Since 2015, the Education Department of the Fondazione offers an instructive experience to establish an unprecedented dialogue with the artists that not only share their work processes and research, but also their life experience and vision of the contemporary world, to secondary schools. During the weeks before the meetings, the educational staff meets the classes in order to prepare them for a training which entails introducing themes and work processes of each artist.
The plenary meetings involve classes from many schools, including the Classical and Music Lyceum Cavour, the Albe Steiner Institute, the Artistic Lyceum Renato Cottini, the Scientific Lyceum Amaldi-Sraffa, and the European Institute Altiero Spinelli. These meetings are conceived so that the artist can contemporarily talk about his/her work and welcome questions from young students.
On top of the plenary meetings, which occur at the auditorium room of the Fondazione, the students of the Artistic Lyceum Cottini realise video-interviews, directly during the exhibition.
“What does being an artist mean to you?” is a recurrent question, and the diversity and depth of the answers establishes a precious heritage, a sort of catalogue of thoughts and reflections upon the role of the contemporary artist. From Adrian Villar Rojas who says he wishes to call into question the same communication that characterizes “making art” - “artist”, “exhibition”,”museum”, in favour of “human being”, “experience”, “environment”, to Liam Gillick, who prefers to start with “what is not an artist”, to Monster Chetwynd, who reveals that, if she could not be an artist, she would certainly find a way to express herself in any other environment or situation; words and stories shared by the artists become an inspiration and starting points that let the students get into the exhibitions further by means of diversified projects, experiences of mediation amongst the public and peer to peer education.
The photography students from the Albe Steiner Institute document the meetings, within the combined study/work experience program.
The artists that have been involved so far are: Adrian Villar Rojas, Ed Atkins, Liam Gillick, Monster Chetwynd and Rachel Rose.
2015, Adrian Villar Rojas: https://vimeo.com/167819435
2016, Ed Atkins: https://vimeo.com/200097280
2017, Liam Gillick: https://vimeo.com/251076490
2018, Monster Chetwynd: https://vimeo.com/317091686
2018, Rachel Rose: https://vimeo.com/317091686
