Sharing as an expanded field: the artistic practice of Aterraterra between conflicts and coexistences

Abstract

This essay aims to summarize recent research on the artistic experience of Aterraterra, a Palermo-based project founded in 2020 by artists Luca Cinquemani and Fabio Aranzulla. Aterraterra project moves his practice between cultivation, activism, and artistic languages. When trying to critically define the practices in question, two pivotal moments stand out: the 2018 project-cum-guerrilla action Viva Menilicchi!, developed by the collective Fare Ala and Wu Ming 2 in the public space of Palermo, and the 15th edition of the documenta exhibition, curated by ruangrupa.

Throughout the research, the participatory experience is presented as an expanded field, borrowing the Kraussian term, generated by the dilation of its structural terms—artist, space, spectators—no longer sufficient to exhaust the artistic process. The departure of practices from institutional frameworks, their entanglement with neoliberal policies, the increasingly sought-after interaction with the multitude, the hybridization of practices, and the progressive permeation into discourses involving non-human communities not only form the foundation of the Aterraterra project, but also articulate an approach to participatory experience that finds its (ir)realization in conflict and in the reconfiguration of possible forms of coexistence.

As the research was developed through direct contact with the artists, an interview with them is included in the appendix.