Call for applications: 20th anniversary of UNIDEE

UNIDEE welcomes your application to participate in one or more of its modules for the 2019 Spring Term and Summer Camp.

Initiated by artist Michelangelo Pistoletto in 1999, UNIDEE – University of Ideas is the higher educational programme for art and social change of Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto (Italy). Based on interdisciplinary research, knowledge sharing and field activities, the programme fosters processes of cross-pollination to investigate the relationship between art and public sphere.

Organized around intensive modules, the programme is open to artists and other practitioners from all over the world to develop formal, theoretical and critical skills and provides enrolled fellows with feedback and resources to facilitate and support their practices. Each module is moderated by a visiting mentor and is specifically designed to train “artivators”, people who intend to use art as a methodology, practice and language advancing the notion of art as a public sphere and political agent.

2019 marks the 20th anniversary of UNIDEE – University of Ideas. Bridging the Arte Povera ’60s movement to the third millenium anthropocenic posthuman challenge, UNIDEE and Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto continue developing research, visibilizing practices and experimenting methodologies in the field of Socially Engaged Art. In line with its previous line of conduct, UNIDEE 2019 has organized a dedicated programme with specific activities and themes, confirming its international network of partnerships and establishing new ones. Curated by visiting curator Valerio Del Baglivo, the modules programme is organized around three key concepts that delve into some of the historic and current major areas of investigation of Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto:

Collective Agency—a series of modules exploring the potential of collective action and its political implications: artists Chto Delat and Adelita Husni Bey will introduce participants to pedagogic embodiment, anti-authoritarianism togetherness and perfomativity;

Climate Action—a summer camp to rediscuss the human impact on our planet and imagine a postpetrol society: artists Brett Bloom, Luigi Coppola and Fernando Garcia Dory will discuss how to engage in long-term art projects considering agroecology, microorganisms as social systems and forms of de-industrialization of the self in times of climate breakdown.

Modes of Instituting—a series of meetings rethinking how we can establish ethical principles to build our institutions not only as centres of power, hierarchy, control and discipline (names to be announced in May).

Furthermore, new exciting features have been added to the 2019 UNIDEE programme: underlying its interdisciplinary nature, each of the key concepts is introduced by a public talk of an expert from another discipline (venues and names to be announced soon); reinforcing UNIDEE publishing activity, a call for papers is launched offering artists and theoreticians to respond the 2019 key concepts; and finally a new rich package of fee reductions and fee waiver is available—including free spots for artist-mothers, reductions for newly arts graduates, a seven days free module supported by Fondazione Zegna, and much more.

Since 1999 the programme has registered the participation of more than 550 students from 54 different countries.
Previous mentors have been Assemble, Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabi, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Viviana Checchia, Etcetera, Iliana Fokianaki, Germano Celant, Rick Lowe, Matteo Lucchetti, Viktor Misiano, Antoni Muntadas, Adrian Paci, STEALTH.unlimited, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Jason Waite among others.

UNIDEE Air—Emerging Geographies programme has established collaborations with organizations such as Fundación Museos de la Ciudad (Ecuador), Yarat Contemporary Art Space (Azerbaijan), Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation (India), A.M. Qattan Foundation (Palestine) and many others.

Cittadellarte
Instituted in 1998 by artist Michelangelo Pistoletto as a concrete development of his Progetto Arte Manifesto—a direct call to artists to initiate social changes in their own contexts—Cittadellarte aims at inspiring and producing responsible changes in society through ideas and creative projects. Pistoletto has translated the Foundation’s mission into the symbol of the Third Paradise: in his words “a reconfiguration of the mathematical infinity sign, made of three consecutive circles. The two external circles represent all the diversities and antinomies, among which nature and artifice. The central one is given by the compenetration of the opposite circles and represents the generative womb of a new humanity”. Since then, Cittadellarte has built a network of autonomous and connected “ambassadors of the Third Paradise,” a group of agents that represent initiatives of social and political transformation worldwide. These ambassadors follow the practices of Demopraxia, a social design prototypical methodology and mythopoetical narrative leading the whole society to participate concretely in the exercise of the government.

Download the appliction form here.

Partners
UNIDEE patrons are Piedmont Region, Compagnia di San Paolo, CRT Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Torino, Fondazione Zegna, illycaffè S.p.A.

UNIDEE AIR partners are A.M. Qattan Foundation (PS); Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation (IN); Yarat Contemporary Art Space (AZ).

For further informations, discounts, etc please visit UNIDEE – University of Ideas website or contact: unidee [​at​] cittadellarte.it.