Eco e Narciso / Resò

BETO SHWAFATY
(artist in residence at Eco e Narciso)

REBECCA DE MARCHI
(for Beto Shwafaty artist residence)

RESÒ is the International art residency program for Piedmont. It was born in 2010 out of collaboration between the leading Piemontese institutions for contemporary art and education and the Foundation for Modern and Contemporary Art CRT.
RESÒ is spelled phonetically from the French word reseau, meaning network, and aims to turn art spaces into places of encounter and engagement through the residency of international artists.
In fact RESÒ grows from a collaboration that for the first time brings together many of the major contemporary art institutions in Piedmont, then adds the support and participation of institutions from Cairo, Rio De Janeiro, San Paulo and New Delhi. In this sense it brings into being an International network of support for the idea of artistic activity understood as social and cultural exchange. During the RESÒ residency the artist is invited to publicly show his/her work both in its first stage, as an introductory moment into the local hosting scene, and at the conclusion of the work, as to give a feedback and share his/her experience and the work developed during the RESÒ residency. A presentation of RESÒ is foreseen at the end of each annual edition within panels and lectures in the setting of a conference, namely Artissima International Contemporary Art Fair. In this frame the works of the resident artists and their research experience are being presented to a wider public. Each hosting partner institution is committed in introducing the visiting artist to cultural realities that specifically address his/her research topic, by favouring the access to museums, collections of art, archives and studio visits/workshops with art critics, curators and professionals. Residencies are not necessarily intended to produce a final art product. Depending on the ways of expression, the narrative styles and the means employed, the time of residency may not be sufficient for a concrete production of art work; in fact among the goals of the residency program much relevance is given to the development stages of projects, and to the study and research that is carried out on the territory and reveals new meanings and interpretations which reflect the dimensions of knowledge and the working related practices.

In 2012 Eco e Narciso hosted the Brasilian artist Beto Shwafaty who had From Monuments to Mainframes, a research-based project that explores a historical process of multi-layered interactions between art, industrial design, computer technology and relations between corporations and social development. Taking as a departure point the local and historical episode regarding the production of the first Italian mainframe computer – the Olivetti’s ELEA 9003 designed by Ettore Sottsass in 1958/59 – together with the rise of minimal art (as both have formal and aesthetical similarities), the project aims to explore connections and implications between industrial design, minimalism and computer engineering as moments of shaping ideas for a new world and society, then translated in the design of new products, industrial sites, offices, convivial environments and socio-cultural relations. The exploration of these situations – from a local, technological and historical episode (Olivetti and ELEA mainframe) to a world wide aesthetical program (Minimalism) – can open up reflections on the emergence of a new informational society (in the 50’s and 60’s) different from the previous industrial models, as all are markedly characterized by computer technologies, modern aesthetics and abstract languages (as in the case of many of Olivetti’s work/social progressive programs). It is important to acknowledge this socio-historical moment as one marked by the beginning of a convergence process where aesthetic discourses were merging with architectural constructions, information and management theory, cybernetics, ergonomics, social engineering and computer science. And more important, all these disciplines of knowledge became central aspects of both a desire to free man from repetitive and hard industrial tasks, as also pillars of late capitalism’s development into a more abstract, immaterial and cognitive socio-economical matrix.

reso-network.net