A sharing of purpose for site- and community-specific art practices

Who this is for

This document is intended for the artists invited to Periferico Festival and to other programming frameworks, and is usually shared with them before their arrival in Modena.

The purpose of this protocol is to establish a shared understanding with our guests regarding the context in which we operate, our working models, the values that inspire our way of working together, and the relational practices we build with local communities and the spaces we inhabit. This sharing of intentions does not assume that our methodologies are "right" or that they should serve as a model in any context. Rather, it stems from the desire to share with you our starting point and some of the questions we continually revisit over time. The goal is to critically address the interdependence within a complex system — curators, artists, communities — not out of a desire for control or simplification, but to consciously inhabit its necessarily entropic dimensions through shared awareness. This is a work-in-progress document that we continue to update based on experience and feedback. The version you are reading (3.0) includes important insights developed through discussions with artists and curators involved in the Interspazio project in 2024. We invite you to consider this protocol as a platform for dialogue to best set the basis for working together in the coming months, as well as with the broader ambition of developing a shared vocabulary around site-specific and community-specific artistic practices that may also be useful in other contexts and for other practices. Please also keep in mind that the issues expressed here represent an ideal working horizon — one that we sometimes manage to realize in practice and sometimes, for many reasons, do not. However, we believe that articulating an aspiration is crucial to setting a direction, and that is what we aim to do here. If your perspective is very different from ours, or if you would like to discuss any of the points outlined below, we would be very happy to talk — perhaps during the festival, over a glass of wine;)

Who we are and how we work

You can read the sections Why We Exist, What We Do, Our Core Values, and How We Organize Ourselves in this handbook.

Why we existWhat we doOur core valuesHow we organize ourselves

The context of Periferico Festival

Periferico takes place in various areas and multiple locations around the city of Modena, mainly in the Sacca and Villaggio Artigiano neighborhoods of Modena Ovest, and in the historic city center. The spaces where the festival unfolds are everyday places, both public and private. In Villaggio Artigiano, Amigdala’s home is the proximity cultural center OvestLab, which also hosts the festival center. OvestLab is an independent space born from a grassroots regeneration process; it is shared by many people from different local communities and proudly promotes a cross-disciplinary approach. The care for the space and the nurturing of its community are central to our daily work. The festival also grows out of a network of relationships with organizations operating locally across the various areas we engage with. If you would like, we would be happy to tell you more about the social history of these neighborhoods and the places that host the artistic projects.

Curatorial practices

We are a decentralized organization: this means we reject the traditional power hierarchies usually associated with the role of "Artistic Direction" in the arts field, and we put in place decision-making, organizational, and human practices that aim to dismantle this principle — not only in the festival's structure but throughout our entire work, as described in this handbook. Periferico's programming is curated by Federica Rocchi and Serena Terranova, but the festival is the result of a collective and shared effort by the whole team. In the process of creating and realizing the festival, we implement a horizontal curatorial practice by assigning each hosted artistic project a “referente” (project anchor) and, for more complex projects, a "working team". The referente is responsible for carrying the project forward, liaising with the artists, and coordinating with the broader team for different needs. We kindly ask you to refer primarily to your assigned referente for all matters related to the artistic development of your project and its interaction with the local context. Alongside Amigdala’s team, the festival is made possible thanks to the help and support of a group of volunteers and all the participants involved in the projects.

Methods

We start from the assumption that this type of work proceeds through trial and error; therefore, it is not our intention to stigmatize the potential failures inherent in every artistic endeavor. Rather, we aim to see them as generative humus for the future. We are also aware of the fundamental irreducibility of these kinds of practices — as perhaps of artistic work as a whole — to any fixed or shared vocabulary, and at the same time, we are convinced that art is not an innocent field and must navigate complexity with awareness and sensitivity. At the following link, you can find some of the practices we apply during the festival, which are based on methods developed by Amigdala over its twenty years of activity:

Methods

See you in Modena ;)

We can’t wait to put these principles into practice with you and we wish you a wonderful stay and great work here in Modena! ;)