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Rewriting the history of art and activism in Milan. New forms of sociality and the radical imaginary

Aria Spinelli

In 1976, a 12-meter-long air balloon was placed in front of an abandoned church in the heart of Brera District in Milan. This artwork, Riappropriazione Chiesa di San Carpoforo[Reappropriation of San Carpoforo Church] (1976) by Franco Mazzucchelli is well-known as a legendary shield against police harassment, through which artists and activist entered and squatted the space of former church San Carpoforo. Mazzuchelli himself and many other engaged artists renamed the space Fabbrica di Communicazione, a centre for arts and culture. In 2003 a couple hundred protestors gathered in Isola quarters’ former public park to celebrate the opening of new community art centre named Isola. The gathering helped foster self-organised initiative OUT - Office of Urban Transformation and turned Isola Art Center into a platform which politically and artistically intervened in the local fight against gentrification. In 2012, thousands of protestors squatted one of the city’s highest skyscrapers, just in front of the main railway station, Stazione Centrale. The space was renamed MACAO, a centre for the arts and culture. These three cases are the result of a social effort of large communities of artists and activist. Although they are part of a long-standing specific history of Italian social centres, these artists and activist offer a cultural and artistic politicised programming that turned these spaces into hubs for artistic and political experimentation, in which artists are citizens and their object of research is social change.

With this brief history of radical art spaces in Milan, I more specifically argue that these cases use the radical imaginary of the individuals involved, to activate new political discourses. According to the writings of Greek-French philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis¹, the radical imaginary is understood as a flux of consciousness that is based on intentionality and emotions, rather that rationality. In his publication L'Institution imaginaire de la société [The Imaginary Institution of Society] (1975/1987) Castoriadis analyses the creation of society through the lens of his ontological philosophy, focusing on language formation and on the relations between the unconscious and social reality. Castoriadis envisions that by opposing social rules, the radical imaginary can play a creative role in the construction of social reality. In his writings Castoriadis endorses the creation of an autonomous society, which exists only as much as individuals are liberated from imposing social imaginaries and already instituted social imaginary significations that rule the radical imaginary of subjects. In reference to works of art, Castoriadis claims a great work of art unveils chaos², ‘because it tears into pieces the everyday, self-evident truths, and the normal course of life’ (Castoriadis 2007, 140). His understanding of art is based upon rebuttal of the Aristotelian notion of mimesis, as according to Castoriadis, works of art not only represent but also create worlds of their own. The public is affected and transformed by their experience of the artists’ capacity to give form to what is not yet present in society, in other words, those significant elements that constitute the radical imaginary (Castoriadis 2007, 133–56). He therefore comes to the conclusion that a project of an autonomous society can only operate through autonomous individuals (Castoriadis and Curtis 1997, 131). This political and psychoanalytic understanding of the radical imaginary of subjects helps us to reconceptualise ways in which the human psyche relates to politicisation, and, in the context of this essay, becomes useful for forwarding a different understanding of artist’s political engagement and their practice as a form of social critique and awareness.

I therefore argue that above mentioned spaces wrote anew the history of art and activism in Milan by experimenting with new forms of sociality and political discourse based on the radical imaginary of human psyche, rather than creating radical political alternatives. The many acts of art and politics that characterise them concurred in creating a unique stream of conscious criticality towards social systems and modes of inhabiting them. In the first case through education, in the second through a new understanding of collectivisation, and in the third case by questioning notions of assembly. In this essay, I revisit the history and identity of each of these spaces, highlighting different practices they carried out and explaining how they contributed to unleashing the subjective radical imaginary of those involved.

The radical imaginary as a critique of power

The dematerialisation of the artistic object in the 1960’s and the artistic empathy with local and national struggles of the early 1970’s constituted a space of critique, from which artist started to define anew Italian public art (Di Raddo 2016, 32). By activating critical political consciousness through different means the artists at Fabrica di Communcazione fostered radical artistic provocations and made social art in the service of social movements. For example, the already mentioned enormous inflatables of the Milan based artist Mazzucchelli, that covered streets, parks and sometimes entire buildings (as in the case of San Carpoforo in Brera), aimed at changing audiences’ perspectives on public space by employing a playful marvel. The work of Fernando De Filippi presents another example of new Italian public art form the early 1970’s. Untitled, 1973 (a series of public artworks that used the city to expose quotations from Marx on the role of art) changed perspectives on the use of public space as a means for activating political consciousness.

