A few ideas, but confused

The Tenuta Dello Scompiglio, the place where we have been operating for more than a decade, has a profound influence on the nature of our work. Within this landscape, artistic activities, agricultural work, managing the land and catering food coexist and feed each other, while respecting and developing the environment that has been given to us.  The intention is to create a path towards an increasingly active and enterprising participation of individuals and the community they form.

Even before the quarantine and the health emergency we are currently experiencing, the Dello Scompiglio Cultural Association had already begun a period of pause with regard to the cultural activities open to the public, with the exception of the children’s theatre and some of the activities that were outstanding and part of the open call “Of Death and Dying”. We were interested in stopping for all of 2020, in order to take time to reflect on what we have done so far, but above all, to think about and create an idea of the future. It is always dangerous to be overwhelmed by having to go ahead at all costs and thus switching to autopilot, no longer questioning the purpose. A period of reflection with the idea of relaunching the general project of Dello Scompiglio with greater incisiveness, increasing the transversality between its different areas and the interaction between these and nature.

Over the recent months, we have witnessed and continue to see a deluge of cultural activities streamed online, and at the risk that these can be used only for “consolation” and as a kind of palliative, we have opted to continue with what we had already proposed: a pause for reflection, which this quarantine has only highlighted further.  In our case, the relationships with nature and with other human beings in the imponderability of the present, the interaction with the spaces and, finally, the experiential aspects of each individual could become a surrogate of themselves if projected into an immaterial universe like the web. 

For this reason, and on the basis of the possible limitations in the immediate future, we are considering further developing the activities in our outdoor spaces that are so fundamental in our project, in dialogue with and contrasting with the internal ones. The dynamics of time and space, together with their perception, will be at the centre of everything that concerns us when we return to work with the artists. A time dilated by quarantine and still slow in its gradual restart. A time to highlight, to understand, and to reactivate interactions between the artists, nature and the intentions of Dello Scompiglio, further enhancing those who work there and lastly, to take time on the procedural phase, with greater involvement of the public, in a more personal environment.

How can we imagine a future?  Will we still be able to imagine utopias? Will we be able to achieve a cultural system that strikes the balance between state and private support? A system that manages to find alternative forms to unbridled capitalism, but that does not descend into a homogenisation of people? A system in which conflicts of interest and personal speculation become ghosts of the past?  A system in which people and cultural institutions feel motivated to contribute to the social well-being of the community?

In which direction do you want to go and, above all, in which direction do “I” want to go with others?

(The Artistic Direction)