The Iaconesi duo - Perch won a tender from the Ministry of Assets cultural for a new Ecomuseum. Young people will participate in thematic workshops.
When creativity meets the environment, it's always a good thing. There are hundreds of experiences of artists all over the world who, on the wave of the pro-climate movements, are now competing for prizes and competitions. The one promoted in Italy by the MiBACT to make reborn the river Oregon, near Palermo , is an effective signal to continue on an evolved road. The 2nd edition of the Creative Living Lab tender for the Sicilian site was won by the duo Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico. He was a robotic engineer, she was an expert in communication and digital inclusion, they won with a project for installation U-DATInos beside an ancient but diseased stream. The winners also want to be recognized as researchers, experimenters and at the mouth of the river they will create the Ecomuseo Urbano Mare Memoria Viva. A work defined as “info-aesthetics” which will bring together data, sensors and workshops.
The river will be reborn thanks to the work of two creatives who ultimately interpret the expectations of committees, associations ,citizens. A link in progress on which the institutions should reflect in order to shape other future tenders. The territories want to participate, to help artists and designers to regenerate habitats. Those with power have good opportunities to immerse themselves in reality.
For the students of the Palermo academies, but also for all lovers of the arts, technologies and the environment, the first two free workshops will take place on 14 and 21 November . “The river is something that concerns us, it is presence: we know how much biodiversity there is and how much movement flows between concrete, reeds, migratory birds and waste. Being custodians does not mean preserving in isolation, it means being facilitators, opening up to life possibilities, making people known, understood, felt” says Cristina Alga, U-DATInos project manager. For Iaconesi and Persico the project starts from the people and enabling them to generate data. But also to take care of them, criticize them and enjoy them. Let's take the example of workshops.
“The fifteen participants will receive sensors to learn how to collect data not as an extractive practice, but as a generative practice that arises from reciprocity and collaboration. The work will feed on this process”. Weeks together to affirm that imagination Commitment, appreciated by the two artists and to a certain extent by all of us, in a land that is complicated and worn down by non-irreversible phenomena. An experiment to be repeated, because Italy is full of the Oreto river.