The use of language in political struggles was one of the main concerns of artists such as Laboratorio di communicazione militante (LCM)³. Those who were part of Fabrica di Communicazione understood this space as ‘a cultural, artistic and multimedia self-organised social centre open to proletarians, of students and of marginalised communities, layers of society, mainly aiming at creating a real alternative to the bourgeoisie cultural and relational model’ (Longari quoted in Casero 2014, 4)⁴. (Longari in Casero 2014, 4). LCM animated the Fabrica di Communicazione by organising meetings, gatherings and laboratories with local councils and schools, producing visual research on the construction of images of criminalisation (Casero 2014, 5). LCM targeted the Italian government’s use of language and media to suppress and exclude radical activists. In their engaged art works, they involved many others, students and fellow activists. Through the use of photographic collage and short performances, the group raised awareness of media manipulation. The group often collaborated with students, who posed as criminals, officers or politicians, using personification and social stereotyping to foster critical awareness and deconstruct what they named as ‘the Information strategy’, used by governments to criminalize activists within public discourse. As an example, LCM participated in an exhibition in 1976 called Strategia dell’ informazione, distorsione della realtà e diffusione del consenso [Information Strategy, reality distortion and consensus dissemination], organised in Rotonda della Besana, Milan (1977), in which the collective presented a series of artworks focused on media manipulation. Their works functioned as a critique of mass media and its language, specifically targeting forms of criminalisation and ways of representing power. The artists aimed at presenting their artworks as tools for their audience, based on ‘a reading and deciphering methodology of all the messages that harass us daily from everywhere, which are ideologically orchestrated to stop and prevent any possible positive social transformation.’ (De Micheli quoted in Madesani 2012, 36)⁵.

Interchanging the positions of authors and producers, LCM acted like a collective platform for political activity, rather than an artistic group. The events LCM curated were based on close collaboration with students and other members of the citizenry, the same people who often composed their own audience. For this reason, there was no separation between authors and producers, and their experience at Fabrica Di Comunicazione was a totalised experience of politics and art. Their ultimate goal was to create awareness around the fact that images - instead of representing objective reality - are products of codes and thus rewrite what is considered as real (Casero 2014, 5). The acts of self-awareness and conscious criticality constituted LCM, activating the radical imaginary of people involved.

Conscious criticality and collectivization

In 2003 the association Isola dell’Arte squatted the second floor in a former industrial building at the centre of Isola neighbourhood in Milan, built by Swiss electrical company Brown Boveri in 1907, one of the major companies who invested in Italy since the early 1900’s. Part of the building had suffered severe damage during the second world war, although it still had been used up until the end of the 1960’s. In the 1980’s after the building was abandoned, artists affiliated with Arte Povera, and a younger generation of artists, such as Stefano Arienti, used abandoned industrial halls as exhibition spaces. When in 2003, Isola dell’arte squatted the same spaces, the group permanently transformed them into an exhibition venue, hosting art programming and events, offering them to self-organised groups as a working and meeting space. In the same year together with fellow associations the group founds OUT - Office for Urban Transformatio⁶. Isola dell’arte was then renamed Isola Art Centre and acted as a community art museum that used a bottom up processes to self-organise the space and its activities. Isola Art Centre and its members fought quite adamantly against the gentrification process that had started in the neighbourhood in the early 2000’s, when investment fund and real estate company Hines hired investor Manfredi Cattela to manage and carry out the Porta Nuova Project⁷. This project comprises 28 new buildings and represents the largest redevelopment plan in Europe. In 2009 Milan gained the International Expo of 2015, thanks to the council proposal co-authored by, amongst others, architect and former cultural officer of Milan city council (but also a former member of Isola dell’arte), Stefano Boeri, who became head of the Expo’s project⁸. This nomination greatly affected the internal politics of Isola Art Centre and initiated a process of negotiation for survival. The Porta Nuova project was consequently included in the framework of Expo, creating an opening for an adjunct investing partner, the Emir of Qatar’s investment fund. Boeri also participated in the Port Nuova Project and authored two iconic buildings called the Vertical Forests⁹, ‘green’ skyscrapers erected on the ruins of the Stecca degli artigiani and the space of Isola Art Center, towering over remains of artistic experimentation.

