mare/AS IF – 16 Dialogues about Sheep, Black Holes, and Movement
A reader on life and the urgent desire to change it, pubblished on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Lungomare
On the occasion of its 20th anniversary, together with Spector Books, Lungomare is publishing the volume AS IF – 16 Dialogues about Sheep, Black Holes, and Movement. The reader is a study of life, the urgent desire to change it and imagine a different future through artistic and creative practices.
Edited by Angelika Burtscher and Daniele Lupo, the book is divided into 16 dialogues. Starting from dialogue as a form of relationship that Lungomare has adopted over its 20 years of artistic and cultural activity, and in order to approach various themes, people, and places, while ever pushing a little beyond its own boundaries and horizons, the reader weaves together 54 voices of people invited to express their own vision to renegotiate the future. These are international authors who have collaborated with Lungomare over the past 20 years, and who have in turn invited many others, so as to open up the discourse to multiple voices.
The dialogues are structured into four chapters. Each chapter refers to methodologies and issues that Lungomare has always grappled with in its projects, reflecting on current discourses inherent to artistic production: Activating Contextual Practices, The Public Space as a Field of Action, Sharing Knowledge and Sense of Belonging. Through these exchanges, the book aims to dare to look to the future by focusing on changes in our society and environment along with the challenges they bring.
Among the contributions, the book also includes the artistic intervention Paradossi dell’abbondanza #53 (Sistemi viventi), Paradoxes of Abundance #53 (Living Systems) by Marzia Migliora, which forms a poster at the center of the volume. Starting from the concept of modernity as described by the journalist Tom Standage, referring to the history of agriculture and its current subjugation to the production of “consumer” food, the artist creates a world of interconnection—a system that arises from various perspectives in constant exchange, nourishing, mutually destroying, and simultaneously reconstructing itself.
AS IF invites radical openness and rethinking, highlighting the potential that lies in artistic processes, in order to create resonance and lead to a way of acting and being that might connect, heal, and move people towards new collective and social visions. AS IF is also an invitation to formulate additional questions to ponder and pose many others, of all species. AS IF is a proposal to continue to stay in motion.
AS IF - special edition by Martino Gamper
In collaboration with designer Martino Gamper, on the occasion on Lungomare 20, a special edition of 120 copies of AS-IF was also created: a nearly surgical milling intervention directly on the book as an object, an act of violation of the book’s sanctity that makes each copy on which it is performed unique.
Year
2023