On the occasion of OpenHouse 2019 we invited Bianca Felicori, journalist, communication expert and, among others, creator of the Forgotten Architecture project, to a micro-residence.

The residence becomes an opportunity for Bianca to guide us to the discovery of a great shared archive of Forgotten Architecture together with other guests.

In fact, on the occasion of the residence there will be an informal meeting to enlarge the map and deepen the already mapped places.

Forgotten Architecture has no pre-established rules, but above all it is a project of pure and genuine sharing. The group starts from a first interpretation of the term: Forgotten should not be misunderstood as abandoned or poorly maintained, but has various nuances. Forgotten is the architecture of a great forgotten master, is the work of a minor architect never considered, is the small church of the archistar never studied at university and so on.

Working between documentary and the imaginary, Škarnulytė makes films and immersive installations exploring deep time and invisible structures, from the cosmic and geologic to the ecological and political. Her blind grandmother gently touches the weathered statue of a Soviet dictator. Neutrino detectors and particular colliders measure the cosmos with otherworldly architecture. Post-human species swim through submarine tunnels above the Arctic Circle and crawl through tectonic fault lines in the Middle Eastern desert.

Winner of the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize, Škarnulytė represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano and was included in the Baltic Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture. With solo exhibitions at CAC, Vilnius in 2015 and Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin in 2017, she has participated in group shows at Ballroom Marfa, Seoul Museum of Art, Kadist Foundation, and the First Riga Biennial. Her numerous prizes include the Kino der Kunst Project Award, Munich (2017); Spare Bank Foundation DNB Artist Award (2017), and the National Lithuanian Art Prize for Young Artists (2016). She received an undergraduate degree from the Brera Academy of Art in Milan and holds a masters from the Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art.

Her films have been screened at the Serpentine Gallery, UK, the Centre Pompidou, France and in numerous film festivals including in Rotterdam, Busan, and Oberhausen. She is a founder and currently co-directs Polar Film Lab, a collective for analogue film practice located in Tromsø, Norway and is a member of artist duo New Mineral Collective, recently commissioned for new work by the First Toronto Biennial.

During the residency,

During the residency, Emilija will explore the underwater and underground Naples for the production of her latest project and will present her works through studio visits and a round table.

the first artist residency of the year 2021 in the spaces of SuperOtium which will take place from 15 to 28 February 2021.

A year after the first lockdown taken in Italy due to the coronavirus emergency, photographer Giovanna Silva returns to Naples, the fourth stop after Milan, Genoa and Rome, for a residency to rediscover a city proud of its architectural and urbanistic charm, and at the same time protagonist of a change that is marking the way of life and crossing all those metropolises with the highest population density in Italy.

“Since I can no longer travel abroad, I am considering a book that combines my architectural walks through the cities of Italy.
My interest is architectural, but also exploratory and performative; I take photos with my i-phone, not for lack of a camera, but precisely because the i-phone allows you to be more discreet and immediate.
I take photographs following the paths and advice of the people I interview, creating and following a ‘map’ of stories that allow me to get to know the city better.”

The “stories to be told about the city of Naples”, due to the ambivalent way in which it is often perceived and enjoyed by those who visit and live there, is one of the themes that has fascinated Lorenzo Xiques in recent years, a young curator and queer activist in the Naples area, whose latest exhibition “Vendi Napoli e poi Muori” inspired by the novel of the same name by Gennaro Ascione” held at Galleria Fonti.

“The way of crossing and living the city, in particular that of Naples, is very different depending on whether you are a queer person or a member of the cisgender society.
Queer communities, or in general those oppressed by the patriarchal system, have always had to identify and create “SAFE” places and paths where they can freely live their identities. These are places and stories that are often not beaten (neither on the road nor on the typewriter) by the people who arrive on the territory, as they are hidden places by their nature or because they are deliberately censored.”

The meeting between Giovanna Silva and Lorenzo Xiques will become the occasion for a research laboratory that will send the two actors on an advance scouting trip through the city of Naples, in search of places and stories – in a period marked by the restrictions due to the “yellow zone” imposed by the DPCM – and of new suggestions and revelations useful for the restitution of a “map” in images of the post-pandemic city.

The year 2020-21, the year of the pandemic, will be remembered above all for its images, and their ability to tell the stories – or the silences – that marked it.

The completed project will be presented on 27 February at 4 pm at the end of the artist’s residency.

During the residency it will be possible to meet Giovanna Silva by booking a studio visit.

The residence is developed with the collaboration of SuperOtium, which, as a residence space, will host the artists, will be a study / laboratory of their work and will contribute to the construction of the Neapolitan edition program.

