Presenting: EXTREME LAND a video by Ramdom, edited by Luca Coclite (visual artist and Ramdom Co-founder), 21 mins. 9 seconds, 2016
For the first time online, Arthub presents EXTREME LAND by Ramdom. The video illustrates the projects developed over the last two years by the Italy based organization, within the framework of an ongoing research focused on Extreme Lands.
About Default 2015: Extreme Lands
Ramdom is a cultural and artistic project. Since 2011 the organization has been based in Gagliano del Capo, a small town located at the extreme southern heel of the Italian peninsula, in the Puglia Region. This year, the association departed from its nomadic and erratic infrastructure by investing in a more stable home base: Lastation.
The group promotes new creative practices and innovative languages of communication, interacting with citizens and public, private, national and international organizations. Ramdom creates and provides training in contemporary art and promotes mobility through masterclass programs, workshops, exhibitions and residencies.
Ramdom is above all a long-term challenge that requires us to invest in a territory by establishing a dialectical tension.
The organization is tested on three different levels: the institutional, which according to Boris Groys’ book Going public, shifts art object into art project – thus transforming art from an aesthetic to a poetic experience. This theory corresponds to a precise intention to generate a social, political and economic dimension, ultimately with the aim of (re)staging our perceived reality, by providing the imagination with new models and formats. On another level you have the educational, with the objective of recognizing and identifying a nonspecific audience, constructed of more than just artists; and last, but not least, you have the artistic level, which is a bridge between the others.
The last mentioned level is indeed the biggest challenge. The artworks perform in this sense a crucial role; artists must constantly re-negotiate their relationship with an extremely peculiar territory. Gagliano del Capo abruptly ends where the rocks fall into the sea – nothing else lays beyond: it is the embodiment of the Extreme Lands.
In September 2011 and 2013 DEFAULT, Masterclass in residence was realized in Lecce. For ten days twenty artists and ten international guests debated the topics of the city and regeneration. Some of the projects discussed at these meetings were later realized. The Masterclass ran alongside a rich program of events.
In addition to Default, Ramdom’s research Investigation on the Extreme Lands (whose second edition inaugurated last summer) is a project that exemplifies the core of the organizations’ intentions. The Extreme Land is an open process that depends on curators, philosophers, scientists and geologists as much as it does on artists.
The Extreme Lands are locations “of landing and not [places] of passage” because, “from the extreme lands, you can get to or you can part from, but you cannot pass. [They are] the last boundary between land and sea–the extremities of the peninsulas. [They are] lands far from the urban centers, [far] from the core of the city and [they are] very difficult to reach.” The extreme lands are “a geographical dislocation that [have become] a socio-anthropological characteristic of the people who live there.”
Moreover the Extreme Lands are, as announced in the project’s statement,as well as in the words of Ramdom’s Director and Founder Paolo Mele, “strategic points to observe the world through, to even go beyond the limits of our imagination and beyond our knowledge.” Extreme Lands are points where as we turn our gaze into the unknown the presence of the sea will appear as a detector, to investigate our incomprehension and limits.
Hence, the Extreme Lands not only provide a privileged point of view to understand our environment, but above all they “allow us to understand ourselves while we look forward with fear and respect.” The Mediterranean has always been a land of cultivated civilization, whose culture has been at the same time safeguarded and stimulated by the waters that have connected them. Today, however, the limits of the maritime borders are synonyms with frailty and exploitation.
Finally, the Extreme Lands are a place that requires you to take risks and experiment. It is a place where we must imagine and re-think a different mental, territorial, and anthropological geography. Extreme Lands is a place where, along with the territory and local communities, a constant dialogue of intense negotiation can be activated.
Text by Claudio Zecchi
For the occasion of Arthub’s Screening curator Claudio Zecchi has interviewed Paolo Mele to discuss Ramdom’s ongoing research cum investigation about artistic production in challenging locals through the project Investigation on the Extreme Lands.
