The Institute of Things to Come: TERRA INCOGNITA

Mirene Arsanios, Mikhail Karikis, Joseph del Pesco, Simon O’Sullivan, Tai Shani, Nicoline van Harskamp

Curated by Valerio del Baglivo

Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo hosts The Institute of Things to Come, an itinerant art programme aimed at investigating forms of imaginative speculation as cultural strategies and methodologies for critical positions. Founded in 2017 by artist Ludovica Carbotta and curator Valerio Del Baglivo, each year The Institute focuses on a different theme, inviting artists to present works that interact with other disciplines. At the centre of each yearly theme are a series of artworks, interrogated through conferences, projections, seminars and exhibitions. Moreover The Institute conducts an eight-months Associates Programme, a free collaborative learning programme for six participants to develop their practice and contribute to the public programme in concert with the yearly theme.

The 2018 theme is TERRA INCOGNITA (a Latin term used in ancient cartography to indicate the existence of unexplored lands) and it is inspired by the book of sociologist Albert Meister, Under the Beabourg (1976). In his text Meister describes the existence of an imaginary museum right beneath the original one: an underground-cultural center where an assembly of four thousand people organizes a countercultural pole. This reference is taken as a starting point to speculate about fictional territories, places and landscapes invented by artists, that have served as literal and metaphorical sites of subversion, anti-authoritarianism, utopia and fantasy.

The programme starts in November 2018 with a night of events at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo: artist Nicoline van Harskamp presents her film PDGN that portrays a future no longer controlled by national governments or global corporations, and where a new linking language is seen to develop between people through voluntary self-instruction; curator and online media producer Joseph del Pesco will read extracts from his book The Museum Took a Few Minutes to Collect Itself discussing the existence of fictional Museums that defy their real-world counterparts, and thus affirm the importance and value of their reimagining; artist Simon O’Sullivan gives a talk about mythopoesis, myth-science, mythotechnesis addressing fictioning as a “counter-strategy” against today’s post-truth and post-fact political terrain. In December The Institute moves to Grazer Kunstverein organizing an explorative journey of lectures and performances co-curated with Director Kate Strain, on what can emerge from wreckages and leftovers, with contributions from artists and curators Mehraneh Atashi, Angelika Loderer, Pádraic E. Moore and the Department of Ultimology. In February, for his solo show, artist Mikhail Karikis presents, for the first time in an Italian institution, Children of Unquiet: a multipartite project exploring new ways of thinking about the destiny of Larderello (Tuscany), a territory scarred by industrial obsolescence, and hints at foreseeable or potential futures conjured up by the imagination. In April artist Tai Shani presents her project Dark Continent: SEMIRAMIS, an adaptation of Christine De Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies, where erotic, fantastical narratives mixing science-fiction, anthropology, feminist and queer theory re-imagine a world to propose a possible post-patriarchal future. Reasoning on the archeology of pain as it links the body and on past and present forms of capital, our writer in residency Mirene Arsanios will publish three new fictional texts in collaboration with NERO Magazine, our media partner. 

From November to May The Institute of Things to Come promotes an Associate Programme for six international participants (artists, curators, researchers, writers, etc.), to develop their practice and contribute the public programme. Directed by our 2018 junior curator Michele Bertolino, the program consists of four research-modules led by international artists in collaboration with another guest: Simon O’Sullivan collaborates with Ola Ståhl, Mikhail Karikis with curator Sofia Victorino and Tai Shani with artist Aura Satz. Free to attend and non-accredited, the programme provides a grant to each associate with the intention to formulate a public programme at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.

For more information about application procedures: www.theinstituteofthingstocome.com

The Institute of Things to Come is realized thanks to the support of Compagnia di San Paolo while the Associate Program is funded by Formech Inspire.