The Neapolitan stage of the project is inspired by the Grand Tour, intended as a practice of training and artistic production in the footsteps of the tradition of travel made by intellectuals and artists between 700 and 800.
The themes related to the exploration of unknown places thus become an opportunity for meeting and migrating acquires a positive connotation, becoming synonymous with exchange, that intertwining with the different that leads to an enrichment and expansion of knowledge. The intent is to narrate Italy through the gaze of some selected artists and artists who, through their work which consists in the creation of a real travel diary, express the impressions received by a specific geographical area with its people, its culture and its historical – artistic heritage.

The protagonists of this residence, all female, are: Simona Da Pozzo, Serena Fineschi, Stefania Mazzola.
The artists will take advantage of the residence and meeting with the realities of the Neapolitan city to create new works, in the form of an in-progress project with drawings, images, sculptures and artist notebooks.

The visiting artists will be joined by the visiting artists: Maura Banfo, Sophie Ko, Valeria Manzi, Concetta Modica, in addition to the contribution of Giuseppina Giordano in correspondence with Japan.

The residence, which will begin on March 8 and will engage the artists in a series of workshops and meetings that will end on March 14 with a special white night.

The traces of the work produced during the residency will find space, thanks to the collaboration with MetroArt / ANM of Naples, in four advertising spaces in as many subway stops in dialogue with the design of the art stations. A preview of what will then be the final exhibition.

In the framework of Espacios Ocupados program, in occasion of 30th anniversary of Cervantes Institute, SuperOtium presents Measuring the Unmeasurable. As part of its program the project is a research residency involving the Chilean artist Paz Ortúzar for a confrontation with the city, through explorations and exchanges with local people and realities, on the theme she has been pursuing of measurement systems, understood as an authoritarian imposition, made of irremovable infrastructures and truths, where inaccuracy becomes an action of heretical disobedience. The residency will end with a public restitution of the artist’s research in the form of an open round table.

Agenda of the residency:
On 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th November exploratory tours, meetings with representatives of the cultural world, and planning of actions in the public space.
8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th November actions in the public space related to the artist’s research and portfolio review by appointment.
10th November public restitution meeting open to the city, by appointment with local guests to be confirmed.

Quoting the artist: “During the last couple of years, I have been researching about the metric measurement system and the relevance that it carries as an underlying infrastructure that allows the persistence of the savage capitalism in which we are immersed.
The metric system was created in Europe in the XIX century, from there it was imposed to its colonies and later, to the rest of the world. This caused the disappearance of a multiplicity of systems of measuring specific to each city or village, which were also tied to particular spiritual beliefs. Once the metric system was imposed, those beliefs were also emptied, giving absolute power to Catholicism reigning in most Western European countries. In this way, the metric system and Catholicism forced a monotheism that annihilated any kind of paganism both in science and in the spiritual realm.
Considering this relationship between measurement and divinity, there is a strong connection between some of the objects, symbols, and actions performed by the Catholic religion around the consecrated communion wafer and the handling, cleaning and display of the Platinum-Iridium Kilogram Prototype, also commonly referred to as The Big K. [1]
Naples was one of the cities in Europe that resisted the standardized use of the metric system, maintaining its measurements (there were many and very diverse) for many years even though Italy was one of the original countries that signed the Metric Convention. Furthermore, Naples is still one of the cities with more Catholic churches in the world. These facts make Naples a strange blend, a divergent space with a sharp tension held by these two vertical institutions.
My project consists of a pilgrimage of several days visiting the most important Catholic churches in Naples. During those visits and walks, I will perform a series of simple actions weaving together some of the symbols and rites linked to both the communion wafer and The Big K.”

Paz Ortúzar, is a Chilean interdisciplinary visual artist and researcher, with a practice in writing and translating. Her present artistic research is focused on systems of beliefs, feminism and the hegemonic standardization of knowledge in colonized territories. Through her practice she seek to apprehend and question physical, cultural, and spiritual truths. Her work is composed process-based pieces that use language, time, and found objects as raw material.
She earned a Bachelor in Fine Arts and a Certificate in Latin-American Art Aesthetics (PUC, Chile). Later on, she studied a Master in Fine Arts with an interdisciplinary focus (UPENN, USA) and an Advanced Master in Artistic Research in a Socio-Political Context (Sint Lucas Antwerp, Belgium). Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as Fjord Gallery, Philadelphia and The Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries, New York (USA); MUCHA, Mendoza (AR); FRANZ JOSEP KAI 3, Vienna (AT); Goethe Institute, Salvador (BR); Galería Gabriela Mistral in Santiago (CL) and RAAT, Antwerp (BE) among others.
Additionally, she have worked collaboratively with curators, artists and collectives developing exhibitions and independent curatorial projects.

