Creativity and Community in the Middle of Nowhere

Abstract

Bordergrounds is an arrival conversation and discussion hosted in the context of the Crossings festival, a 7 day event of workshops and exchanges hosted by La Rivioluzione delle Seppie. Somewhere between centres, practices expand and migrate outside of capital(ist) locales… fringe fields, edges and borders, rural radicality making magic at the margins. Experiments and configurations of creativity, construction and community. Bordergrounds traces these conditions through mediated questioning and messaging with groups in France and Italy, at La Cuisine and La Rivoluzione delle Seppie, between the kitchen and the squid. The contradiction that resides in the provocative phrase “the middle of nowhere” speaks to the poetic potentials of places where infrastructures, resources and energies are more loosely distributed, places outside of capital cities that are less dense, locally concerned but globally in touch and radical in the sense of being ‘closer to roots’.

Our question(s): What are the positions, potentialities and problems with creating with communities in places that are outside of but always in relation to centres of power, population and capital?

Crossings is supported by the patronage of the Municipality of Belmonte Calabro, in collaboration with Orizzontale, Ex-Convento, London Metropolitan University and with the participation of Cheap Festival, Claudio Morelli (Editor of VD News), Collectif etc, Arts of the Working Class, Giulia Ricci (Domus), Calupso36o21, Jamie Allen, Fulu Miziki, Gaia Crocella (Interdine), Carlotta Novella (Public Work), Giuseppe Affinito, Dario Biancullo, Egeeno. Promoted by Erasmus+ and supported by Itaka Training e Sirius Training, Italia Patria della Bellezza Foundation."