The relevance of a worldview
Speakers
Franco Falasca: Office for Preventive Imagination
Guglielmo Gigliotti: lecturer in History of Contemporary Art, Academy of Fine Arts in Rome
Daniela Lancioni: Senior Curator, Palazzo delle Esposizioni
Luca Lo Pinto: artistic director of MACRO – Museo per l’Immaginazione Preventiva
Lucilla Meloni: lecturer in History of Contemporary Art, Academy of Fine Arts in Rome
Cesare Pietroiusti: artist
Institutional greetings:
Cecilia Casorati, Director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome
On 18 February 1973, Carlo Maurizio Benveduti, Tullio Catalano and Franco Falasca announced the establishment of an Office for Preventive Imagination, based in Rome in Via Monserrato at Gianni Fileccia’s Galleria Gap and divided into different sections (liberating, repressive and analytical imagination with reference to emotions and meanings).
This meeting dedicated to the group, 50 years after its creation, is intended as an opportunity to reflect on the relevance of the thinking and operating methods of the three artists, who implemented a visionary, poetic and political project that, also characterised by collaboration with other authors, has taken shape over the years through actions, installations, conferences, debates and the organisation of exhibitions.
Confirming its theoretical imprint, the group also published the magazine “Imprinting – sperimentazione e linguaggio” (1975-1979), where each author managed their own space, and the editorial staff, refraining from any editorial, compared artistic language with non-artistic language.
The Ufficio per la Immaginazione Preventiva was present at the 37th Venice Biennale in 1976 in the section curated by Enrico Crispolti and Raffaele De Grada “Ambiente come sociale. Proposte/azioni esperienze. Documenti di una ricerca per nuovi modi di intervento creativo nell’ambiente sociale” together with the numerous artist collectives that were active during the decade.
Although part of that historical context, unlike the many formations that did not survive the movement and protest culture of the time, the group, precisely because of the idea of “preventive imagination” which, as Falasca writes: “is a way of thinking, a continuous practice without theories and without isms”, is placed in a timeless dimension that still makes its artistic and poetic assumptions rich in meaning today.
Communications Office of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome
Coordination: Prof. Guglielmo Gigliotti g.gigliotti@abaroma.it
Collaboration: Chiara Picco, Martina Macchia, Marianna Pontillo comunicazione@abaroma.it