Bulgaria), Asia (South and North Korea), and North America (Mexico and the United States) mixes languages, cultures, traditions, and imaginaries by modifying the border in undoing differences and uniting. Inconsistent in relation to global markets, financial spaces, the Internet, and digital technological universes that know and want no boundaries, such borders in fact undermine the imaginary of a society that instead aspires to be osmotic, interconnected, and cohesive. Appealing to the European cultural tradition that cultivates solidarity and values individual differences, Filippo Berta's performance civilizes social space in a pluralist key by mobilizing the peaceful capacity of each individual in favor of a democracy that understands citizenship as a participatory, inclusive, transformative experience. Through encounter, dialogue, and exchange, the new space of relationship and sharing comes to life instead of the border.
The installation can be visited from Dec. 1 to Jan. 15.
Monday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 to 5 p.m.
Reservations required for the vernissage at link: https://iicbruxelles.esteri.it/iic_bruxelles/it/gli_eventi/calendario/2022/11/installazione-one-by-one-di-filippo.html