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Matera 2019 and the social culture

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With an extraordinary year (2019) and path (the one that led us to 2019) behind us, the Matera-Basilicata 2019 Foundation is now working towards the future. It is true that due to the COVID-19 emergency, some projects have been postponed, others are being developed (also in light of the new perception of reality and our way of enjoying culture that will surely undergo changes), and others are still flourishing in these days and are a source of support to those who are on the front line of the current Coronavirus emergency.

With the experimental design workshop “Open Design School”, which was a pillar project of the Matera 2019 programme and legacy, thanks to various tools and professionals, 500 face shields have been created for the healthcare workers of Basilicata.

At the request of the Basilicata emergency services and in coordination with the Regional Civil Protection for the distribution, makers, professionals, digital and medical craftsmen have become involved in these activities included in the widespread digital manufacturing project developed by Officine Mediterranee, a network of Southern Italy fab labs, coordinated with the Syskrack association of Grassano (MT). The latter also launched a fundraiser for the purchase of the materials necessary for the production of another 500 face shields built with materials recovered and repurposed by the makers themselves: plastic supports created with 3D printers, elastic bands, rubber supports, PVC/PET sheets, etc.

Furthermore, for the intensive care unit of the "Madonna delle Grazie di Matera" Hospital, Open Design School has produced, in partnership with local makers, a plexiglass case that reduces exposure of the health workers to contamination when carrying out intubation and other high-risk procedures on the airways of COVID-19 patients, providing an additional protection system. The idea came from a proposal put forward by Dr Francesco Zuccaro, doctor at the Matera hospital, as well as an open data and open culture enthusiast, who suggested to the ODS team the creation of an "aerosol box" designed by a Taiwanese doctor and validated in an article in "The New England Journal of Medicine" by a team of doctors from Boston who tested its protective efficacy through simulations. Following the success of this first experiment, the Open Design School team will create new cases for other hospitals in Basilicata.

Finally, Open Design School will provide support to the tailoring workshop of the Silent Academy of Il Sicomoro Co-operative, where the boys and girls of the SPRAR project and the operators have started a small-scale production of masks made with African fabrics, with the common goal of making themselves useful at such a difficult time for the whole community.

Matera 2019 is also present online.

Collective productions, collaborations between cultural inhabitants, exchanges between different artistic identities to set up important and profound co-productions: what would cultural spaces be without the visitors, spectators, listeners, participants, and mere onlookers of the planned initiatives? That's why, for about a month now, with Matera 2019 we have fully accepted the appeal of MiBACT to spread the beauty of our artistic and creative heritage online, involving and entertaining the public at home as much as possible.

We are doing this via our social media channels both by retracing the beauty of what has been in stages and by reworking in different ways the contents collected in an immense archive of images, videos and sounds, and by bringing together excellent initiatives at a national and international level, to communicate how much beauty -despite the current circumstances- is circulating thanks to the digital grapevine, narrating the amazing miracle of amazement that is taking place on the web.

Whether they are those promoted by our partners or by small and large cultural institutions, every day we have made available our virtual spaces to share beauty and wonder, putting ourselves at the service of those who right now are following us "from home", the only place from where it is possible to look at the world today. And we will do it again. Therefore we invite you to continue to follow us and to keep us company in compliance with the main rule: stay at home!

Diary of an encouter: Matera 2019 and Eu Japan Fest

"Diary of an encouter (Diario di un incontro)" is the title of the publication, available in Italian, English and Japanese, in which we wanted to bring together all the initiatives carried out for Matera European Capital of Culture 2019 together with our partner EU-Japan Fest, a Japanese association of private companies that for 30 years has collaborated with all European Capitals of Culture to create opportunities for exchanges and shared work between Japanese and European artists.

Not just a meeting between artists, but between cultures, between populations and, ultimately, between people. The most emotive images of this meeting, which can be seen by browsing the catalogue, primarily portray the smiles and kindness of the Japanese volunteers who arrived in Matera with the Volunteers Exchange programme. Our friends have shown incredible enthusiasm in making their contribution to some important Matera 2019 projects, while at the same time finding a great welcome among the local volunteers and the Matera community.

