In-ruins is a no-profit organisation founded in Calabria, Italy, in 2018. Via residencies, talks and publications we explore the critical potential of the relation between contemporary art and archaeology. The project rethinks the territory via its past, transforms ancient ruins in places for encounter and activates cultural economies thanks to the contributions of artists and researchers. Exploring myths and traditions In-ruins valorises cultural heritage and the very communities that guard it.
Regional
Italy
An itinerant project grounded in the Calabrian Region and aiming to expand to other regions of the South of Italy and the Mediterranean area
Editions locations:
2018 - Province of Catanzaro - Archaeological Park of Scolacium
2021 - Province of Catanzaro - Norman Castle of Squillace
2022 - Province of Vibo Valentia - Polo Museale di Soriano Calabro / Province of Reggio Calabria - Villa Romana Palazzi di Casignana
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
2022-10-16
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): In-ruins Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Nicola Last name of representative: Guastamacchia Gender: Male Nationality: Italy Function: Co-director Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Corso Trieste 11 Town: Bari Postal code: 70126 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 351 612 1246 E-mail:info@inruins.org Website:https://inruins.org/
In-ruins is an artist-residency programme exploring the relation between contemporary art and archaeology to stimulate forward-thinking critical reflection and promote cultural initiatives in areas - and for communities - otherwise excluded from the occasions, opportunities and networks of major national and global cities.
Every year we launch an open call (free of application charges) inviting international established and emerging artists to submit proposals for 3-4 weeks residencies to take place in rural and urban areas of Calabria. The locations are selected because of their proximity to internationally relevant archaeological sites to which we gain privileged access and working space thanks to agreements and partnerships with local councils, the Regional government and the Authority for Cultural Heritage. In 2022, we received over 200 applications, almost doubling the previous edition turnout.
The project is inspired by the guiding idea of safeguarding the liveliness and traditions of Italy’s extremely rich “internal” and peripheral areas, and responds to the actual lack and need for institutions dedicated to contemporary art in Calabria by implementing a residency-format that brakes through the routine of the communities hosting our activities. Making a virtue of necessity, the project identifies ruins as the very location wherein alternative cultural economies can flourish. This format is promising for any region marked by a strong archaeological landscape and could be adapted to almost all Mediterranean and European countries finding it hard to fund and organise “standard” art institutions. This opens to another level of action implied by the residency which is the valorisation of the archaeological sites themselves via international discourse and beyond their established narratives, which comes together with a renovated sense of pride and engagement shown by the very communities guarding them.
ART
CULTURAL HERITAGE
BELONGING
REPURPOSING
COMMUNITY-MAKING
The In-ruins residency programme is highly sustainable as it relies almost completely on the support provided by local administrations and individuals. Over the past 3 editions we have granted selected artists room and board, and free local transports also thanks to the generosity of hosting towns and archaeological institutions. The residency is “nomadic”, moving every year to a new site, but each edition is an intense immersion into the selected area.
Calabria is a wonderful region of the south of Italy, yet marked by strong political and economic fragility. Touristic fluxes exploit what the Calabrian breath-taking coast has to offer, without being directed towards structured attempts to promote the Region in terms of fresh and updated cultural offer. In-ruins hence invites artists to approach “ruins” as inhabitable places to be revived and conceived beyond the category of “cultural heritage”. Our activities develop in accordance with regulations of access and use of the monuments. No initiative is meant to directly affect the hosting environments, and we encourage artists to focus on research or carry out km0 productions in collaboration with local artisans.
The sustainability of the project has a proven a grip also at a social level. Over the years residents have built personal relations with the locals, triggering enthusiasm and participation in communities sometimes not exceeding 300 inhabitants (eg. Casignana in 2022). The hospitality of Calabrian people has often brought us significant steps further ordinary touristic paths. From a cultural point of view, the residency works as a pilot-opportunity for local heritage administrations to experiment low-cost alternative takes on archaeological sites and test their potential in the field of contemporary art. In these areas, in fact, it would be more sustainable and impactful to amplify the offer of existing infrastructures rather than attempting unaffordable museum projects to be started anew.
through design
In-ruins affirms conscious and local good practices of creative production, and has gradually built a strong appeal in the national art-field. We are a young Programme dealing with serious intellectual matter, and make the most to communicate the ambitious character of our activities to the hosting communities. Public presentations are organized in advance and upon completion of the residency, yet our friendly approach has a contagious rhythm that has proven to foster synergies between resident artists and the population throughout their stay.
Through positive emotions:
Every spring the curatorial team organizes trips to individuate the new sites, and the final choices are highly influenced by their social context.
