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Great Success for Silent Academy and the Sewing Workshops, Performances and Installations
Wuyeh and Savane are both tailors. Wuyeh is a young Gambian boy who arrived in Italy when he was a child, after moving from place to place for two years. Savane, instead, had to escape from the Ivory Coast because he made suits for an important politician and at the outbreak of the war, his name was on the list of the people to be persecuted. Trèsor was enrolled in the faculty of architecture and managed a building company in the Congo that employed 20 citizens. He left his country with his children and his wife who died at sea during their journey. Tessy is a Senegalese single mother and Mohammad is a Pakistani boy who escaped from the Taliban, who wanted to kill him because he was involved in rescue activities during big disasters on behalf of an NGO.
These are just a few stories that the Silent Academy tells through everyone’s skills and abilities within a project relying on the values of equality, integration and contamination among different cultures. Nowadays, immigration is one of the key issues in National and European debates whilst elsewhere walls are being built and bridges are being destroyed. Matera 2019 and Il Sicomoro, which is a social cooperative set up in 2002 to give voice to “Silent people”, respond with a message of inclusion starting from the awareness that talents are everywhere in the world.
Matera 2019 Silent Academy enhances the migrants’ artisan skills within hosting communities. It has set up a school of craft skills to foster the acknowledgement of professions of those people who escape from war and famine as well as to acknowledge the professional experiences acquired in their countries of origin, which they skillfully use within their new homes.
The workshops are held by a migrant teacher and a local expert, who together with participants gather skills and traditions to make products with a new identity. Savane and Wuyeh are the tailors of the sewing workshops, Trèsor will be one of the experts in decoration and plastic design, Mohammad works Matera’s tufa stone and Tessy has participated in a fashion parade along the streets of the city. She wore a golden dress made with the fabric of an isothermal blanket, which is the same type of blanket that migrants put on when they arrive ashore. This golden dress was made by the Ivorian tailor Ibrahim and the artist BR1 from Turin.
Following a co-creation and capacity building process, the Silent Academy made its debut from last June to July. It organized 20 days of public art and social craftmasnhip during which collective works were made together with foreigners and local people coming from different towns of Basilicata: Rionero in Vulture, Nova Siri, San Chirico Raparo and Matera. It was a journey through the places, the histories of the towns and the people living in them, regardless of their skin colour.
In 2019 a long series of workshops opened to all the holders of the Matera 2019 Passport and involved 230 temporary citizens. On 20 March the first performance titled Sotto lo stesso manto (Under the Same Cloak) will be staged. The clothes made by the fashion designer Eloi Sessou will be worn for a collective performance curated by Mariano Bauduin, which takes inspiration from an ancient icon of the town of Matera, “la Madonna del Terzo Settore”.
A modern “symphonic poem” specially composed by Bauduin and performed by the wind Orchestra from Grottole and by "Corale per San Giovanni" from Naples will celebrate diversity searching its harmony, from the “tamurriata” (translator’s note:the dance on the drum, typical folk dance of Campania) for the Virgin Mary, to a revised orchestration of “Missa Luba”, created in Afro-American form.
This event is inspired by a big seventeenth-century painting (la Madonna del Gonfalone) which hangs at the back of the church. The painting depicts the Virgin Mary wearing a special cloak, who is the Matera icon belonging to the fraternity which bear the same name. This painting shows the brothers on one side and on the other the “entrusted” - the poor and the forgotten. They are all under the same cloak and the fraternity helps and “entrusts” them to the “Mother”.
An installation evoking the scenic action will be set up in the Church of Santa Maria of Costantinople, within the complex of the Museo Diocesano (Diocesan Museum), where it will be possible to admire the original painting the event took inspiration from until 24 March.
This event will start the restoration of the big painting of "Madonna del Gonfalone", which will be funded by the social cooperative Il Sicomoro.
Information about the project, the events organised by Silent Academy and the ways you can participate in the next workshops are available on both the Matera 2019 website and on the Il Sicomoro website in the project-related sections.
Silent Academy tries to tell a different story about immigration - a new story made up of opportunities rather than resentment, of humanity rather than divisions. Culture belongs to everybody. This is what Silent Academy wants to tell us.
‘Humana Vergogna’ is the final event in the first phase of the project ‘Poetry of Shame’.
The project The Poetry of Shame has completely reached its goal, which is telling the story of a “redemption” through theatre and performative language. It showed that when we reverse our shameful and vulnerable side we can unlock our human potential.
The project is co-produced by #reteteatro41, with Franco Ungaro as coordinator and Antonella Iallorenzi of ‘Petra’ theatre company as art director. Together with the theatre company ‘L’albero’, ‘IAC Centro Arti Integrate’ and ‘Gommalacca Teatro’, Antonella has founded #reteteatro41, a cultural organisation that develops relations and actions supporting territories, institutions and operators at regional, national and international level.
The project is included in the theme ‘Continuity and Disruptions’ and follows the relevant guidelines planned in the Candidacy bidbook. It investigates the concept of shame as a positive impulse towards a collective process of self-analysis, self-criticism and self-improvement, which can generate new strength and greater optimism about the future.
