ABITARE – l’arte e lo spazio domestico, non solo una casa
as part of Caterina project, supported by the Con i Bambini foundation
in collaboration with the socio-educational center Sane stelle (Traparentesi onlus)
The project “ABITARE – l’arte e lo spazio domestico, non solo una casa” (Living – art and domestic space, not just a house) was dedicated to the exploration of the concept of home, understood as an intimate space but also as a space to be enjoyed with the imagination. An inner journey to the places of living was proposed to the children, through intimacy and the meanings attributed to everyday life, in order to find new interpretations.
Because of the remote teaching activity, the workshop aimed to respond to two needs, one of training and the other of experimental practice. The training consisted in sharing audio-visual materials related to the language and history of contemporary art and architecture, through work groups, riddles and quizzes, presentations; the experimental practice instead introduced flexible ways of accessing and using the gained information, with images, video and audio. In the first step the activities focused on the link between art and space and how both concepts relate to change the perception of things, also visually, sharing on the screen a sequence of images taken from works by contemporary artists and from real and fictional plans (R. Magritte, M. Duchamp, Y. Kusama, Ai Wei Wei, J. Kounsellis, B. Munari, R. Horn, etc.); underlining the capacity of gesture and artistic thought to change everyday reality. In this phase the realization of the drawings was often accompanied by listening to music. In the second step, the children’s gaze was directed towards the imaginary representation of the living space, its inhabitants and its objects, by using drawing, the collage technique and visual-verbal games, aimed at encouraging awareness actions for a playful and creative use of the home space. The adoption of storytelling allowed the children to freely explore their imagination, not only about the space of the house but also about the body that inhabits it, analyzing physical diversity through the work of contemporary artists (G. Penone, C. Camoni, D. Hanson, V. Maier, F. Kahlo, etc.), showing that it is always in the other people’ s eyes that we reflect and recognize ourselves. Despite the particular situations due to the remote experience, the collective work led the workshop to the final sharing of the materials produced during the whole play-creative process: drawings, screenshots, a fairy tale about the objects in the house, the games played, etc., starting from the plan of the house and arriving at the emotional map and the perceptive-sensorial transformation of the everyday space, up to the creation of a short final video.