Claudio Zecchi (CZ): One of the most intriguing aspects of EXTREME LANDis the site-specific and performative dimension of all the works included. How do the artists react to your invitation to participate, furthermore how do they realize their site-specific works in such a peculiar and inspiring territory?
Paolo Mele (PM): Extreme places are really evocative; they offer a unique vantage point for viewing the rest of the world. I think this is very important for an artist: they love discovering new and different points of view. It’s a stimulating situation to be in and many artists like to work within this context so they can engage with local communities, while simultaneously exploring the landscape in this extreme place (in this instance the heel of Italy).
CZ: The performative dimension of the works produced by Ramdom so far makes them somewhat ephemeral and transitory. How do you think these two characteristics can help the project generate a new vision of the territory?
PM: The performative dimension of the artworks produced is the result of a deep and long process of dialogue and research. The local community and the surrounding landscape are protagonists within this creative process. In this framework, what is actually important is not the final production but above all the practice of artistic engagement. However, we have actually produced several physical works as well, such as the vinyl
Drob and Folds by Alessandro Carboni, the cassette tape by Luca Coclite and Alessandro Carboni, mixed media artworks such as
Deriva by Coclite and De Mattia, the flags by Andreco and the impressive light work
Luminaria by Carlos Casas.
CZ: Let’s stick with the artistic side of the project: what kind of function does art have within such a peculiar territory? According to your experience, how do you think that the artists and the art as a consequence performs and engages with an Extreme Land, like Ramdom’s territory in Italy?
PM: One of our main goals is to demonstrate that it’s possible to have a high quality art production in a remote area, far from the big capitalistic hubs of contemporary art. We offer the artists an intimate and extreme place to work, to rethink their practice, to approach the idea of site-specific production from one of the most extreme points in Italy. However, at the same time, we are in the middle of the Mediterranean, a strategic and stimulating positioning that pushes us to build bridges and engage in a constant dialogue with others.
CZ: On the other hand, the political side of the project forces you to have a certain perspective—a vision. What impact do you think a project like Ramdom has on the territory and the local community? Do you actually think that the artwork produced can make the project sustainable?
PM: I think art can be the extra vitality needed for this extreme piece of land on the south-east shore of Italy. Since 2011, we have been working on different platforms such as masterclasses, exhibitions, performances and residencies with the idea to broaden this local and isolated setting—pushing the community towards an international dimension, in order to provide them with the opportunity to share their ideas, visions and practices with other artists, curators and managers from around the world. I think we can be sustainable if we keep these dual objectives, provoking the interests of the public and private sector simultaneously. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but I think this is the only way to initiate change.
Edited by Ryan Nuckolls
Translated by Paul Han
Who’s Who
Luca Coclite is a visual artist. He was born in Gagliano del Capo (Lecce) and he lives and works between Bologna and Lecce. His works suggest imaginary overlappings and the temporary or permanent reference absence, which create the conditions within his poetics take form. The viewer, caught off guard by an assiduous image changing, is pushed to look for (original) information spoors behind materializing projections.
Find out more about Luca
here.
Paolo Mele is a PhD student in Communication & New Technologies at IULM Univesity (Milan, Italy). He is a cultural and digital project manager and in he has recently worked with several international organisations such as World Bank, New Art Exchange, Fondazione Veronesi, and Fondazione Chivasso. He has been project manager for the Biennial of Young Artist from Europe and Mediterranean from 2008 to 2012. In 2006, he funded and coordinated the Observatory of Communication Politics (OCP) at the University of Salento. He has published two books on media and politics and he carry out several essay and articles. His current research focus is on new media (art) and cultural policies. He is founder of Cooperativa PAZ.
Find out more about Paolo
here.
Claudio Zecchi is an independent curator whose field of research and approach is a practice aimed at investigating new visions and reading of the urban and social space as well as the role and the responsibility that artists, curators, institutions and the public have in the contemporary society at large. From 2006 until 2013, Zecchi was co-curator of Cantieri d’Arte Public Art Project, a platform for new visions and readings of urban space and society, and is an active contributor to Arte e Critica.
Find out more about Claudio
here.