The artists we hosted over the years revived mythic and collective stories; learnt artisanal techniques; cooked recipes close to be forgotten; and, later, exported an enthusiastic idea of Calabria itself. These processes - like in any traditional Italian town – start at the tables of bars adjacent to the main square, where artists are free to meet local scholars and make friends.
Through cultural benefits:
In-ruins offers a unique life experience to international artists who come to discover Italy away from established art-world routes; and challenges communities with sporadic occasions for international exposure to positively rethink their own heritage, often taken as granted. In-ruins grows with the territory, strengthening the population’s awareness of their own local artistic and cultural excellence. The community feels empowered and proud of the artistic interest in their heritage and respond with enthusiasm to artists coming to reside in their towns.
Our priority is to grant artists the best conditions to carry out their research. Our offer includes:
•Accommodation from 3 weeks to 1 month in 1/2 towns, + services/wi-fi;
• Board: breakfast + packed lunch + dinner;
• Ongoing curatorial assistance: curators live with artists;
• Free access to archaeological sites, archives, museums;
• Residency car;
• Meetings with archaeologists;
• Studio space.
The submissions to our yearly open calls are free of charge and since the 2022 edition we decided to nominate a jury of experts to make sure that the selection process grants a balanced distribution of genres and backgrounds among the selected applicants.To support the local art scene, we have a dedicated slot for artists who are from Calabria. This is also a curatorial strategy adding to the group a creative who knows the territory.
Inclusivity is also pursued among local population –and more generally– the project’s audience, which over the years transversally involved old people, youngsters and kids, rampant and retired professionals, art enthusiasts and amateurs at the very beginning of their own artistic and creative paths. In these directions go the presentations carried out over the residency, the online seminars in English and Italian, and the more recent editorial activity.
The project has been developed in 3 of the 5 provinces of the region, and aspires to organise activities also beyond the borders of Calabria. The very idea of approaching archaeological matter via art and vice-versa opens to spatiotemporal inspirations able to bypass geographical and interpretative structures of our society. Archaeology, and history, make everyone close, blend distances, and unearth incredible genealogies. Calabria - both Greek and Arab, and whose kings gave Italy its name - turns into the epicentre of a reflection on international identity, built on the explosive blend of the common past embodied by the ruins and the futuristic drives of contemporary art.
Since its start in 2018, the residency brought to Calabria 22 international artists working across different disciplines and mediums including photography, sound, sculpture, performance and writing. This provided peripheral urban and rural areas of the region with the opportunity to hosts processes of multicultural exchange and encounter the languages of contemporary art often for the first time. Squillace, Soriano Calabro and Casignana – 2021and 2022 locations respectively – are towns with less than 5000 inhabitants. This made our programme a highly attractive event in their routines, which flow at the pace of old pagan and religious rituals.
To explain the project, introduce resident artists and engage with the community, we organise “frontal” informative press conferences, work-in-progress, and final presentations. Yet citizens do not participate as audience only. Local human and professional resources have been indispensable to develop the projects of our residents. These communities have little experience of contemporary art’s politics of presentation and spectatorship, and this leads towards a spontaneous and participative horizontal approach. In 2021: Emii Alrai learnt from local artisans a slipware technique of Byzantine origins; Itamar Gov’s engaged with a whole network of citrons producers for his installation. In 2022: Alice Pedroletti worked in synergy with Soriano's National Library to re-stage archival photos depicting boys with the participation of young ladies from the town; Gianmarco Porru learnt the traditional recipe of “mustaccioli”, once world-famous and now ever less known; Armando Perna managed to get access to the ancient cloister of a local monastery closed to the public. Citizens have hence been pivotal to our programme, from hospitality to the production and local word-of-mouth promotion of our work. Their involvement is a crucial validation of our activities and sets the ground to demand attention at regional and national levels.
The Administrations of hosting towns have been pivotal partners. Dealing with a limited budget, we rely significantly on the hospitality offered by these communities who, in turn, find in the residency an occasion to temporarily revive areas marked by high levels of depopulation. Together with local authorities the museums and ad hoc institutions managing the selected archaeological areas have also been central stakeholders: providing us with both full access to their spaces; and integrating the residency into their public programmes. Under this light, the artists we work with are another, globally distributed, stakeholder. A strong part of the residency's success depends on the feedback that internationals provide about their time in Calabria. Artists are professionals, and our future growth also depends on the reputation we will be able to gain in the art field.
Ongoing partner of our activities has been the “Soprintendenza Archeologia, BelleArti e Paesaggio”: the Italian designated authority for the safeguard of cultural heritage. No unauthorised activity can be carried out in archaeological sites without its consent and we were proud to gain its support in the 2018 and 2022 editions. In 2019, In-ruins was awarded with public funding by the Regional Council of Calabria. In 2021, the project was admitted to STARE, the Italian Association of Artistic Residencies. Only organisations meeting its statutory principles can enter the network, as STARE works as a national representative and stakeholder for the demands of regional cultural actors to central governmental institutions. This multi-level engagement has been further enriched: -by In-ruins’ inclusion in the 2022 Italian Council winning project “Endless Residency” by Giulio Verago, which amplified the national resonance of the residency; -by the recently started partnership with AHA (Art, Heritage and Archaeology) Network at UCL, London, which will open to international research and curatorial opportunities.
Local landscapes are In-ruins’ constitutive elements just as much as contemporary art – its subject matter. Contemporary art is an incredibly hybrid and multi-layered field, which flows through and beyond modern narratives and genealogies. Organising an art residency today implies not only to engage with disparate mediums spanning from sculpture to painting, video, photography, performance and writing; but also to take critical stances towards international discourses and combine the perspectives of multicultural actors. In-ruins is hence based on transdisciplinary curatorial approach supporting art projects moving at the intersection of the most diverse knowledge fields. Examples:
- Religion and political critique,with Itamar Gov;
- Urban and rural development, with Armando Perna;
- Collective memory and the archive, with Alice Pedroletti;
- Sound and religious rituals, with The New Liquidity duo;
- Performance and mythology, with Gianmarco Porru;
- Archaeology and ceramics, with Emii Alrai;
- Feminism and intimacy, with Anna Ill;
- Ancient chants, with Martyna Benedyka.
Bringing together creatives with such different interests roots the residency into global and interdisciplinary intellectual endeavours. The complementary focus on “Archaeology” further expands this character, as we approach the field not just in academic terms but as a speculative arena where common pasts may turn into fertile grounds to affirm transnational futures. Building relations with local archaeologists has hence been central to our programme. Our approach has, in fact, proved to be attractive to professionals in both fields and this led to In-ruins’ first, upcoming, publication: Archivalia. The volume gives a clear breakthrough of the types of contributions triggered and received by our project up until now, and features contributions by past residents and emerging researchers as well as texts by influential anthropologist Vito Teti and Pompeii Commitment curator Stella Bottai.
In-ruins successfully delivered 3 editions of the residency (2018, 2021, 2022), and we are now looking for the 2023 location. We grew our reputation among international artists, with a switch from 40 applicants in 2018, to 80 in 2021, to over 200 in 2022. We also saw a rise in our attractivity on social media, counting + 2300 followers on Instagram, where our audience is plural, reaching to academics, activists, musicians and designers. We gained the attention of professionals in the field of heritage and archaeology at national and international levels, and established privileged relationships with local Museum Directions and Heritage Authorities.
The residency saw the completion of as many art projects as the artists it hosted (22), spanning installations, photographs, videos and other aesthetic devices. In-ruins recognises artists as a global minority – professionals neglected by the labour market – and provides optimal hosting conditions to its guests, making of the residency a unique occasion for personal and professional growth. Our friendly attitude facilitates daily relations with the local community: our second, pivotal, recipient. Focusing on traditions, ancient monuments and local heritage, the programme offers a galvanising opportunity for cross-generational confrontation. Citizens’ memories and support determine our activities. In turn,the views of international artists challenge citizens to rethink their heritage in future perspective, fostering pride and sense of belonging.
The project reveals that remote territories often already bear the minimum required resources to host contemporary art. In-ruins’ model based on the repurposing of archaeological spaces hence configures a local solution to the global challenge of granting the conditions for cultural production not only in global cities but throughout the social texture. The achieved outcomes led to a growing press attention, promoting local towns and archaeological museums under a new light.
The art residency is a globally established format for artistic production. Yet, the ubication in locations hardly presenting any institutions dedicated to contemporary art makes of In-ruins a uniquely ambitious project at regional and Italian levels. To organise a residency and its divulgation in Calabria can be quite a hard endeavour. From transports to production timings, the territory is not easy to flex towards the contingent needs of creative production. In-ruins is hence a crucial and original pilot experiment, that keeps its strength at the international level thanks to its special links to monumental archaeological sites. On December 2022, we were flattered to hear In-ruins referred to as a virtuous Calabrian project at the “Future Archaeologies” conference dedicated to the Riace Bronzes at Triennale Milano.
