ABITO LA CITTADINANZA (I INHABIT CITIZENSHIP)
Rossana Calbi, Alena Ivochkina, Martina Zaninelli & Thomas Jakobs
At the Magazzini TuMiTurbi we have chosen to interpret ABITO as an exploration of citizenship. Inhabiting a society means recognising ourselves as a part of what happens to us, dialoguing with our surroundings and recognising what seems to regard merely individual groups or people as collective questions. The three projects presented together in this space regard different eras and contexts, but they all call into question the fine line between the individual and the collective dimensions, between observing and taking a stand, between submitting to the powers that be and contributing to their transformation.
With Brotherland, Martina Zaninelli, photographer with a background in history, and Thomas Jakobs, teacher and operator in the field, shed light on a page of German history sidelined after the celebrations for the fall of the Berlin Wall, a page of violence and racism towards immigrant ex-East German workers. Their research weaves together interviews, archive material and images of the places where attacks and violence took place, with a focus – achieved through enlarged details of clapping hands – on those who did not act directly but watched and encouraged those attacks. A detail which leads us to reflect on the responsibility not only of those who carry out acts, but of those who observe, approve and encourage them.
Apologia in strada by Rossana Calbi takes us into public spaces: the project starts from the neofascist propaganda posters pasted onto the walls of her neighbourhood, experienced as a sort of “uniform” imposed on the city. The artist intervenes ripping them off and covering them with coloured sticking tape, documenting the actions with her photography. The exhibition layout puts the action, its documentation and what remains on the same plane: the photographs are placed side by side with a stratified panel of posters collected from the city streets, which the public can write on, rip and transform. The artist’s gesture becomes a direct invitation to act.
Architectures of Power by Alena Ivochkina reflects on the condition of the individual under a totalitarian régime. Intervening directly with needle and thread on the images, the artist shows us the consequences of a power that manages to control every aspect of life. Their undefined appearance expands reflection beyond the specific context of totalitarianism, interrogating us on the fragility of individual identity in the face of any means of control and conformity.
The projects exhibited at the Magazzini TuMiTurbi remind us that we do not live dissociated from what surrounds us: we are inside the places, stories and structures we experience and for this exact reason we can contribute to changing them. Analysing the past and recognising the signs left by the present in our spaces are ways of exercising a critical view, of not being “submerged” by events and, on the contrary, being capable of acting with awareness.