When in 2001 the space was squatted, this working-class neighbourhood housed many artists and intellectuals. Isola Art Center was part of the Stecca degli artigiani, a hub of self-organised political squats, alternative bars, concert halls, and artisan workshops. For four years Isola Art Centre negotiated unyieldingly with the city councils’ urban planning office, asking the council to support and participate in the construction of a community art centre, and implement the 16000 sqm public park that surrounded it. Former right-wing mayor Letizia Moratti, visited the spaces quite often, diffusing a sense of hope amongst the group’s members. The council’s commission voted against the project, as it considered the area to be in danger of criminalisation, and finally approved the buildings’ demolition in 2007. In the meantime, Isola Art Center carved a collective space for experimental and engaged art within this context, housing permanent artworks by artists such as Tania Bruguera and Maria Papadimitriou, amongst many others. Members also participated in and supported actions, meetings and other activities of the neighbourhood’s associations, which fought against processes of gentrification. The spaces of Isola Art Center functioned as a meeting place for a diverse range of audiences, but also as a safe haven for those who feared the consequences of the erection of the Porta Nuova project. Given the spaces’ history, and the ongoing conflict, Isola quickly became a means for artistic experimentation, also amongst a younger generation of artists based in Milan. The visibility of the space within the local and international art circuits allowed Isola Art Center to gain access to a wider array of possibilities through varied collaborations with interested institutions, art spaces and fellow colleagues. Isola Art Centre’s experience became an example of politicised practice for other European collectives, such as Parisian Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (aaa)¹⁰, Hamburg-based Park Fiction¹¹, inspiring the practices of artists like Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, in particular their ongoing project pro-test lab¹². In the early 2000’s, due to the expansion of global financial markets, redevelopment projects became good places to park enormous amounts of capital, process facilitated by local governments. The Porta Nuova Project is one of the most visible examples of the intertwinement of local politics and global finance. Isola Art Centre played an important part in this new economic and political scenario by protecting localised, self-organised, and politicised artistic initiatives from global financialization. Over the course of ten years Isola Art Center made a case for synthesis between artistic practices and political activism, facilitating a transversal conversation between artists, activist and inhabitants.

Two strategies of survival that characterised Isola Art Centre activities can be identified as the group’s constant intergenerational dialogue and as the initiation of collectivising processes. Both unfolded in result of collective solidarity and commitment, not hampered by the limits of time or restrictions of membership. The core members, the late Bert Theis, and Mariette Schlitz, were well aware that people’s interests and investment are only temporary, and that the intensity of commitment falls short of what is required for social change. As artists, they were also aware that practice has to evolve and appreciated the importance of novelty. This emphasis on spontaneity obviously came at a price: a non-commitment to regular institutions and political parties, that could have potentially changed the anarchic style of institutionalisation prevalent within the centre (Isola Art Center 2013, 132) and a lack of stable budget (Isola Art Center 2013, 133), due to which project funding depended on circumstances.

Due to the open-door policy, a core membership base changed throughout the years, periodically renewing itself. Isola Art Center was always eager to support a good cause, offering engagement of its members and few resources the centre had at its disposal. Collectivisation was mediated by gift economy - the exchange of non-monetary resources. The absence of money inverted relations between members. At Isola money was always deemed secondary to the value of participation, time and solidarity with the cause. Most of Isola Art Center’s activities happened by soliciting donations: both monetary, in the form of artworks, and in-kind contributions that provided resources to support artistic productions. In rare cases the projects were funded by institutional bodies who supported the fight against gentrification.

