Within the framework of the Torino Social Impact Art Award, conceived by Artissima and promoted by Torino Social Impact, in collaboration with Combo and with the support of the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation, a workshop/experiential path involving artists and a number of local realities took place on Saturday 2 July. Thanks to the willingness and support of a number of organisations and figures familiar with the dynamics that characterise the city of Turin, the workshop was a dynamic opportunity for an exchange to bring the theme of the call into the local context.
The title of the call 2022 is Rebellions and Rebirths: the creative potential of confrontation, and invites artists to reflect on the theme of social conflict in its various manifestations and latent forms.
Structure of the Workshop
The workshop has been organised on the basis of an itinerary interspersed with meetings and visits to significant sites, with the aim of helping the artists trace the history of the city’s transformation, as well as the direction in which it is heading.
Free Exchange Market
Theme: (underground and contrasts) Turin’s Free Trade Market has been held for many years in the Borgo Dora area, coexisting in conflict with residents and other businesses in the area. It is a spontaneous and informal market, a source of income and livelihood for many. Legislative changes in the late 1990s reformed the categories of trades present in the public area, leaving some 500 vendors who had been participating in the market for years without formal recognition. These changes are a source of tension, clashes and the creation of new representations and identities that reverberate in the spaces and people who pass through and experience that space (traders, vendors, residents, public administration, local associations, etc.). The market, the spaces it occupies and the people it involves represent a history of recent tensions and wounds in the city of Turin and the search for a synthesis.
For more: Free trade, the souk, politics and choices: some elements for clarity
Museum of Resistance, Deportation, War, Rights and Freedom
Theme: (Underground and Resistance) The permanent exhibition of the Museo Diffuso della Resistenza is located in the underground rooms of the Palazzo dei Quartieri Militari. During World War II, around 45 public air-raid shelters were built in Turin, including the air-raid shelter in the Palazzo dei Quartieri Militari, intended for the employees of the newspaper “La Gazzetta del Popolo”, which was based in the same block. Situated at a depth of about 12 metres, this shelter consisted of four reinforced concrete tunnels to resist bomb blasts and shock waves. The history of the resistance in Turin is intertwined with that of the workers’ struggle (the Fiat Ferriere strikes, Mirafiori in 1943, etc.) and the underground places where daily life was conducted under the bombing. Going to the underground places is not only an act of survival but also a look into the future, to a new imaginary, to a new world and a new society. The Museum represents an important stage in reflecting on the values of the Resistance in order to read the present and look to the future.
For further information: the Museum’s institutional website
Mirafiori: General gardens, House in Mirafiori Park
Theme: (transformation and rebirth) The Mirafiori district is known for being home to one of the most famous Fiat factories, a symbol of the Italian industrialisation process. In the 1960s, Mirafiori was one of the largest worker concentrations in Europe, employing 65,000 people. The growth of the plant linked to the economic boom triggered migratory phenomena and affected the transformation of the metropolitan area. Rethinking a neighbourhood such as Mirafiori certainly represents a challenge, which is being taken up by a number of local realities capable of thinking up future trajectories for the city thanks also to social innovation.
For more: Mirafiori project after the Myth
