The digital schedule of the Castello di Rivoli
The Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea announces its program of digital appointments. Starting from December 2020, the virtual headquarters of the Museum, the DIGITAL COSMOS, will be enriched with new contents and unpublished events on a weekly basis.
With reference to the philosophy of the “Slow Food” movement born in Piedmont, Castello di Rivoli enhances the prototype of the Slow Museum already launched in February 2020. A concept of museum which, starting from the reopening, on a physical level will address visitors with deep and long experiences and that, thanks to its digitization, can also be experienced immediately by the local and global public.
DIGITAL COSMOS, the virtual headquarters of the Museum recently opened is enriched with new contents through programming that integrates the physicality of the visit path, offering the online visitor an additional dimension of experience. Embracing the instances of the two-year Espressioni project – a series of new exhibitions and events at Castello di Rivoli that address forms of expression and expressionism from the past to the present, DIGITAL COSMOS hosts audio and video works by leading artists, including Anne Imhof, Agnieszka Kurant, Marzia Migliora, Elena Mazzi and Cally Spooner. These contributions establish a dialogue with the works already published on the site, including the recent multimedia work Deep Simulator by aaajiao, in the context of the digital insights presented on the occasion of the illy Present Future 2019 Award.
In contrast, and unlike most museums, the DIGITAL COSMOS puts at the center of its program the contemplation and experience of real works of art designed to be online, but without the obligation of interaction and active participation of the public. Furthermore, in the DIGITAL COSMOS, the discursive aspect of lessons and conferences that so characterize the digital world does not prevail. The participatory aspect of online activities is mostly reserved for activities promoted by the EDUCATION DEPARTMENT of the Museum with social media platforms. However, the DIGITAL COSMOS also offers numerous opportunities for discursive insights. Starting from December 3, the autumn digital programming is also developed through the CYCLE OF LESSONS AND CONVERSATIONS dedicated to the Museum’s Collections and to contemporary artists held by the Director of the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea and the Cerruti Collection, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, by the Chief Curator and Curator of the Collections Marcella Beccaria, by the Manager and Curator of the Castello di Rivoli Research Institute (CRRI) Andrea Viliani and by the Curator Marianna Vecellio. The digital schedule also includes a series of appointments dedicated to the Savoy Residence held by the Coordinator of the Valorisation of the Artistic and Historical Heritage of the Museum Alessia Giorda and an in-depth path on the masterpieces of the Cerruti Collection, held by Fabio Cafagna and Laura Cantone. The weekly program will be communicated on the official social channels of the Museum and made available in streaming on the page of the DIGITAL COSMOS.
An opportunity for further study of the Espressioni project is the Sixteenth Day of the Contemporary promoted by AMACI, the Association of Italian Contemporary Art Museums, held on December 5, 2020. Castello di Rivoli invited Patrizio Di Massimo to unveil the backstage of The Escalator Cycle, his latest pictorial work that arises from the need to redevelop the spaces of the mechanized ascent, closed since 2011 and originally designed to connect the historic center of Rivoli to the piazzale del Castello. Di Massimo’s work is the first of a new program of site-specific commissions for this public space, created in collaboration with the City of Rivoli. The video Behind The Scenes: The Escalator Cycle by Patrizio Di Massimo documents the different phases of the pictorial cycle, narrated by Di Massimo himself and by Stella Bottai, curator of the project. Starting from the intention to give back to the community public spaces otherwise not usable, Di Massimo tells how his own pictorial intervention was conceived by him involving the students of Scenography of the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin. Developing his project in accordance with the community spirit of the initiative, the artist in fact conducted a series of workshops with the students for three weeks that were hosted by Combo in Turin. The video also explores the peculiar subject identified by the artist, consisting of a “human comedy” that stages characters from the local cultural community, while giving ample prominence to essential workers, the anonymous protagonists who keep the social fabric alive during the periods of lockdown caused by the COVID-19 emergency. Behind The Scenes: The Escalator Cycle by Patrizio Di Massimo will be broadcast during the Day of the Contemporary on Saturday 5 December 2020 either on the Castello di Rivoli website and social channels, and on the AMACI channels.
