In this talk curator Marianna Vecellio gave insights to her transdisciplinary curatorial practice and interspecies artistic research. Alongside the theorical practice she described the artistic research COMP(H)OST, a transdisciplinary project in dialogue with speculative thought and the human and social sciences, followed by contributions from philosopher Leonardo Caffo.
The discussion was moderated by Ruth Anderwald, Leonhard Grond, artists, current PEEK-fellows at ZentrumFokusForschung / University of Applied Arts Vienna and initiators of the HASENHERZ Sessions – an ongoing series that presents artistic research from academic and non-academic background to a wider audience.
COMP(H)OST is a project placing artistic research in dialogue with speculative thought and the human and social sciences, inspired by the notion of compost after philosopher and biologist Donna Haraway. COMP(H)OST combines the notion of composting and that of hospitality by evoking the generative and fertilizing power of hosting, with the guest philosopher Leonardo Caffo and a contribution by artist-writer Claire Pentecost. Moderated by Ruth Anderwald + Leonhard Grond.
As an intellectual metaphor, Compost responds to the present time’s complexity as a format able to offer various perspectives to consider new cultural productions and speculative reflexions about social and ecological urgencies. The research is based on the expansion of the concept of species, gender, diversity and collectivity to configure a new form of subjectivity increasingly linked to the ecological and social dimensions of the world. Compost as a collection of practices on the process of decomposition highlights the life itself in which everything is connected and entangled with one another.
Compost is a formal model of fluidity and co-evolutionary space on which Marianna Vecellio focuses her personal research and curatorial practice. On the occasion of her speech based on the idea of an entangled reciprocity, she intends to offer an encounter with philosopher Leonardo Caffo, in the form of a flexible and open performance. Caffo will discuss the relationships between art and anthropocentrism, also analyzing some unusual characteristics of anthropocentrism such as the definition of ‘youth’.
In 2019, in collaboration with the curatorial collective a.titolo she has created COMP(H)OST a project that combines the notion of composting and hospitality, supported by Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Turin.
The HASENHERZ or the Pleasures of the Moving Image and Word sessions present artistic research from academic and non-academic background to a wider audience. By means of repetition and an open and receptive conversation between the audience and invited artistic researchers, new ways of artistic and curatorial practice and their novel ways of knowledge work will be introduced to the audience.
Marianna Vecellio
is a curator and art historian, graduated in History of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Rome, La Sapienza. Since 2012, she has been Curator at the Castello di Rivoli, Rivoli/Turin, where she has worked since 2007.
For the Castello di Rivoli, she conceived and created exhibitions and publications paying particular attention to subjectivity in the digital society, including f.e. aaajiao. Deep Simulator (2020), Hito Steyerl. The City of Broken Windows (2018-19), Cécile B. Evans (2017-18), Ed Atkins (2016-17), Massimo Grimaldi. Before The Images (2009) and others. She also conceived and curated transdisciplinary projects such as Abitare il minerale (2018) and Comp(h)ost (2019-20) which, between ecology and posthuman, explores new forms of coexistence and transformation of the living.
Curator of various monographs and Collaborator on various catalogs, she has also published with international institutions including Whitechapel, London, Bergen Kunsthall and others and has collaborated with Italian and international magazines.
Since 2016 she has curated the residences program Curva Blu located on the island of Favignana.
Leonardo Caffo
is philosopher and writer. Currently he is a Philosopher in Residency at Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art and former curator of the Public Program at La Triennale Milano and former professor of Ontology at Politecnico, in Turin. He is professor of Philosophy of Art, Art Direction and Philosophy of Fashion at NABA in Milan, and Faculty Member at Made Program (Sicily). His latest book Essere Giovani (2021) is published by Ponte alle Grazie. Forthcoming English book is Human Fragility (Palgrave MacMillan 2022).
Ruth Anderwald + Leonhard Grond
have been working as a collective in artistic, curatorial and artistic-research contexts since 1999. They perceive their artistic practice as a dialogue with and between disciplines. Their art is primarily concerned with exploring zones of staggering and uncertainty. Again and again they devote themselves to processes of thinking and acting, such as recently the importance of repetition and remembering, also with their association HASENHERZ, and the contemplation of processes of change. Navigating Dizziness Together is their current project at the ZFF, Angewandte– funded by FWF Peek.
anderwald-grond.at