Fondazione Prada increases and reimagines its digital presence in response to the temporary closure of exhibition spaces due to the current health emergency.
With the aim of transforming a period of crisis into an opportunity for study and analysis, we experience new ways of operating and communicating. The question that moves us—What is a cultural institution for?—becomes a new challenge, in a context where culture is not only useful and necessary, but must be experienced as something engaging and attractive by “remote” visitors. Without a physical audience, it is essential to create new languages so as not to remain silent.
Fondazione Prada’s website (fondazioneprada.org) and its social media channels (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, and Youtube) turn into a laboratory of ideas, a flexible platform in which to test new formats and codes that will be able to develop in a further way in the future, beyond the current emergency.
With “Glossary” Fondazione Prada critically explores its archive. Through the elaboration of a list of some key words, a possible “glossary” is created to analyze the foundation’s history and identity. Each entry brings together several projects carried out since 1993 in different fields: art, cinema, dance, music, architecture and philosophy. By publishing archive images and videos, unpublished texts, excerpts from catalogues and reviews from the press, thematic paths and ideal dialogues between various activities will be established.
“Inner Views” replaces the physical visit of the three recently opened exhibitions The Porcelain Room, Storytelling and K through a virtual experience of learning and knowledge. New interviews, images, videos and focuses on single exhibits bring the audience closer to the contents of the three projects from an inner, intimate and engaging perspective.
With “Outer Views” the foundation broadens its horizons to what happens outside its own premises. In particular, it documents the scientific and curatorial contribution provided by Collezione Prada’s remarkable works on loan to international institutions and museums on the occasion of group and solo shows, such as the recent retrospectives of Donald Judd, Richard Artschwager and Bruce Nauman.
During the temporary closure of exhibition spaces, the Cinema projects, the workshops of Accademia dei bambini, and the editorial activities invent new ways of fruition and participation of our audience.
The cinematographic program “Perfect Failures,” conceived by Fondazione Prada and MUBI, will be available from April 5 on the curated streaming service. The project will be accompanied by a new section of Fondazione Prada’s website where original materials, native content reflecting on the experience of streaming, information on selected movies and curiosities about the directors, from Billy Wilder to Kelly Reichardt, will be included.
“Accademia Aperta” is a video project through which Accademia dei bambini retraces the workshops conceived by “masters” (architects, educators, artists, scientists, movie directors and musicians) over the last 5 years. The publication of materials, partly unreleased and arranged according to thematic areas, becomes an opportunity to rediscover the experimental and innovative nature of Accademia dei bambini, Fondazione Prada’s project created for children and developed in 2015 by neuropediatrician Giannetta Ottilia Latis, now curated by pediatrician and neonatologist Gabriele Ferraris.
“Readings” is a new editorial initiative involving the creation of podcasts that can be downloaded from a platform linked to the foundation’s website. The Italian audience will be able to listen for free to the reading of excerpts from books published by the foundation since 2012. “Readings” is a vast audio anthology, destined to grow and comprising more than 50 critical essays and narrative texts by authors such as, Nicolas Bourriaud, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Massimo Cacciari, Simon Castets, Germano Celant, Christoph Cox, Charles Esche, Emilio Gentile, Alison Gingeras, Jonathan Griffin, Boris Groys, Udo Kittelmann, Rachel Kuschner, Roxana Marcoci, Glenn Phillips, Salvatore Settis, Ali Smith, and many others.