This important theme is based on the assumption that the investigation on shame, which characterised the history of both Matera and whole of Europe, may lead to change its meaning, by starting up a dialogue among different cultures and creating connections between Eastern and Western Europe in order to build up a common cultural area based on shared values.
Humana Vergogna was staged from 1st to 9th March. It was also performed at Teatro Paisiello in Lecce on 11th March. It is the outcome of a long process of artistic research and creation that has turned shame into beauty. Shame is seen from a range of perspectives – shame for one’s own body, family, failure, sex as well as for being different. The live performance brought art into the jail of Matera and, despite its apparent lightness, it dealt with the innermost features of our identity.
The investigation on the word ‘shame’ starts from a deep analysis carried out by performers which then explodes in entwined bodies that explore every nuance of the theme through dance moves and thundering words accompanied by a soundtrack mixing pop music and opera. Daily fragility, humiliation and embarrassment, private and collective shame – all of them find a place in this sparkling performance that provides a careful and sensitive analysis of the most intimate of human shame and of the relevant poetic visions.
The ad hoc production was entrusted to Matteo Maffesanti and Silvia Gribaudi. The latter has been working for years on the embarassment experienced by people with “conspicuous” bodies. Her work aims at freeing them from stereotypes and desecrating them with beauty. The performers, including actors and dancers, were selected during the artistic residence that took place in Skopje from November to December 2018. Artists include Mattia Giordano, Antonella Iallorenzi and Mariagrazia Nacci, from Basilicata, Simona Spirovska from Macedonia and Ema Tashiro from Japan. On their return from the capital of the Republic of North Macedonia, the artists started to work on the performance in the village of Satriano di Lucania where they engaged the local community in theatre and shared ideas and suggestions on the concept of shame with citizens and students.
‘Humana Vergogna’ is part of the project ‘The Poetry of Shame’. It is the result of a process in performing arts, which was started with workshops held at the ‘Accademia Mediterranea dell’Attore’ of Campi Salentina (Lecce) last year. In this first phase, open calls addressed to international actors, dancers and performers were announced with the aim of giving young artists a chance of training abroad and of contributing with their critical work to the development of the idea underlying the project.
The first workshop, was held from 8th to 12th May and directed by Massimiliano Civica, who was awarded the Ubu Prize in 2016 and in 2017. The second workshop took place from 3rd to 7th November and was directed by Radoslaw Rychcik, one of the most renowned directors of Polish theatre.
In the second phase of the project, the research continued with the workshop ‘Shamelab’, held in the jail of Matera from 19th September to 23rd November by Antonella Iallorenzi, an expert on social theatre and founder of #reteteatro41. The workshop’s aim was to investigate, with the prisoners, the word ‘shame’ and play with the connected stereotypes in order to break the pattern and free the mind. The research ended with a performance open to the public, an intense and evocative moment that joined prisoners and the community of Matera.
During the third phase of the project an artistic residence took place in Skopje at the end of 2018 with the collaboration of partners from the Balkans. The artists to be involved in the performance were selected during the drama workshop led by Sharon Fridman, the top dancer and choreographer in contemporary Israeli dance, and in the dance-theatre workshop led by the former director of the National Theatre of Kosovo, Jeton Neziraj, and the coreographer, director and performer Silvia Gribaudi.
Besides theatre workshops and performances, the research planned in the project ‘The Poetry of Shame’ was carried out also through international meetings involving renowned people in the Balkan and European culture and theatre. The first meeting was held in Matera at the beginning of November. Its aim was to deepen the reflection on ‘shame’ in a multidisciplinary context involving cinema, literature, anthropology, poetry and architecture thanks to the contributions by Mario Desiati, Mario Bianchi, Giuliano Geri, Misumi Misuki, Cristina Amenta, Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers e Fatos Lubonja. The second meeting was held in Skopje and was aimed at talking about the connections between the capital of the Republic of North Macedonia and Matera, moving beyond national borders and shame towards an open Europe. The third meeting was held in Matera at the end of the first performance and focused on the theme of internationalisation of arts. It saw the participation of international art directors and programmers supporting the dissemination of the performance.
This is the end of the co-creation work with #reteteatro41, which started from the long capacity building programme that Matera 2019 created in order to strengthen practices that remain on the Lucanian territory, thus leaving a significant legacy even beyond the year as European Capital of Cuture.
The Great Success of the First Future Digs Events
We live in an era where information travels fast and is at times superficial. The challenge posed by Future Digs is to give rise to more profound reflections with some of today’s most authoritative personalities – historians, scholars, researchers and intellectuals – who will bring Matera to the centre of the European cultural debate. The outcome of the first events on the programme has been positive, opening with “Lezioni di Cinema” (Lectures on the Cinema) – a series of showings and meetings organized with the Lucana Film Commission as a partner.
