The Bologna Social Practice Lab, coordinated by Pedro Lasch in collaboration with Rossella Mazzaglia, offers participating students the opportunity to conduct scholarly research and immediately direct it towards socially engaged productions that go beyond conventional academic formats.
It is the only GSCT Summer School activity that integrates international students (up to 20) with Bologna-based students, artists, and activists (up to 20) on a daily basis. Joint productions take place in social media, museums, public areas, historical buildings, popular markets, occupied spaces, and sites of resistance. Students have the option of staying involved with the projects after the 2017 Summer School ends through transnational social components and collaborative online platforms. These will continue through the following year and result in a final set of interventions and an exhibition in Bologna during 2018 Summer School session.
The research and production groups of the Bologna Social Practice Lab have been developed with the overarching framework of Polit(t)ico: Interventions for Bologna (2017-2018). Taking its Italian name from Giotto’s famous painting in Bologna, the series conflates notions of politics with the historical art form of the polyptych. Distinct topics and approaches for each intervention are developed within specific communities and social contexts over two years, with the GSCT Summer School weeks as the densest and most important periods. Seen together as a polittico (polyptych), the works paint a slowly emerging picture of social and aesthetic engagement with Bologna as a site of political resistance, and social movements worldwide. They also add complexity to the rich discursive context of the oldest university in Europe, highlighting within it the creative processes of acting, making, and doing.
Polit(t)ico is composed of the following projects:
- Popular Education, Yes! But Online?
- NAE & Anatomy of a Nation
- Mercato Morandi
- Digna Rabbia (Workshops & Action Committee)
- Museum Of…(or, MUSREMED)
Authors: Pedro Lasch and BSPL
Partners: Franklin Humanities Institute