Apurahat ja residenssipaikat

Taide

Exploring the union of mountain municipalities by poverty and orality, and expanding the concepts of leadership and socially engaged artistic practice

Hakemuksen tiivistelmä

In 2026 I will run for mayor as an artist in the municipal elections of my home village, Gromo, in the Alps of northern Italy. I approach the candidacy with a curatorial project that will perform alternative leadership and enact possible futures for the mountain villages of my valley. In particular, the project focuses on the advantages and disadvantages of the proposal to create a union between Gromo and the neighbouring villages to deal with economic issues. The artistic proposal for the candidacy is curated into 4 phases: 1) Resume the positive Franciscan concept of "Povertà" (poverty) to approach the idea of leadership. The project's structure is based on Leadership Povera, which means modest, welcoming, vulnerable, amateurish and made up of a multicultural and multidisciplinary collection of poor leaders. It wants to provide a model that can be applied to different leadership positions. 2) Create a network between Finland, Italy, and across Europe, to approach the local issues of Gromo’s union through a transnational gaze of other villages’ union experiences. Interviews with mayors, encounters and discussions with the inhabitants. 3) Use a series of performances and orality as a tool to explore and document the topic of the union of municipalities. In a podcast format composed live and a participatory performance format, the performances will explore big internationally shared questions about "union" (macro-level) through the reality of a small village in Italy (micro-level). 4) Propose an expanded alternative to the local administrative model of 1 mayor and 9 councillors. Encourage the formation of a councillors network made up of 10 people from Gromo and 10 international. Work with the councillors group on the electoral proposal with different points of view and a union of a plurality of voices. The project is part of broader artistic research that blurs the boundaries between art and life.

The two-year project is part of my long-term artistic practice, which stems from my interest in the socio-political issues of the Alta Valle Seriana (AVS) in the Italian Alps. The AVS is a rural area of 20 small villages facing depopulation, lack of services, climate crisis and resource exploitation. I've been exploring how artistic practice can contribute to local governance discussions through performative and multidisciplinary approaches. This laid the groundwork for the formation of a local citizens' group to collectively run in the 2026 elections in Gromo, one of the villages in the valley.

In this project, I explored three themes in the valley that are also relevant in other places. The first focus was the future scenario of merging small villages of AVS. I developed the performance 'Call For Stand-in Mayors and Councillors' where the audience took on the roles of mayors and councillors of the valley to discuss alternative merger proposals. I've performed this in areas of Norway and Finland that have experienced municipal mergers, involving local people and politicians.
Secondly, I explored the politics of shared resources such as water. I used water-tasting techniques to guide audiences through different public water management and accessibility. I also continued my WaterBar collaboration with the artist Eero Yli-Vakkuri.
Thirdly, I developed the performance 'Yellowcake'. It invited participants to prepare a communal lunch and explore shared responsibility in relation to mining concessions in the AVS, linking histories of uranium mining in Italy and Finland.

Deepening my studies of feminist leadership and early Franciscanism, I shifted from the idea of running for mayor myself to running for mayor as a collective candidacy. This also led me to question authorship and audience agency in participatory performance.

A milestone in the project was co-founding CAP24020, a collective working in AVS with participatory and site-specific art practices.

Takaisin apurahalistaukseen