ARTInRETI, initiated by Cittadellarte, is dedicated to the topic of art in the social context with the aim at stimulating deep insights into the concept of transformation, a term so abused to have become vague and confused. What does transformation
mean? Who are the actors that carry out the transformation? What is the role of art? Can art interact with other forms of knowledge? How can artists acti- vate transformation processes? The projects, the actions and the researches shown in the exhibition suggest answers to these questions, critically and problematically investigating the sense of responsibility of the artist that de- cides to work with the public space, the instruments he has to tune in with the needs and the habits of a community, the experimentation of participative methods, the chances of impacting the territory the intervention has. ARTInRETI refers to both the establishing of a network of institutions and independent associations – some historical, other younger – which have been operating in Piedmont with particularly significant past or current projects, and the networking activities with different subjects, situations and realities required or determined by the development of the projects themselves. networks born from dynamics of horizontally expanding relationships, visualized on a wall of the exhibition space in the form of a constellation.
ARTInRETI comes from an idea and an action of establishing a connection among artistic practices whose activators – artists, curators, cultural ac- tors – share the same vision and the same questions about the sense of art and its social function today. In spite of their variety and their differences, the projects in the exhibition remind one of the other in their modalities and their objectives, in a continuous interconnection which creates a common communicative “environment”. A network that, in respect of the unique- ness of its participants, presents itself as a “critical mass” present and ac- tive in the territory, able to have a dialogue with the public administrations for the proposition and the discussion of valuable cultural politics.
As the subtitle says, the exhibition focuses on artistic experiences from Piedmont, because this region, first among all and for several years, has promoted theoretical thinking and innovative planning on the rela- tionship between art and public context. However, it is the first step of a bigger cultural project, whose content is still in fieri, aiming at going beyond the regional dimension and, moving centrifugally from Pied- mont, becoming a permanent observatory on the relationship between artistic practices and the urban transformation in act in our country.