Isola Art Centre has grown since 2003, from a small group of engaged artists to a large platform of artists, scholars, philosophers, architects and urban planners. Currently housed in a public garden, the Isola Pepe Verde, Isola Art Centre has survived ten years of activities thanks to a constant influx of enthusiastic collaborators, who managed to sustain and direct its activities. Although the membership changed over time, all generations are equally invested in the struggle for a bottom up and self-organised management of green spaces in the neighbourhood. This modest aim is caught up in the interlocked web of the effects of gentrification, which has engulfed the neighbourhood since 2001. This contextualisation is remarked throughout the artworks, that sustain, support, help and represent the ongoing fight, helping to turn Isola Art Center into a self-organised community centre, exhibition venue and a centre for artistic production (Isola Art Center 2013, 18). Here again the radical imaginary of each individual, capable of critical understanding him/herself within the social context of struggle, engender temporary forms of collectivisation.

For example, a collective Fuori dal Vaso¹³ emerged in 2011, in the midst of Isola Art Center difficulties, when it lost its space due to eviction. This group of artists used artistic forms to create provocative interventions in support of local struggles. In 2011 they subverted a parallel programme of the Milan’s Design Week by creating a fake corporate identity and symbolically claiming a courtyard of former ceramic factory in the middle of Isola neighbourhood, by plating a one meter high sign, painted green, resembling a pointer from Google maps. The pointer was connected to a web page registered under a fake name, featured on Google maps, collecting the information on local struggles and distributing it to the visitors of the fair. Despite the scepticism amongst inhabitants, the highly visited website and the fake google pointer became the logo of newly founded organisation Isola Pepe Verde. By appropriating the sign, the inhabitants unanimously decided to adopt the image, as it represented their own, new identity, forged in the struggle to reclaim a piece of land in the neighbourhood to open a community garden. Thus Fuori Dal Vaso facilitated a collective process, of both political and social nature, raising the criticality and awareness of the inhabitants, and prompting new forms of collectivising.

Another example of re-appropriation that forged critical awareness through the radical imaginary, was the Rosta project (2009), inspired by the revolutionary project of Vladimir Mayakovski titled ROSTA (a telegraph agency producing over 3000 propaganda posters between 1919-1923). By commissioning graphics and paintings to be placed on shutters of small shops and cultural centres in the neighbourhood, Isola Art Centre responded to the eviction of its own premises, refusing to give up its presence in the neighbourhood. An exchange between international artists and inhabitants, it involved such internationally reputed artists as Dan Perjovschi or Christoph Schäfer (Isola Art Center 2013, 391). Thanks to the solidarity of business owners and managers of cultural associations, the Rosta project marked the territory, carving its mark into the image of the city. These street paintings, based on designs donated by international artists, interplayed identity and re-appropriation.

Instability in subjective radical imaginary

When in 2011 nascent Occupy Movements filled squares with tents all around the world, Italian citizens rallied for direct democracy and signed up with a newly founded populist movement called Five-star Movement, headed by comedian Beppe Grillo. The country was also called to vote through a referendum on the use and distribution of water, via public or private means. In this context operated the Rodotà Commission in 2009¹⁴, which presented a bill to the Italian ministry of justice arguing that for the first time in Italian history legal system should legally recognize commons as a distinctive mode of ownership. This work was continued through 2011 and 2012 by Ugo Mattei, a campaign member for the ‘no’ vote and a professor of law at the University of Torino. Mattei toured the country discussing this new politics of the commons. He helped to facilitate the emergence of new social movement that had many political and social consequences, amongst them the occupation of a former theatre in Rome, Teatro Valle Occupato. In 2012 the group of actors, stage managers and technicians took over Teatro Valle, one of the oldest theatres in Rome, originally built in 1700. The aim of occupation was to resist privatisation of the building, as the theatre was decommissioned in 2010 due to the government cuts to cultural budgets. The squatted theatre was open on a daily basis, offering politicised cultural programming free of charge. Before it was evicted in 2014, Teatro Valle Occupato had served as a hub for the political debate on the nascent politics of the commons, and the melting pot for the new class composition of creative and cultural workers, trying to cope with the precarity in the tertiary sector.

