Thursday Talks:
Marco Baravalle: Alter-instituent practices in a neoliberal art world

As a tragic but coherent result of extractivism – a predatory attitude towards natural resources and the web of life – the COVID19 pandemic is both a consequence and a blockage of the globalized neoliberal economy. Like many other sectors, the arts have been hit, blocked and slowed down. The impact of the pandemic has highlighted limits and inadequacies of our neoliberal art world: a system where the epistemic capture of radical themes, claims, theories and images seems to guarantee the reproduction of a structure solidly anchored to capitalistic priorities, rather than opening spaces of social transformation. Although no easy solution is in sight, it is still possible to focus on some crucial points to orient ourselves and to act in the present situation: the potentiality of alter-instituent practices; the transformation of the art mobility regime from neoliberal nomadism to radical permanence; the discovery of a decolonised dialectics in place of the paternalistic aesthetics of dialogue; the deconstruction of the link between art and rent in favor of institutional models of care, and much more.

Marco Baravalle is a member of S.a.L.E. Docks, a collective and an independent space for visual arts, activism and experimental theater, founded in 2007 and located in what was previously an abandoned salt storage facility in Dorsoduro, Venice, Italy. The programming of S.a.L.E. Docks includes activist group meetings, formal exhibitions and screenings.

Baravalle is a research fellow at INCOMMON. In praise of community. Shared creativity in arts and politics in Italy (1959-1979), a project hosted by IUAV, University of Venice.
He teaches Phenomenology of Contemporary Art in the MA in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies program at NABA (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milan).
He is a member of IRI (Institute Of Radical Imagination), a collective inviting political scientists, economists, lawyers, architects, hackers, activists, artists and cultural producers to share knowledge on a continuous basis with the aim of defining and implementing zones of post-capitalism in Europe’s South and the Mediterranean.