OPEN MAD
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Livia Dubon
Curator
Livia Dubon is a London-Florence based art writer and independent curator. Her curatorial practice, interweaves artist commissions, research and participatory practices encouraging innovative ideas and interdisciplinary dialogue between creative individuals. Her recent research focuses on the relationship between concepts of national identity, collective memory, and representation. She is particularly interested in how contemporary artists’ practices decolonize institutions and which processes foster a decolonization of knowledge. Exhibition she curated are “Negotiating Amensia” (Murate PAC, 28 Nov – 09 Dec 2015) and “The Impossible Black Tulip” (Murate PAC 3 May-3Jun.2018).
Livia successfully completed three Masters Degrees; in Museums and Gallery Studies (Newcastle, UK, 2009), in International Management of the Arts (Genoa, Italy, 2005), and in Art History (Parma, Italy, 2004). She is Ph.D. candidate at Kingston University London with the title “Italian Blackness: D
Livia Dubon is a London-Florence based art writer and independent curator. Her curatorial practice, interweaves artist commissions, research and participatory practices encouraging innovative ideas and interdisciplinary dialogue between creative individuals. Her recent research focuses on the relationship between concepts of national identity, collective memory, and representation. She is particularly interested in how contemporary artists’ practices decolonize institutions and which processes foster a decolonization of knowledge. Exhibition she curated are “Negotiating Amensia” (Murate PAC, 28 Nov – 09 Dec 2015) and “The Impossible Black Tulip” (Murate PAC 3 May-3Jun.2018).
Livia successfully completed three Masters Degrees; in Museums and Gallery Studies (Newcastle, UK, 2009), in International Management of the Arts (Genoa, Italy, 2005), and in Art History (Parma, Italy, 2004). She is Ph.D. candidate at Kingston University London with the title “Italian Blackness: Decolonising the former Museum of the Colonies“. Livia writes for Artkernel, Artribune, and Kritica. She has also participated in international conferences as a guest speaker to disseminate her curatorial and research work such as LYNX Imaging The Past/Collecting The Future, 22-25 June 2016, Lucca (Italy) and Curatorial Challenges, The University of Copenhagen. 26-27 May 2016.
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Global Identity
The Impossible Black Tulip, third episode of the GLOBAL IDENTITIES Postcolonial and cross-cultural Narrative cycle, is a project that finds its reason in the exploration of the concept of belonging. The exhibition is named after the earliest known Chinese world map that unites western and eastern cartographic views and style. Maps and identities have a deep connection: As a crucial visualization of national borders, mapping has been linked to the political construction of national identity. However this map, symbol of cultural hybridity, confuses our concept of identity and, along with its rarity and exoticism, it was called the Impossible Black Tulip. Through this exhibition and participatory actions, this event wants to contribute to the post-colonial debates on hybridity, decolonization and fluid identity. In this reagard Macau represents an unique case-study: a Portuguese colony for 400 years, after the return to China in 1999 as a special administrative region (SAR) , identity mak
The Impossible Black Tulip, third episode of the GLOBAL IDENTITIES Postcolonial and cross-cultural Narrative cycle, is a project that finds its reason in the exploration of the concept of belonging. The exhibition is named after the earliest known Chinese world map that unites western and eastern cartographic views and style. Maps and identities have a deep connection: As a crucial visualization of national borders, mapping has been linked to the political construction of national identity. However this map, symbol of cultural hybridity, confuses our concept of identity and, along with its rarity and exoticism, it was called the Impossible Black Tulip. Through this exhibition and participatory actions, this event wants to contribute to the post-colonial debates on hybridity, decolonization and fluid identity. In this reagard Macau represents an unique case-study: a Portuguese colony for 400 years, after the return to China in 1999 as a special administrative region (SAR) , identity making in Macao has been a process of incorporating instead of repressing or eliminating the identities of “the other”. How is the concept of hybridity related to belonging? Together with the local Chinese community (one of the biggest communities in the EU) and three artists from Macau, Eric FOK, Gue Jie CAI, and Ka Long WONG we will investigate the different ways we can reflect on these concepts. We will inquire as to the legitimacy of basing an identity on only certain specific aspects of local colonial history, the relationship between belonging and ownership, and finally, the relationship between the memory of an area and the “modern” capitalist appropriation of the landscape. The various anti-migratory events and the increasing success of souverainiste parties have brought to light an urgent need to analyse the historical racialised constructions of identity in order to foster contemporary debate on a more fluid concept of identity. How can we define an “identity” today?