Even though the Teatro Valle was eventually evicted, this collective process was carried over by MACAO, a collective of cultural workers in Milan, born out of the group Lavoratori dell’arte¹⁵, who in 2012 caused a public uproar¹⁶ by squatting and holding the Torre Galfa [Galfa Tower]¹⁷, located just a few blocks from the central train station in Milan. The artists and activist of MACAO reclaimed not only a skyscraper but also an imaginative space of political discussion, expanding the political imagination of people in Milan and entire Italy. They reframed conditions of political organising by pushing forward notions of consensus and commons¹⁸. The activists involved in this process questioned their own roles as cultural producers, embedded in neoliberal forms of cultural production, which they resisted, thus reframing radical imaginary.

The Torre Galfa is a 31-floor building, built in 1959 as a symbol of the city’s economic boom of the 1960’s. A unique interpretation of the international style, it borders with Isola neighbourhood, and is one of the 28 buildings that have been requalified in the Porta Nuova Project, to house the regional offices. Isola Art Centre was also involved in the process of squatting the building alongside MACAO, in protest against gentrification. But this act of occupation triggered a much wider debate, in which the city council’s role was pivotal. After an effective campaign, former left-wing mayor, Giuliano Pisapia, was elected again into office in 2011, after years of right wing governments. The advent of MACAO and the occupation of Torre Galfa created a new wave of city politics. Pisapia positioned himself in favour of the occupation and came forth requesting cooperation with the squatters. After negotiations around the possibility of remaining in the building, the council voted for its eviction. MACAO then squatted and settled in another location, a former slaughterhouse on the outskirts of the city centre. Thanks to media tactics and visual strategies, MACAO managed to animate public debate around the absence of spaces for civic activities, cooperation and collaboration. Although the group’s strategy recalls a legacy of squatted cultural centres, which includes LCM and Isola Art Centre, their use of the space proposes a different understanding of political agency. As a testimony to the political developments caused by MACAO, the city council is currently spearheading the multiplication of spaces for arts and culture, though eschewed of their radicality, understood as boosters of service economy and attractors of the capital.

Just months after the group was settled in their current place, MACAO hosted 69,300 Hours¹⁹ a seminar that presented the results of a worker’s inquiry²⁰ that was initiated by the group to analyse its own constitution. The seminar was named after the total count of the amount of time that the activists had committed to the functioning of the squat during the first six months of its existence. The seminar invited artists, intellectuals and scholars to collectively analyse the results of the self-inquiry. The act of analysing its own composition was deemed a strong gesture of political consciousness that immediately transformed each individual’s awareness of their own position within the collective structure.

The notion of instability informs the current organisational structure of MACAO. As scholar Alberto Cossu puts it, ‘the desire to be unstable constitutes a safeguard from self-exploitation’ (Cossu 2015, 83). This sensation of instability is carried over by practicing consensus, at occasions such as weekly assemblies and working groups. Members of MACAO embrace conflict and are well aware of the transformative effects these open assemblies could produce, where roles of leadership are constantly challenged by horizontal and spontaneous workflows of production. Over the years MACAO became a hub for engaged artists, a space in which ‘the “artistic sensibility” was embodied in the planning and thinking of the experiential activity they proposed’ (Cossu 2015, 50). Many of participants considered themselves to be in part of a living work of art and reflected upon the formative process of it. This impulse originated prior to establishing MACAO, in the formation of radical imaginary. Whilst in Torre Galfa the group produced a video on gentrification in the city, a sequence of photographs of nude bodies of women and men, standing with their backs to the camera, pointing at a specific abandoned space in the city. Non è mica la luna (2012)²¹is a video art performance that critically engages with the urban space, breaking with traditional forms of protest and activism. Occupare il conflitto , a project that supported the Italian feminist movement #Nonunadimeno, also focused on the transformative aspects of conflict, expanding these concepts to political and human subjectivities and their formation. The project consisted of a series of workshops and happenings, in which artistic means and activism overlapped.