SuperOtium, an art-residency space for contemporary cultures, which will curate the residency project. SuperOtium will welcome and mentor the artist during her residency;

Ex-Voto, radical public culture, project promoter, realizes projects centred on the practice and theme of active socialisation and co-creation, as tools for enhancing the activity and resources of the territory, communities and communities.

Instituto Cervantes Nápoles, is an institution created by the Spanish State in 1991 with the aim of promoting the teaching of the Spanish language, disseminating Spanish and Hispano-American culture and participating in the development of cultural exchanges throughout the world. It is based in Madrid and in Alcalá de Henares, the birthplace of the writer Miguel de Cervantes. The Instituto Cervantes is present in 88 cities in 45 countries on the four continents.

Espacios Ocupados, The project Measuring the Unmeasurable is part of the Espacios Ocupados Programme, an initiative that seeks to develop trajectories in different directions that serve to relate Spanish-speaking artists to contexts, cultural actors and places in the centres of the Cervantes Institute network, with the idea of bringing artistic practice and its creators closer to the citizens of the world.
We believe that it is time to focus on projects that foster relationships between different people, creating common channels of communication and bringing people together through art to be surprised by ever-changing situations. Through artistic residencies in specific places, other ways of thinking and feeling arise in order to be able to understand and share questions and possible answers.

The artistic residency activity entrusts the winning artist with the mission to answer the question “What is your future vision of contemporary Naples?”. This question will be the leitmotif that will guide the various activities planned during the residency that will lead the artist to explore the Neapolitan territory and imagine it with a look towards the future, trying to solve the contemporary criticalities.

Sevana Holst, winning artist, declares:

“During my stay at SuperOtium, I would like to focus my research on a specific aspect of the city: where is the place and what is the role of the Word within the public space?” . Today the word is used as a tool for consumerism (see advertising) and to impose limits (see signs and prohibitions). Is there, then, a space where it can exist for no other purpose than its beauty?
My project starts from the observation and exploration of the city with the aim of expanding or creating a new space where the Word can exist for itself in contemporary Naples”.

Sevana Holst, is a French-American writer and visual poet who explores the limits and aesthetics of language by experimenting with visual and concrete poetry, inspired by poets such as Susan Howe, Paula Claire and Giulia Niccolai. Holst studied History at the Sorbonne and Persian Studies at INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales), beginning her professional life as a translator and freelance writer collaborating with theaters and artists in Paris. Through her work, she unites both the visual and literary realms in pursuit of a complete desacralization of both text and image.

Silent Art Explorer (SAE), is a private project supporting emerging art talent co-founded by emerging collector Giulio Raffaele and Aurora Rossini, a communications professional. SAE’s activity focuses on the work of emerging artists and on the role of the collector as a supporter of art projects – beyond the purchase of artworks. In addition to supporting creative talent, SAE combines the goal of supporting talent in professions related to the arts and culture sector, as well as facilitating valuable exchanges within the professional ecosystem.

ReA Arte Cultural Association, founded by a group of young female cultural entrepreneurs in January 2020, is the organizer of ReA! Art Fair. The annual event, which takes place in Milan’s Fabbrica del Vapore venue, aims to go beyond the traditional fair model, supporting – in an increasingly challenging market – transparent sales, flanked by adequate representation and fair value of the works. ReA! Art Fair creates a dialogue between deserving new talents, collectors, the public and numerous national and international institutions, with the aim of promoting emerging talents – through awarding prizes, organizing solo and group exhibitions and publishing catalogs.

VisualcontainerTv International Videoart webchannel, curated by Alessandra Arnò, has been presenting videoart projects and festivals under the care of curators and festival directors, interviews, and monograph programs from all over the world, since 2009. It’s a big renowned cultural project made for videoart lovers, students, curators, and all audiences, a place where to find the best videoart selection for free and for cultural purposes. The project aiming to spread the fresh and latest researches in the videoart scenario under the care of visualcontainer and many other partners around the world into a overall view.

Vegapunk is an artist run space&time of sharing artistic practices. It is an extension of Simona Da Pozzo‘s artistic practice into the domain of curating driven by impromptu curiosities. The focus is on artistic practice as both an intellectual and physical process guided by dialogue (between people, formats, disciplines). Vegapunk tends to build collaborations with artists whose discourse stretches beyond the artistic frame to include researches entangled with the world, also in a social and political sense. The attention to the relationship between space and time, both in a physical and aesthetic sense, leads Vegapunk to favor time-based projects and to define Vegapunk as an artist- run-space-&-time. Vegapunk is a project born in the frame of www.ex-voto.org.