BRUNO BARSANTI

Generazione Critica: Since 2021 you have been the director of the Fondazione Elpis in Milan. You already collaborated with the Fondazione as curator for the “Una Boccata d’Arte” project, but now you are involved on a different level.
A new cultural subject always poses challenges for those who manage it and take care of its activities, what are the fixed points of this professional experience, new from different points of view?

Bruno Barsanti: Although the change of perspective from curator of a single project to director is remarkable, the fixed points and the design bases continue to reflect the objectives of the foundation, created in 2020 by Marina Nissim with the aim of imagining and giving life to unpublished works by Italian and foreign artists, with particular attention to the latest generations. My new role began in a very important transition phase and with several design challenges on the horizon, above all the consolidation of Una Boccata d’Arte – now in its third edition with the collaboration of Galleria Continua and the participation of Threes – and the opening of a new exhibition venue for the foundation in Milan, in the Porta Romana area. The activities will therefore continue on two levels, on the one hand the exploration of the national territory and in particular of small villages and inland areas, on the other a program linked to the visual arts (and not only) in a large urban and cultural center such as Milan.

GC: “Una Boccata d’Arte” project, promoted by Fondazione Elpis, is configured as a new approach to cultural planning, with the sharing and network of subjects and experiences that until before the pandemic was hardly possible to systematize.
One of the challenges of expanding the design and use spaces is to involve an audience that is not necessarily competent and informed, how can this dissemination aspect be managed while maintaining design coherence and respect for the work and practice of the artists?

BB: Una Boccata d’Arte is based on an essential encounter, the one between the very rich material and intangible heritage – not so well known – of our country and the specific vision of the artists involved in the different villages, bearers of an external point of view with respect to the inhabitants. In this sense, the transmission between knowledges takes place in both directions and is not unidirectional. The enrichment is reciprocal and also the listening should be. In this context, the valuable mediation work carried out by the regional coordinators and local associations in the area is fundamental. Each year the project becomes reality thanks to a network that from time to time is enlarged by hundreds of people from the most diverse backgrounds. We could therefore speak of skills and information in a broader sense, with respect to which everyone potentially has something to learn. We first and foremost.

GC: From 2016 to 2018 you were part of the curatorial team of “The Others”, an independent fair based in Turin. How did you embrace the challenge of proposing an art fair that sought to create a short circuit in the self-referential art system, a pioneering project in a certain sense. How do you analyze, in retrospect, this experience and this collaboration?

BB: It was a fundamental experience in my professional career. The three years I spent at the helm of the curatorial board, made up of international curators active in European cities and beyond, allowed me to build a network and deepen my knowledge of different artistic scenes, with particular attention to the most experimental and innovative realities in terms of program and organizational structure. Another challenge – a classic for The Others – was to create an art fair in a highly distinctive place such as a former hospital, a circumstance that at the time had led us to create a special section dedicated to site-specific projects that could be directly in dialogue with operating theaters, waiting rooms, kitchens and other spaces that are anything but neutral. For sure it is extreme in a certain sense: it was really impossible to find any kind of white walls!

GC: The occasion of “The Others” has placed you in a position to collaborate with other curatorial figures, how do you approach shared projects and this, in your opinion, affects planning?

BB: Most of the projects I’ve curated have been four-handed or more, even before The Others. I think it’s a question of attitude. Sharing a project involves the need to immediately (or almost immediately) find a common ground on which to bring together research, comparisons and discussions, protecting at least in part from the risk of absolutizing one’s ideas and positions. In my experience, collaboration does not always affect planning in the same way: sometimes it can lead to longer processing and decision times, other times it can help speed up processes.

GC: In the curatorial practice, especially if practiced as a freelance, the relationship with the exhibition space is a question to be faced and declined every time, give us two examples of different projects (for place and interlocutors) that have been complex and stimulating and how did you develop the exhibition concept?

BB: I respond with a recent project and another which now is ten years old. Last May, with Gabriele Tosi, I curated the group show Adesso no at Manifattura Tabacchi in Florence. The exhibition is a reaction to a specific space, a basement used as a technical room that creates an unexpected connection between the external and internal courtyard of the Manifattura. Starting from the opening of a new passage and the massive presence of cables and conduits, we have assembled a group of works that are focused on issues such as the persistence of meditative states, the possibilities of reorientation and the degree of predictability of our lives in a hyper-connected present and constantly looking for algorithmic optimization. Through this corpus of works, some of which were created ad hoc or adapted on site, we developed the entire exhibition as a disorientation device in which the visitor was progressively removed from the usual holds and reference points in an exhibition itinerary, an invitation to get lost to find a new way out.

The second example is a public art project created in 2011 in the area of the old port of Bari, co-curated together with Fabrizio Bellomo. In that case we started with an interactive map, a sort of dynamic documentary from which the artists who wished to participate in the open call could draw stimuli and information of various kinds to propose a project to be carried out in the area. After the selection, the artists had produced their intervention in Bari interacting with the workers and “inhabitants” of the old port, in many cases seeing their initial ideas transformed and remodeled by the encounter with the local context. This “overwriting” action of the place was subsequently absorbed into a final documentary film which also contains parts of the first documentary / mapping.

In both examples that I have cited, space is a variable that largely affects both the concept (arriving to be part of it) and the exhibition mechanisms that determine the development of the project.

GC: Client and calls for tenders: the curator’s practice today must increasingly relate to and decline with these production methods, for reasons of expediency and sustainability of the projects. How do you evaluate this type of experience both from the point of view of the curator and the type of projects that, in collaboration with the artists, can be carried out? Are there any particularly virtuous examples in your opinion?

BB: Given that I am not a serial accumulator of calls, I positively evaluate consolidated experiences such as Italian Council, but also more recent ones such as Cantica, which give the possibility to artists, curators and institutions to activate shared projects or, in some cases, simply create conditions for carrying out a research activity that needs time and space that are not always easy to find.

GC: You recently curated, together with Gabriele Tosi, “Adesso no”, exhibition that took place inside “Manifattura Tabacchi” in Florence. “Manifattura Tabacchi” project is very articulated, between architectural recovery and reconversion, cultural operation and entertainment. In your opinion, is this hybrid mode of cultural container an episodic and functional practice in specific conditions and places or can it become a virtuous method?

BB: It is difficult to give a single answer to this question. These are operations that are virtuous if they manage to create a balance between cultural proposal and economic and business objectives. A key aspect in these cases is governance and the involvement of figures able to guarantee the quality and relevance of cultural programming over time within a broader context and in the presence of interests of a different nature, not always easy to reconcile.

Bruno Barsanti © Photo: Noemi Ardesi

22/09/2022