Artistic Direction: Valentina Gensini Curating: Livia Dubon Organization: Mus.e, Le Murate. Progetti Arte Contemporanea Coordinator: Sandy Chan Interpretation Panels: Veronica Gabriele e Livia Dubon Graphic Design: Athos de Martino Sponsor: Instituto Cultural do Governo da R.A.E. de Macau (I.C.M.), the Institute Confucio Florence, Macau Visual Students Art Zone Supporters: the Camões Institute of Lisbon, the Department of Languages, Literatures and Studies Interculturali of the University of Florence and the “Fernando Pessoa” Chair Contributions: Association Chì-na, Dragon Film Festival, Permanent workshop for the Peace – District 5, Florence.
This content is avaiable only in this archive.
This content is avaiable only in this archive.
In collaboration with 56° Festival dei Popoli – International Documentary Film Festival - and the Alinari Archive, the exhibition presents a meditation on a semi-forgotten chapter of Italian history: colonialism. Through the production of an essay film and a pedagogical project, the artist-researcher Alessandra Ferrini reveals the legacies of the Italian occupation of East Africa and the perception of this historical period, too often a blind-spot within Italian collective memory. Investigating public and private politics of memory and amnesia, the project stems from an analysis of images from the Alinari Archive, of monuments and memorials linked to the colonial past as well as of history textbooks used in Italian high-schools from 1946 to today. The exhibition will present the film and an installation that, while revealing the artist's research process, will function as a work-in-progress, which will be activated by workshops with high school students. The exhibition is curated by Livia Dubon.
Negotiating Amnesia is an essay film based on research conducted at the Alinari Archive and the National Library in Florence. It focuses on the Ethiopian War of 1935-36 and the legacy of the fascist, imperial drive in Italy. Through interviews, archival images and the analysis of high-school textbooks employed in Italy since 1946, the film shifts through different historical and personal anecdotes, modes and technologies of representation.
Organised in four chapters, (Heritage vs Memory; Photography vs Memory; Monuments vs Memory; Education vs Memory) it aims to reveal the controversial memory and racist politics characteristic of this historical period and its aftermath, while exposing public and personal strategies of remembering. The film is intended as a performance of a process of self-teaching, becoming aware of the manipulations and silences intrinsic in this history – in order to reflect on personal and collective accountability towards colonial violence.
In its first i
Negotiating Amnesia is an essay film based on research conducted at the Alinari Archive and the National Library in Florence. It focuses on the Ethiopian War of 1935-36 and the legacy of the fascist, imperial drive in Italy. Through interviews, archival images and the analysis of high-school textbooks employed in Italy since 1946, the film shifts through different historical and personal anecdotes, modes and technologies of representation.
Organised in four chapters, (Heritage vs Memory; Photography vs Memory; Monuments vs Memory; Education vs Memory) it aims to reveal the controversial memory and racist politics characteristic of this historical period and its aftermath, while exposing public and personal strategies of remembering. The film is intended as a performance of a process of self-teaching, becoming aware of the manipulations and silences intrinsic in this history – in order to reflect on personal and collective accountability towards colonial violence.
In its first iteration, Negotiating Amnesia was presented at the 56thFestival dei Popoli, International Documentary Film Festival (Nov-Dec 2015, Florence) as a collateral exhibition that took place at MAD Murate Art District(Florence). The exhibition presented the film alongside the installation Notes on Historical Amnesia, which displayed the research process and was conceived as a learning resource to be activated and transformed by a series of workshops with high school students. The film was deconstructed to explore its pedagogical potential. Most surfaces were painted in blackboard paint so that the students could intervene on them. Through a teachers’ pack and a workshop, they were introduced to methods for the analysis of images and texts, in order to empower them with the instruments to approach and deconstruct historical and documentary practices in a critical way.
This content is avaiable only in this archive.
'Negotiating Amnesia' is an essay film based on research conducted at the Alinari Archive and the National Library in Florence. It focuses on the Ethiopian War of 1935-36 and the legacy of the fascist, imperial drive in Italy. Through interviews, archival images and the analysis of high-school textbooks employed in Italy since 1946, the film shifts through different historical and personal anecdotes, modes and technologies of representation.
Organised in four chapters, (Heritage vs Memory; Photography vs Memory; Monuments vs Memory; Education vs Memory) it aims to reveal the controversial memory and racist politics characteristic of this historical period and its aftermath, while exposing public and personal strategies of remembering. The film is intended as a performance of a process of self-teaching, becoming aware of the manipulations and silences intrinsic in this history - in order to reflect on personal and collective accountability towards colonial violence.
This content is avaiable only in this archive.