Circolo scandinavo is happy to have the opportunity to offer 5 grants in the frame of Retake a place, reuse a space, a one-year cultural project supported by Kulturkontakt Nord. Through our collaboration with Stalker, a collective practice based in Rome, Circolo Scandinavo invites Nordic artists and researchers to join local inhabitants, artists, architects, and experts, for a collective exploration of unused or abandoned urban sites in the Eternal city.
The project aims to create connections between the specificity of the local situation and a global context from an ecological, social, cultural, and economic point of view. The artistic processes will be in the centre of a collective exploration producing interdisciplinary connections and allowing for unexpected meetings and new perspectives on crucial global challenges.
The residence is part of the local cultural project, La Zattera (The Raft) and the Scuola di urbanesimo nomade (School of Nomadic Urbanism), led by Stalker and part of the cultural season of the City of Rome. Participants from both the Nordic region and Italy will have the possibility to develop artistic projects and knowledge building, with focus on reuse of existing urban sites, in parallel with the activities offered by the cultural program of La Zattera.
The situation of Rome will be used as a starting point because of its specific long history of reusing urban heritage, from monuments and historical events to small pieces of marble spolia in a church wall or ruins turned into parks and artificial landscapes. The project is a collaboration between Circolo Scandinavo, Stalker, South Iceland Biennal and Umeå school of architecture/UMARTS. Several collateral activities will take place on South Iceland and Umeå in 2022.