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Gardentopia Day 2, exploring the heart of Basilicata amongst community gardens
Contemporary art enters the heart of Basilicata with the Gardentopia Day #2 community gardens tour, a large-scale project that promotes green culture and active citizenship thanks to new synergies between citizens and artists.
An opportunity to bring together the citizens who work to manage these urban green spaces and for them to participate in the artistic and social interventions that are created here by artists from all over the world, selected by the curator of the Gardentopia project, Pelin Tan.
Between food, cultivation and philosophy, the day's programme started in Matera, where at 9.00 two buses departed with more than 100 citizens, to start a Gardentopia tour between the municipalities of Basilicata, covering two different routes.The first section included a first morning stop at the Irsina community garden where the public participated in the ‘Community Radio’ artistic intervention with the Radio Instabile performance from the artists Futurefarmers and Maria Pecchioli who worked with the local inhabitants, plants and one another to collectively imagine a new ‘tale of wonder’. The story was transmitted locally via radio and through a series of seed-shaped speakers, migrating from hand to hand throughout the area. The second stage went through the community garden of Campomaggiore where at noon there was a community picnic with music from Pu.Ba.La selectors and made even more tasty by the infusions of the mobile tea house. In parallel, the second section included a first stop at the Metaponto community garden with the Epicurean garden performance from the Greek collective Errands, composed of architects, visual artists and sociologists. The group has created an epicurean garden according to the life models of the Greek philosopher Epicurus. The second stop at the community garden of Stigliano was the site for the community picnic with entertainment from Euroband, La Murgia's street band. At 19.00, all the buses then found themselves in the community garden of Castelsaraceno for the ‘Community Dinner’, accompanied by two different activities: the performance by the Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, known for creating social relations in the artistic spaces and widely recognised as one of the most influential artists in socially engaged art; and a talk by the philosopher Nicola Perullo.
The Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija ended Gardentopia Day #2 with a lively cooking performance and installation in the garden, cooking with local and Thai ingredients at the NaturalMensa of Castelsaraceno, an eco-sustainable canteen with an experimental lunch service based on organic products.
Gardentopia Day 1, community gardens tour of Matera
With the beginning of spring the first Gardentopia Day transformed the gardens of Matera into community places. This marks the start of the second phase of a large-scale project that promotes green culture and active citizenship, also thanks to new collaborations between citizens and artists. The sociologist and historian of Turkish art, Pelin Tan, will be in charge of the development of the project during 2019. The first Gardentopia Day opened in the morning with the creation of the new community garden at Casino Padula, home of the Open Design School in Matera, thanks to the involvement of students and teachers from the IC Padre Semeria school, Don Milano campus, Briganti Agricultural Institute and C. Levi School of Arts. The students were the protagonists of the performance of ‘Evolutionary Garden - 100 trees for Gardentopia’ by the artist Luigi Coppola, activist and promoter of public art projects. With this inauguration, planting began of the first of the 100 trees of many varieties of berries destined for the public gardens of the Basilicata network. In the afternoon the trees were handed over to the representatives of the 22 municipalities of Basilicata that joined the project by responding to Matera 2019’s call to all of Basilicata in collaboration with the regional ANCI, namely Bernalda, Stigliano, Salandra, Oliveto Lucano, Campomaggiore, Pietrapertosa, Irsina, Palazzo San Gervasio, Vaglio di Basilicata, Pietragalla, Montemilone, Lavello, Maschito, Barile, Rionero in Vulture, Rapone, Muro Lucano, Vietri di Potenza, Sasso di Castalda, Chiaromonte, San Costantino Albanese, Castelsaraceno, as well as Matera and Potenza. Planting these trees in community gardens was a symbolic act to start a network across the region facilitated by the presence of artists who will use art as a tool to engage the community. The ‘Evolutionary Garden’ project illustrated by the artist Coppola works on the theme of biodiversity overcoming the idea of monoculture just as thanks to agriculture, plants that have arrived from the most diverse places have become plants that we today consider as ours, having accepted them and integrated them into our territory. A rickshaw and electric bike tour amongst the three community gardens of the city of Matera, each featuring entertainment for the public, livened up the afternoon of Gardentopia Day 1. The Garden of Moments in the Lanera district, managed by the MOM Association - Materan Mothers at Work, hosted the magic show by the Association ‘Lacaposciuc ASD’. At Agoragri there was food design with Cozinha Nomade while in Pascoli, in the Spighe Bianche garden on Via Lazzazzera, there was a performance from the Cantori Materani conducted by Alessandra Barbaro. The tour ended with a return to Casino Padula to participate in a Contini performance and spend the first spring evening with a DJ set.