The most interesting part of this emergent process is how the assembly becomes a mode of self-management. The assemblies within MACAO functioned as an open platform where anyone can participate freely and partake in the collective process. Assembly-making in activist practice has changed over the years. The recent wave of anti-capitalist protests, such as the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement have confirmed an increasing interest in cohabitation and social gatherings. Political subjectivities are formed through these tactics, and rather than producing specific demands, these social movements have refused representation. Following with these intuitions, many scholars have focused on the formation of social relations through these acts of struggle (Butler 2015; Sitrin and Azzellini 2014). MACAO is a product of this new wave of protest and it has proven the importance of these practices within the space of art production, highlighting the inequalities of creative labour. The radical imaginary of individuals participating in these processes of formation has fostered the development of new linguistic terms and different practices of political struggle. Again, Cossu explains the co-existence of various forms of leadership that permeated the social body of MACAO that seem to constitute a basis for dialogue (Cossu 2015, 84). These kinds of leadership are dependent upon the skills of individuals and requirements of the projects initiated by MACAO. The dialogue is therefore based on difference, positively valorising a variety of capacities and skills of MACAO’s members (Cossu 2015, 84).

Conclusion

Applied to these three cases, Castoriadis’ notion of radical imaginary as a flux of consciousness capable of creating society anew, has helped me to highlight how the political engagement of artists furthers self-awareness and criticality to undermine the ways in which social systems are inhabited. Far from being just an utopian vision of an alternative society, these practices deconstruct an internalised imaginary by shifting subjective perceptions, blurring distinctions between viewers and participants, artists and activists, artists and creative workers. The projects discussed here aim at involving their own public in creative acts of collective political engagement and activate organisational tactics that favour collectivisation and bottom up management. They channelled, in different eras, the city’s’ social imaginary, creating radical and often violent breaks within the everyday politics. The radical imaginary of those included in this process fosters the creation of artworks and projects embedded in social movements, local struggles and self-organised social and cultural centres. These artworks, practices and collective actions affected the very notion of citizenry, enabling process of transformation and radicalisation of autonomous practices.

The Fabrica di Comunicazione hosted various events activating political consciousness, criticising media’s manipulation of language. Members of LCM made use of artworks and performative acts as tools that stimulate subjective radical imaginary in order to foster critical self-awareness. Isola Art Center prompted new fluid forms of collectivisation, avoiding monetary exchanges in order to activate the radical imaginary of their members, facilitating collaborations between artists and activists. MACAO organises open assemblies as a means of enticing trust and establishing cooperative networks that sustain artistic creations and new productions.

If Castoriadis understood the radical imaginary as a way in which the human psyche relates to social organisation, enabling liberated, autonomous human beings to self-regulate their own society, then in this case the radical imaginary is understood as a perception of self towards the other, ultimately bringing to a critical awareness other ways of inhabiting social systems regulating processes of education, collectivisation and assembly. The social system of education is overthrown by the concept of permanent laboratory, the social system of collectivization is verified by minding the politics of production and considering their limitations, and in the third case, the notion of the permanent assembly is amplified into new forms of the commons. They empower the radical imaginary of the subjectivities involved to deconstruct the social and political identity of creative workers in neoliberalism. In these three cases, artists engage with the critique of power of language, the critique of production, and the critique of collaboration. Ultimately, this brief history of radical art in Milan forwards a novel understanding of artistic political engagement and its relations with the radical imaginary.

Aria Spinelli is an independent curator and a PostDoc Researcher at the University of Amsterdam. Her PhD has analysed relations of curatorial practice to social imagination and performativity. Her main area of ​​research is the investigation of the relationship between art, activism and political theory. She holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in art history, visual arts and curatorial studies. Founding member of the artistic and curatorial collective Radical Intention, from 2018 top 2020 she was associate researcher and member of the curatorial team of the project The Independent at the MAXXI – Museum of the XXI century for art (Rome). Between 2015 and 2020 she collaborated as external curator at the Pistoletto Foundation (Biella) and BOZAR, Center for Fine Arts (Brussels). She has published many articles and she is the editor of the publication Shaping Desired Futures(NERO, 2018). Between 2009 and 2012 she was curator at the Isola Art Center (Milan). 

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Footnotes