On February 7th, the Cinema Piccolo set the stage for a collective reflection on contemporary film-making entitled “Ieri. Andreotti e il cinema: I modelli produttivi nella prospettiva europea” (“Yesterday. Andreotti and cinema –productive models in a European perspective”). In this full-scale show, Tatti Sanguineti, the exceptional mentor of this series, engaged experts and authoritative partners such as writer and journalist Bruno Gambarotta and Paride Leporace, the director of the Lucana Film Commission. This lecture on cinema showed how depth and lightness could be joint in a conversation that offered an attentive audience intriguing details on the leading role played by “Il Divo” ( translator’s note “the Star”, as Andreotti is often referred to ) in the history of the cinema after the Second World War.
On February 9th the cultural baggage of Future Digs was moved to Casa Cava for the inauguration of the series (“Lezioni di storia. Oltre I confine”) “Lectures on History. Beyond borders”, organized in cooperation with Editori Laterza. It tells of the never-ending need of peoples to cross geopolitical and cultural borders in a continuing transformation of the self and of others.
The lecture series was opened by an expert popularizer – Alessandro Barbero who took part in the meeting “Ai confini dell’Europa: da Adrianopoli a Poitiers” (“On the borders of Europe: from Adrianopolis to Poitiers”) dealing with the great invasions from the late Roman Empire up to the time the Muslims appeared on the scene. The lecture was very well-attended and a large audience could also follow from home thanks to YouTube streaming, with over two thousand viewings registered.
After the kick-off with the historian Barbero, on Saturday February 23rd Casa Cava was again the venue chosen for the lecture (also on livestream) held by Franco Farinelli, the Dean of the Philosophy and Communications Department of the University of Bologna and chairman of the Association of Italian Geographers (Agei). Views were exchanged on the evolution of spatial models used to represent the world during the event “Ai confini della terra: da Colombo a Google” (“To the boundaries of the world : from Columbus to Google”). How is our idea of the world being reshaped with the advent of the Internet? What do you think about the concept of ‘boundaries’? Questions such as these ones are what we attempted to answer together with the students of the schools who took part in the discussion. In this article they tell us how, in their view, the concept of boundaries has changed.
Lezioni di Storia (Lectures on History) is an event fully in tune with the spirit of the European Capital of Culture – looking to the past with a look towards the future.
After the lectures on cinema and those on history on February 27th, it is time to open the chapter regarding lectures on democracy. After the first meeting in Milan, “People have the power” will be launched in Matera with five dates organized in cooperation with the Fondazione Giacomo Feltrinelli in order to gain insight into the processes of grassroots participation.
The lecture entitled “Democrazia è: il potere di realizzare” (“Democracy is: the power to make things happen”) was moderated by the Huffington Post journalist Angela Mauro and featured the following speakers: the sociologist Giovanni Moro, Michelangelo Secchi of the Centro Estudios Sociais of the University of Coimbra, Elio Manti of Basilicata Region and Silvana Kuhtz of the University of Basilicata.
And that is not the end of Future Digs: in order to bridge the distance between citizens and institutions , citizens are invited to bring their ideas and energies to the gatherings on the 6th, 7th and 8th of March for another set of lectures on democracy, cinema and history.
The 8th of March is a special date as it marks the opening in Matera of the Biennale di Democrazia, a cultural event promoted by the City of Turin and organized by the Fondazione per la Cultura Torino and the Polo del ‘900 with the contribution of Compagnia di San Paolo and the support of Intesa Sanpaolo. For further information, please access the official Matera 2019 calendar of events.
European Capitals of Culture 2018
Valletta (Malta) and Leeuwarden (Netherlands) are the European Capitals of Culture 2018 and we want to wish them a good job!
The European Capital of Culture in Valletta will be held an opening ceremony from the 14th to the 21st of January 2018 to officially begin the year.
The central theme "Imagine 18" is an exciting opportunity to experience cultural identity afresh in new contexts that push the boundaries and allow for ideas, dialogue, creativity and innovation to flow freely. Valletta 2018 will bring shifts in mentality, challenge to experiment, raise expectations both as artists and as audiences, and embrace permanent change to enrich Maltese cultural lives. This will be done by focusing on encouraging the participation of individuals and organizations from different parts of society.
The programme includes festivals and performances in science, arts, kids and youths, dance, theatre, food and many others topics. The concepts behind the events are driven by three main themes: “Island Stories”, “Future Baroque” and “Voyages”.
The opening ceremony in the city of Leeuwarden, on the other hand, will be held the following week on the 26th and 27th of January.
The central theme "The iepen mienskip - open community" has the aim to connect different kinds of communities across Europe, both online and ‘in real life’. With more than 800 projects, the ECoC will show an idiosyncratic and committed community sensitive to and curious about each other’s ideas, opportunities and challenges.
The programme is articulated into three themes. Theme one is about how nature and culture relate to each other in the broadest sense. Theme two focuses on the relationship between city and countryside. The third theme is about how people live together in these places and how different co-existing cultures communicate and interact.
Running alongside the main programme, Leeuwarden 2018 has two side programmes. Lab LWD can be compared to a toolbox to test out different kinds of open platforms for connecting people. The second one, Royal Friesian, is a programme considering the past, present and future of cultural import-export relations.