Coldiretti donated the hundred trees, the hundred bales of hay that marked out the space of the great outdoor amphitheatre of Casino Padula and also the fruit that was given to the participants. ‘Evolutionary Garden’ is a participatory project that wants to create, with an extensive network of collective gardens, an open vision of the practice of plant reproduction, trying to escape the logic of domination of nature, uniformity, monoculture and embracing interspecies hybridisation, fusion, circulation and complexity.
Matera - Japan: cultural exchange between Lucanian and Japanese artists
Do you work in the art or culture environment and live in Basilicata? Would you like to host a Japanese artist in 2019 who will offer you hospitality in Japan in 2020?
The aim of the Passport Program is to launch a two-year reciprocal cultural exchange program for Italian and Japanese artists, to foster an exchange of ideas and knowledge and develop strong and lasting bonds between Lucanian and Japanese artists.
In 2019 Lucanian artists and professionals will host a Japanese artist or citizen resident in Japan, while in 2020 Japanese artists and professionals will return the hospitality to Lucanian artists by hosting them in Japan. The Program is managed in partnership by Matera 2019 and EU-Japan Fest, a Japanese non-governmental organisation whose mission is to support cultural contacts of all kinds through the European Capitals of Culture.
The call is open to artists and professionals in the cultural sector who are resident in Basilicata and work in any artistic domain (including arts and crafts, design, graphic work and architecture).
To take part and host a Japanese artist please read the application information carefully and fill in the registration form you will find in the dedicated section under Transparent Administration. The completed form then needs to be sent to the following email address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Lucanian artists or professionals will be responsible for the Japanese artist’s food and accommodation expenses for the entire duration of their stay in Italy (i.e. from a minimum of 5 to a maximum of 10 days, excluding days for travelling to and from Japan). Matera 2019 will contribute a share up to €20 per diem for each artist hosted, up to a maximum of €200. To find out more, see the application information. The deadline for applications is 31 October 2019.
I-DEA, from Mario Cresci to Formafantasma – archives from Lucania on display
The I-DEA project expresses the power of archives in experimental and contemporary ways in one of the most cutting-edge exhibition spaces in Matera 2019: the Hangar Paradiso, situated in the Paradiso quarry on the outskirts of the city.
On 22 March the photographer Mario Cresci opened this amazing artistic journey with ‘The Two Cultures. Artefacts and Archives’ based on research he carried out which shed completely new light on the South of Italy and Lucania. Using archive material including photography, craftwork, science and machinery, Cresci proposed his view of the area from the mid 20th century to the first decades of the 21 st century, with Leonardo Sinisgalli and Mimmo Castellano, sculptures in wood by Di Trani and his son, also revisiting prehistory through Gianfranco Lionetti’s personal archive.
Mario Cresci’s exhibition was followed by ‘Unique Vision: Cultures of Environmental Manipulation’ by Formafantasma, which opened on 8 June and will continue until 15 September. The two Studio Formafantasma designers are some of the most interesting on the international design scene and for I-DEA they presented a video-installation consisting of 5 projections, 10 digital screens and a small group of vernacular objects.
Distributed in space as if to create a complete panorama, and placed at the entrance to the exhibition, the screens and their contents can be seen by visitors either individually or as part of a whole. Unique Vision focuses on the impact of human activity on the land, on actions that people have taken to shape the environment where they live. One of the main features of the I-DEA displays is to keep some elements from previous displays. So for Unique Vision by Studio Formafantasma the curators decided to leave in place the wood carvings by Giovanni and Giuseppe Di Trani, who was custodian at the Museo Ridola in Matera in the 1960s and 1970s, which represent human figures linked to nature, reality and country life.
The exhibition was mounted by the Open Design School and sponsored by Bawer SPA, a bronze partner for Matera 2019.
I-DEA is curated by Joseph Grima and is one of the main projects of Matera 2019: an experiment that considers archives and collections as living organisms that can be used to interpret the complex layers of history of Matera and Basilicata. Five artists and designers will alternate at the Hangar Paradiso, leaving as a legacy in the exhibition space part of the previous exhibition, so as to continue the process of rediscovery of our great cultural heritage.