Within the world’s leading event dedicated to contemporary art, in 2024 NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, renewed its commitment to dialogue between artistic research, education and experimentation.
At the 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, titled "Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere" and curated by Adriano Pedrosa, the Academy took part through two distinct yet closely connected projects: "Disobedience Archive (The Zoetrope)", curated by Marco Scotini (NABA Visual Arts Department Head), and the Public Programme "IF ONLY WE HAD EARS", conceived for the Italian Pavilion by Luca Cerizza in collaboration with Gaia Martino (NABA faculty members).
Two complementary experiences that highlighted the centrality of NABA’s teaching within the international art landscape: a place where artistic practices become tools for knowledge, political action, listening and the construction of collective meaning.
Conceived in 2005, Disobedience Archive is a curatorial and research project devised by Marco Scotini as a constantly evolving archive of moving images. Over nearly two decades, it has travelled through museums and international institutions, positioning itself as a "user's manual" for social disobedience through contemporary tactics of resistance - from direct action to counter-information, from constituent practices to forms of bio-resistance - with documentary elements spanning several decades.
For Biennale Arte 2024, the archive took the form of "The Zoetrope", a new installation hosted at the Corderie dell'Arsenale, inspired by the pre-cinematic device that animates images and generates centrifugal movement. The installation explored the representation of movement and disobedience as living dynamics, opening a dialogue between memory and the present.
This new edition included two macro-sections featuring forty films:
- Diaspora Activism, dedicated to transnational migration processes and their challenges in a global context dominated by neoliberalism, which redefines the very meaning of citizenship;
- Gender Disobedience, in continuity with the previous section, focuses on nomadic subjectivities, conceived as a break with heterosexual binarism, and brings together the alliance between forms of activism as a critique of capitalism and LGBTQ+ movements emerging globally.
NABA’s presence at the Biennale also extended to the Italian Pavilion, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture and curated by Luca Cerizza (NABA faculty member) with the project "Due qui / To Hear" by the artist Massimo Bartolini (also NABA faculty), a large installation to be listened to.
Within this context, "IF ONLY WE HAD EARS" was created: the public programme curated by Cerizza in collaboration with Gaia Martino (NABA faculty), involving students from the Academy’s Visual Arts Area. A schedule of conferences, lectures, musical performances and contributions by international guests ran from May to September 2024 at the Tese and the Giardino delle Vergini at the Arsenale in Venice.
The programme gave word, voice and sound to the human, social, spiritual and ecological perspectives suggested by Bartolini’s installation, taking listening as its point of departure - understood as a relationship and as a way of understanding oneself and other human and non-human subjects.
Each event focused on a different aspect of listening, shaping an experiential path and an act of collective, participatory awareness:
- Politica dell’ascolto (ascoltare in relazione) - Politics of listening (listening in relation) - 17-18 May;
- Fiducia nello sfondo (in ascolto con la natura) - Trust in the background (listening with nature) - 14-15 June;
- Meditazione, in-azione (ascoltarsi) - Meditation, in-action (listening to oneself) - 12-13 July;
- Fai per me (ascoltare la macchina) - Do it for me (listening to the machine) - 13-14 September.
“Disobedience Archive (The Zoetrope)”
The project, realised with Arnold Braho (Project Assistant), was coordinated by Andris Brinkmanis (BA in Painting and Visual Arts Course Leader), with the visual concept developed by Lilia Di Bella and Chiara Figone of Archive Appendix.
The contribution of students from the MA in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at the Milan and Rome campuses was crucial. They wrote texts on the exhibiting artists, working closely with the curatorial team and engaging in a learning model grounded in direct research and professional practice.
“IF ONLY WE HAD EARS”
In “IF ONLY WE HAD EARS” too, students from NABA’s Visual Arts Area took part in a high-level educational experience, joining workshops and shared research moments together with classes from the University Iuav of Venice. Through sound observation exercises and listening ecology practices, students explored the relationships between sound, space and perception, experimenting with new forms of dialogue between art, education and the environment.
NABA at the 60th International Art Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia: a presence reflecting the Academy’s vision
NABA’s participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia marked a particularly significant moment for the Academy. Through Disobedience Archive (The Zoetrope) and IF ONLY WE HAD EARS, NABA demonstrated how artistic education can be a cultural act in which knowledge is built through dialogue, participation and responsibility towards the world.
Lecturers/Project leaders