In October 2017 the Collective Intelligence group was invited to spend one month in Palermo and work together with Dimora Oz, an artists-run association focusing on relational art and place-making processes. This initial choice led to a chain of fruitful events and activities, the process lasted from October 2017 to November 2018.
From the beginning of its activity, Collective Intelligence (CI) has been moving tangentially to the Pixelache community. CI independently seeks the collaboration and patronage of institutions and funders to support CI activity, and the distribution of the results. The workgroup traveling to Palermo in 2017 was formed by Pixelache members Alan Bulfin, Antti Ahonen, Egle Oddo, Krisjanis Rijnieks, Saša Nemec; by artists Erika De Martino, Marjatta Oja, Milla Martikainen, Timo Tuhkanen, Jytte Hill, Ionas Amelung, and by project manager Johanna Fredriksson. The idea was to spend time together to discover common ideas, sharing intuitions during our daily routines. We stayed at a house in Mondello close to the seaside of Palermo, and while one could say that we were busy living and working together non-stop, the atmosphere was of pleasant excitement and discovery. Very seldom a large group of professionals of the creative field has the possibility to spend time together without the pressure for a given outcome. I found this initial possibility to think together extremely precious, and somehow I am convinced that that was the key of the success of the project.
“What do we seek? Unexpected assemblages, intuitive actions and heuristic knowledge” I wrote in 2017 before starting our trip to Palermo. What is heuristic? If one would search for its original meaning, it is not rooted in computational science, nor in empirical knowledge. The Greek term εὑρίσκω ‘I discover’, is a philosophical discourse the main purpose of which is to find new facts that were not known at the beginning of the investigation, it points to the production of new knowledge. And indeed we were busy with two discoveries: the influence of our subjectivities in the group, and the definition of the context in which we were enmeshed. Alan Bulfin took the initiative during our breakfasts, and involved the whole group to reflect about the geo-political and social context in Sicily, drown by its complexity and thorny history and layers of colonialism. Slowly, on the A1 papers covering our breakfast table, started to appear a labyrinth, a rhizome of words, drawings, signs, colours. The Breakfast Papers were taken to several places, they were the diary and the mind-map of the group, they were shared with Dimora Oz artists who added their inputs, and were finally shown at Dimora Oz gallery during one-month exhibition and activities.
However we were struggling to position ourselves in the context where we were. We came to agree that the context cannot be the background of an action, it is not inertly available to be interpreted, used, populated, compared, defined, included. The context needs to be a participant subject, for the project to be meaningful. After we re-positioned, various things started to happen at individual and collective level. We were tired to talk, and to communicate mainly verbally and textually. During a public event, we performed together indoors in Palazzo Barlotta and outdoors in Piazza Garraffello, in the heart of Palermo historical center. The actions of CI group emerged in collaboration with local artists and with the inhabitants of Garraffello district. This happening supported the birth of an affective relation, a bond, a thread with the context. To explain this delicate choreography of emotions in terms of generic cultural production would be reductive.
Our activities attracted the attention of curator Lori Adragna and of the Director of the Museum of Fondazione Orestiadi Enzo Fiammetta, who invited us to visit them and suggested a residency at the Foundation. The curators of Manifesta 12 attended our events, and encouraged us to apply the open call for 5x5x5 program. The program Collective Intelligence was selected for Manifesta12 and presented at Collective Intelligence in KaOZ, Growing a Language, IL TRAFFICO. However, the most important part of our program remained available only here and now, inside the specific situations generated extemporary.
To keep an artistic process fresh, spontaneous and genuine, and at the same time to gather interest around it is a rare combination of factors. In my opinion the success of the project has been to resist over-production, to resist stretching over the limit when the resources where limited, to resist overgrowing the project. I see the success of Collective Intelligence rooted in its intense yet inconspicuous relational research. From the first common artefact, the Breakfast Papers, to the exhibition IL TRAFFICO closing our activity in Sicily, we managed to stay true to our needs, hopefully without impersonating the needs imposed by external pressure.
Press and program links:
2017
First public event of Collective Intelligence in Palermo, advertised by Italian press.
Collective Intelligence participates at Le Vie dei Tesori cultural event.
2018
The Finnish Institute in Rome advertises Collective Intelligence activity in Sicily.
