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Art Week, Stage as a social platform

Stage as a social platform
Jérôme Bel, Alexis Blake, Luigi Coppola, Christian Nyampeta
Curated by Simone Frangi and Tommaso Sacchi
Assistant Curator: Giovanna Manzotti
On the occasion of XXI Triennale di Milano, during Art Week 2016
9 – 10 April 2016
Teatro Continuo, Parco Sempione, Milan

In 1973, on the occasion of the XV Triennale di Milano, Alberto Burri inaugurated, in the frame of Contatto Arte-Città conceived by Giulio Macchi for Parco Sempione, the architectural work Teatro Continuo, a free stage machinery that is always ready to be used, for both artistic activities and performances, and  for independent use by everyone. Located on the ideal axis that, cutting the Park, connects Piazza Duomo with Corso Sempione, the Teatro Continuo is  a perspective telescope between the Filarete Tower of Castello Sforzesco, on the one hand, and the Arco della Pace, on the other. Offering different forms of city protagonism, the work expresses an idea of theatre extended to the urban space and characterised by an attention to new possibilities of dialogue with the public. The Theatre is “continuous” because it is able to react to the social becoming and urban transformation that surround it and to welcome the desire of a city and a society to represent itself  and, at the same time,  “discontinuous” because, after being demolished in 1989 and remaining “latent” for about twenty-six years, it was handed back to the city last year on the occasion of the centenary of Alberto Burri’s birth.

Taking as its starting point the ambiguous and ambitious nature of the Teatro Continuo, Stage as a social platform focuses on the public, social and political value of a performance. Teatro Continuo is indeed a fluid junction in public space, a hybrid form that has abandoned a classically theatrical posture to become a place of transition, lived and liveable.

Articulated around the idea that such a theatrical scene can work as a social catalyst, Stage as a social platform activates Teatro Continuo with performative practices progressively emerging from a phase of participatory production. Through a path of production workshops organized by Viafarini with different social groups, the invited artists have performatively re-articulated the on/off dynamic that qualifies this space as a continuous flow of activities. Four different approaches to the scene, with the aim of modulating it to propose, in a specific civic context, different forms of collective housing of the urban space.

The entire production process of Stage as a social platform is documented by the students of the School of Photography coordinated by Paola Di Bello at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera (Milan).

Programme
Saturday 9 April 2016
Alexis Blake, We Will Not Be Moved
Luigi Coppola, Continuum
Talk con Jérôme Bel, Gabi Scardi and Ben Borthwick at MiArt, fiera internazionale d’arte moderna e contemporanea

Sunday 10 April 2016
Talk with Alexis Blake, Luigi Coppola, Jérôme Bel, Christian Nyampeta, Simone Frangi, Tommaso Sacchi, Gabi Scardi at Teatro Agorà, La Triennale di Milano
Jérôme Bel, Compagnie, Compagnie
Christian Nyampeta, The Lives of Ideas