As part of the Espressioni project, Castello di Rivoli presents a two-part conference entitled Digital PTSD. The Artistic Practice and Its Impact on Digital Trauma, developed between 2020 and 2021. With the participation of artists, theorists, neuroscientists and experts of the technological reality, the first appointment is held on December 12, 2020 at 4 pm and the second is held on May 20, 2021. The event aims to investigate the issues related to the sudden increase in digital activities in a period of closure of social gathering spaces including museums, to provide an opportunity for reflection on some of the first effects that the global lockdown has had – and continues to have – on our relationship with the digital experience, as well as to know the effects caused by the abuse of digital platforms. The isolating experience of the lockdown has raised new alarms regarding the potentially traumatic effects of digital overload on subjectivity and on the social body. With the term Digital PTSD, we ask ourselves whether our obsessive and growing dependence on technology can be a threat to our creative freedom, physical and mental well-being, and therefore what is the role of art in reducing psychological distress. This cycle of meetings invites some of the leading Italian and international scientists, artists, thinkers and curators to present their research and collectively reflect on topics of crucial importance for the human condition, including: the physical erosion of living matter and the transformation of human experience in mega-data; the “digital trauma” in relation to the collective nervous system; the neuro-scientific study of cognitive and social relations mediated by technology; and, finally, the impact of these phenomena on social structures and ideological polarization. The fact of presenting a critique of contemporary technologies through online platforms seems paradoxical, yet it falls within the most classic tradition of modern art to investigate and lay bare one’s means and languages through the use of critical thinking. Digital PTSD is made in partnership with e-flux.
Among the invited speakers, in addition to the Director of the Castello di Rivoli Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, there are: Beatriz Colomina & Mark Wigley, Bracha L. Ettinger, Cécile B. Evans, Vittorio Gallese, Anne Imhof, Agnieszka Kurant, Catherine Malabou, Chus Martínez , Griselda Pollock, Stuart Ringholt, Éric Sadin, Hito Steyerl, Cally Spooner and Shoshana Zuboff. The event is free.
On the occasion of the anniversary of the birth of Alighiero Boetti, Castello di Rivoli presents an international preview of the documentary Shaman and Showman produced by Sky Arte. The film is visible for the whole day of 16 December 2020 on the DIGITAL COSMOS page.
DIGITAL COSMOS hosts philosophical reflections, conversations, debates and lessons on the theme of coexistence and metamorphosis, offering new perspectives for analysis of today’s world. Digital Comp(h)ost is a digital extension of the COMP(H)OST project created by a.titolo, NERO and Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, in collaboration with the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, with the support of the Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo as part of the competition notice “ORA! Produzioni di Cultura Contemporanea”, with the contribution of the Regione Piemonte, the hospitality of Duparc Contemporary Suites and the collaboration of the Film Commission Torino Piemonte. COMP(H)OST was born from an idea of Marianna Vecellio, curator, Castello di Rivoli, and Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy, director, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art and is curated by Francesca Comisso, Luisa Perlo di a.titolo, Lorenzo Gigotti, Valerio Mannucci, Valerio Mattioli for Nero and Marianna Vecellio for Castello di Rivoli.
As part of the collaboration with the Fondazione CRC aimed at promoting knowledge of the works from the Castello di Rivoli Collections in the Cuneo area, in December 2020 a program of conversations focused on the new E luce fu. Giacomo Balla, Lucio Fontana, Olafur Eliasson, Renato Leotta and William Kentridge. Breathe exhibitions respectively set up in Cuneo and Alba is presented on the Webex platform. The conversations take place live and are made available to the public on a deferred basis on the DIGITAL COSMOS page and on the Fondazione CRC website. The program will be communicated through the official social channels of the Museum and the Fondazione CRC.
DIGITAL COSMOS is part of a technological updating project of the Castello di Rivoli supported by the Compagnia di San Paolo. The project aims to update the technological infrastructure, language and function of social media, and to create a digital archive of knowledge produced in over thirty-five years of museum activity. Another purpose is to transform the website from a simple place for information on the Institution’s activities to an online archive and virtual art space, a real “Museum” of works created specifically for this new artistic dimension and elaborated in order to create an unprecedented relationship with the conscience of the online visitor.
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The activities of Castello di Rivoli are made possible primarily thanks to the contribution of the Regione Piemonte.