The Independent summit

hall, Carlo Scarpa foyer, videogallery, staircase
curated by Giulia Ferracci, Elena Motisi and Valerio Del Baglivo
Interdependent Transformation curated by Aria Spinelli

I Am Not Able To Find My Thoughts Without Passing Through Your Eyes.

In 2020 the research project The Independent at MAXXI—conceived by Hou Hanru and curated by Giulia Ferracci and Elena Motisi—celebrates its 5th anniversary. The project identifies and promotes social spaces for independent thinking. A summit, coinciding with the museum’s 10th anniversary, has been called to mark the occasion by exploring the power of friendship, solidarity and alliances.

By bringing together actors from the art world and beyond, the summit addresses how independent spaces and art projects question the conventions of cultural legitimacy, analysing reasons for, and means by which they organise support structures, encourage forms of solidarity and foster alliances.

Friendship | Solidarity | Alliances is divided into four chapters, different in content and duration: Solidarity and Interdependent Transformation are discussion-based programmes, Movements proposes performative interventions, and Becoming a Collective Body—on display from January 25 to February 2—is a comprehensive film programme.

Solidarity, the series of keynote lectures, investigate uses of this term, triggering a new recount of histories of struggles that led to the production of different values, the mutual recognition of differences, and to the development of supportive processes. Each invited speaker offers theoretical and methodological guidance on how artistic practices can foster ecosystems of alliances, thereby overcoming marginality and isolation.

Interdependent Transformation explores the relationship between care and economy, and how mutual support can be an alternative economic model. This existing form of exchange and production, although relatively invisible, serves as the basis for a series of talks between actors in the art and curatorial, and activists scenes. Members of independent art spaces and scholars discuss their modes of collaboration and address the ‘non-visible’ aspects that determine their working relationships.

Within the Movements section, performative interventions enable public engagement, corporeal pedagogy and painting as well as singing. 

In the videogallery, Becoming a Collective Body presents the various emancipatory practices of communities who exist outside the art system.

SOLIDARITY_Lectures
Zdenka Badovinac, Grégory Castéra, Céline Condorelli, Ade Darmawan (Ruangrupa), Hou Hanru, Maria Lind, Andrea Phillips, Cesare Pietroiusti, Helena Reckitt

MOVEMENTS_Performance
Max Fletcher with Cole Denyer and Andrea Celeste La Forgia, Public Movement, Pamela Z

INTERDEPENDENT TRANSFORMATION_Dialogues
Aria Spinelli with
Andreco, Chicco Bacci, Emanuele Braga, Luigi Coppola, Bianca Elzenbaumer, Olga Gambari, Ippolita, Paolo Mele, Maria Pecchioli, Cristiano Seganfreddo, Kuba Szreder

BECOMING A COLLECTIVE BODY_Videogallery
Chto Delat, Adelita Husni-Bey, Alexa Karolinski & Ingo Niermann, Tsubasa Kato, Alex Martinis Roe, Koki Tanaka

WORKSHOP in collaboration with MAXXI Educazione:
Bea Bonafini, Cecilia Granara

For more information visit the summit webpage or download the programme