And then there are the cultural productions, which involved many artists from Japan: the actress Ema Tashiro in the show 'Humana Vergogna', part of the project 'Poetry of Shame' co-produced by #Reteteatro41; the artist Kaori Kato in the workshops on paper and the creation of installations for 'M.E.M.O.RI. - The Euro Mediterranean Museum of Re(f)used Objects' co-produced by Luna al guinzaglio; the juggler and contortionist Hisashi Watanabe, of the Atama to Kuchi company, on stage with 'Inverted Tree' as part of the project dedicated to the contemporary circus 'Circus +'; the artist Takashi Kuribayashi, with his two artistic installations 'Entrances' and 'Cielo Capolvolto'; the multimedia artist Ryoichi Kurokawa with his audiovisual performance 'Subassemblies' for the 'In Vitro - Artificial Sonification' project co-produced by LOXOSconcept; the artist Hiroaki Umeda in the digital art and dance performance 'Intensional Particle' for the 'Quantum Danza' project; the architect Gakutoshi Kojima, who in 1974 participated in the international competition for the recovery of the Sassi stone districts, protagonist of a design workshop and a talk organised by the Open Design School.

Through the 'City Pop Up' project, Open Design School also hosted the Solar Cooking Club workshop with Japanese architects Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima of the Atelier Bow Wow studio, while for the Artistic Residencies project, thanks to the collaboration with the Basilicata Chamber of Commerce, the Japanese artist Yu Arak, who has worked with the network of companies linked to Casamatera, came to Matera. Another artistic residency was that of the 'European Eyes On Japan' project, which brought photographers from the European Capitals to Japan, observed through the shots taken by a ‘European eye’, and the 'Passport Programme', a joint programme of cultural exchanges between artists and culture experts from Basilicata and Japan.

All of the above and other content are included in this volume that we have created as a sort of diary in verse, disseminating between the pages, triplets, in homage to the tradition of Japanese haiku, written by Edoardo Delle Donne, the Basilicata author of the 'Manifesto for Matera', an emotional map in eight points from which the artist Kuribayashi obtained the verses that constituted the verbal material of his installation 'Cielo Capovolto'.

Meetings that are intended for deeper bonds and exchanges. Because a meeting is not only in the moment, it lasts over time... people to people!

Diary of an encouter (Diario di un incontro) / Catalogue

Matera 2019 and Google Arts & Culture

11 December 2019 and 21 February 2020. Two dates that are reference points for months of research, assembly and construction of the story of stories, that of a wonderful journey to be preserved and shown to the world. The faces, the projects, the spaces, the workshops, the exhibitions, the events, the emotions: all that has been Matera 2019 is today part of the large open window on the Google Arts & Culture platform, an immense online museum where you can retrace the extraordinary year of Matera European Capital of Culture 2019, reading about it from exclusive and emotional points of view.

Matera 2019 is the first European capital of culture to be present on the Google Arts & Culture platform, alongside the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world such as the New York MoMA, the Palace of Versailles and the Venice Biennale.
The presence of Matera 2019 on the platform developed by Google to promote and preserve online culture does not simply aim to tell the material heritage of the city, but above all to enhance the stories and processes that accompanied the 2019 initiatives.

Unlike other institutions, in fact, we worked and concentrated on the processes and stories that made this exponential global visibility in the cultural field possible. The narrations are therefore dedicated to the volunteers and citizens that were the protagonists of cultural productions, to national and international artists who have enriched the cultural offer, to large and more immersive exhibitions, to film productions, to the Cava del Sole that became a vessel for all the music of the world, to the great workshop of Matera 2019, to underground Matera (the productions hosted in the underground spaces), to the expanded city (the activities in Piccianello, in the village of La Martella, Serra Venerdì, the quarries, the Murgia, the prison, the Tre Torri Theatre), to the whole of Basilicata, which in 2019 lent itself to welcome and produce various cultural and creative processes, to the Sassi stone districts as a stage for the European capital of culture (Inhabiting the Opera, Open sound, Heritage Games, Matera Alberga, to name a few) to the great co-productions (Rai Radio3, Teatro San Carlo, Teatro delle Albe, etc.), to the murals that today colour the centre and the periphery (but not only) of the city of Matera.

After the launch of the dedicated page and the first stories, which took place in December 2019, in February 2020 the narrative process was complete, enriched with other stories and elements, of which people and places are the protagonists. Many multimedia pieces and routes mapped for the first time with Street View, with added photographic and video content, dedicated to the events of the Matera 2019 cultural programme, for a total of 519 elements accompanied by a narrative available in Italian and English, for a highly representative story of the major thematic strands of Matera 2019.

An important result therefore, the result of a great collaboration between the digital communication team of Matera 2019 and the editorial staff of Google Arts & Culture, who have approved all the proposed content, confirming both the quality of the materials and the choice of storytelling method.