In-ruins is different from mainstream practices not only because of its distinctive geographic frame of action but also because of its cutting-edge curatorial and artistic focus: contemporary art in relation to archaeology. Integrated by online talks and symposia, the residency makes of Calabria the home for ground-breaking interdisciplinary research and puts in practice the idea of repurposing neglected landmarks and archaeological sites to foster present culture and creativity. The project addresses themes such as history and historiography, memory and the archive, politics and ideology, making of local heritage, skills and traditions the starting points to support independent critical views on our present. In-ruins is a programme run by artists for artists, and finds in the Mediterranean identity and heterogeneity its speculative reference. We take distance from intellectualistic approaches, refuse to reduce art to a market-driven event, and implemented a working alternative solution.
Relying on the professional backgrounds of it team members, In-ruins combines an interdisciplinary curatorial approach with a street-level pragmatic methodology. To produce attractive outcomes for the international artistic panorama whilst keeping a grip on the local community, the project adopts a model of action that prioritises relations over production. Artists negotiate their submitted projects thanks to the inputs and perspectives offered by civil society. Focusing on the process rather than on finished products, our curatorial approach helps artists implement their ideas outside of their individual comfort zones, and has often led to trans-disciplinary collaborations among the residents themselves.
A careful selection process is crucial for the good outcome of the residency. This is why we started, since last year, to rely on a jury of international experts. The jury not only grants diversity of identities and of application topics, but also helps us identify characters and practices that are resourceful and dynamic like the enthusiastic and adventurous spirit of the residency demands. Upon selection we provide selected applicants with informative material on their stay, trips and activities. Once in settled in Calabria, artists have independent housing solutions and are hence free to explore their surroundings. We encourage a proactive and enterprising approach and, working on the coast, we never miss a dip in the sea to team-build and share a good mood. By the end of our residencies, the artists turn into a big international family, having shared a totally unfiltered and real Italian experience.
At an organisational level, our methodology relies on sustainable partnerships arranged year by year with local councils and archaeological institutions. This makes of In-ruinns a grass-roots political actor creating needs, activating synergies and affirming good practices.
In-ruins has a very high potential for transferability and replicability, and this is why we openly state the ambition of running the residency also in other European and Mediterranean destinations. Archaeology works here as a shared and rich cultural landscape able to link northern Europe to the southern borders of the Mediterranean. The project hence offers the international opportunity to affirm the present relevance of neglected and forgotten landmarks, highlighting local excellences as well as the lacks in their ordinary managements.
The object of archaeology is not the “ancient” ruin only. “Modern ruins” – such as abandoned factories and depopulated centres – as well as “ecological ruins” – such as degraded and affected ecosystems – expand the possible fields of analysis of the project. Whilst keeping its focus on peripheral and internal areas, in fact, the format proposed by In-ruins can effectively address multiple knowledge fields, valorising the customs and traditions encountered in each location. It goes without saying that, if these practices were to receive not only hospitality but structured regional or European financial support, their potential for growth would be exponential and open to structural opportunities for local cultural growth.
Beneficiaries include: national and international artists looking for a research opportunity in south Italy; local aspiring artists and creatives finding in the residency a first occasion to engage with the art-world; communities looking to update the appeal of their towns’ cultural offer; Archaeological and Museum Institutions who want to promote and diversify the activities in their programmes.
The methodology and activities pursued by In-ruins provide local solutions to global challenges in terms of both form and content. The residency-format reveals to be an exemplary and powerful tool for grass-roots and emerging organisations to activate international and multidisciplinary fluxes of visitors and ideas in remote areas. Relying on the existing infrastructures of the territory – and valorising their functionality – the residency requires minimum financial resources and can hence be implemented in underdeveloped as well as rapidly transforming areas. The link with cultural heritage and archaeological monuments further deepens the global relevance of our activities: we work with what we have, and demonstrate that it can be sustainable and sufficient.
In the context of the contemporary, capitalist, conditions of the production of culture, a project like In-ruins falls outside the networks of international mundane artistic occasions. Yet, it successfully manages to gather likeminded individuals with multicultural backgrounds, and community-build at artistic and intellectual level. Not all territories and identities can keep the pace of globalized progress. Recognising the importance to defend these specificities – and their cultures – is an urgent task for contemporary global politics, which we propose to tackle via art. The project, in fact, explores and addresses global challenges also at artistic and research levels. International discourses on post-colonial culture, ecology, democracy and human rights determine our curatorial practice and the work of the resident artists. Together, we have been exploring how contemporary art can impact and be impacted by people, traditions and myths; where this can still happen; and why it is so important not to lose it.
