SUMMER INTENSIVE 7: STALKER

July 8 at 4:00 pm in Noworking, Via dei Lucani 37 (San Lorenzo)

In the seventh session of the summer intensive of In Qualche Luogo Lontano: Roma (In Some Far Place: Roma), Stalker presents SOS Scuola, Selvatico, Ospitalità: Three places and three critical questions for a different Rome.

In qualche luogo lontano: Roma is the title of the program that takes place in Rome within Space is The Place/The Place is Space. This research project, initiated by Bulegoa z/b in 2018, aims to analyse the role of art as a critical practice that offers tools to stop, look and position oneself in the world, to generate situations and imagine ways of living and producing space. Structured through periodic meetings, it takes various forms, such as presentations, reading sessions, walks, actions on the territory and various artistic productions.

SOS SCUOLA, SELVATICO, OSPITALITÀ: THREE PLACES AND THREE CRITICAL QUESTIONS FOR A DIFFERENT ROME

S de Scuola, the NoWorking space, promoted by Stalker since 2016 in the Roman neighborhood of San Lorenzo, is a space-time for art and coexistence, and a presence from which arises a possible future. A space to think together through shared, artistic, civil and spiritual action. It is a space of discovery, care and hospitality, of oneself, of others and of the world. A space that tries to escape from the logic of economic, political and social relations in the contemporary world, from dictatorship and violence of real time. It is a space for uneducation of behaviour, relationships and thought colonized by the contemporary. A space for research and formation of behaviours, relationships and thoughts that arise from it, a refuge on the margins of the present.

NoWorking is home to the Stalker Archive. It compiles documentation and projects carried out over 25 years of artistic and cultural activity and investigation of the territory, particularly in the city of Rome, an archive open to consultation by Italian and foreign artists and researchers, students and cultural workers, which aims to keep the uncertain memory of informal and abandoned spaces alive. It is also the headquarters of the SUN Scuola di Urbanesimo Nomade (School of Nomadic Urbanism), a mutual and continuing training course around Stalker’s activity.

O de Ospitalità is the space occupied by Spin Time in the Esquilino neighborhood, where work is being done on the construction of Mad’O, the Museum of the Hospitality Act, a laboratory of memories, practices and imaginaries of hospitality that are intertwined between different cultures to give life to an intercultural and planetary citizenship that is capable of restoring the status of World City to Rome, and to the Esquilino neighborhood.

S de Selvatico is located near Lake Bullicante, the scene of the struggle of an unexpected lake and of the community that, for thirty years, has defended it against urban speculation and, in recent months, against environmental devastation. Lake Bullicante is the paradigm of that new urban desert that, since 1995, Stalker has called Territori Attuali (Current Territories) and that, in Rome, coincides with the legendary Lazio. It is an emerging and widespread ecosystem that reappropriates abandoned and anthropic places. A landscape which is new and old at the same time, that designs possible futures among the ruins of a present that becomes the past. A spontaneous landscape that it is up to us to understand, defend and care for. An emerging territory that is strategic for the city of the future, just as it was for the city of the past, since it randomly and unpredictably generates biodiversity, quality of the environment and life for all.

Stalker is a group that emerged in 1995 that carries out research and actions on the territory with special attention to marginal realities, abandoned and developing territories called Territori Attuali (Current Territories). Stalker proposes a modality of experimental intervention, based on spatial practices which are exploratory, listening, relational, social and of collaborative design, which are activated through creative interaction devices with the investigated environment, with its inhabitants, with imaginaries and archives of the memory. These practices and devices aim to catalyze the development of self-organized evolutionary processes, through the fabric of social and environmental relationships, where, due to their abandonment or unavailability, they have ceased to exist.

www.stalkerlab.org
www.osservatorionomade.net
FB stalker/noworking

In qualche luogo lontano: Roma is a project carried out within the framework of the MAEC-AECID Scholarships for Art, Education and Culture for the academic year 2020-2021, within the scholarship program for the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome.