The first Condominium-Museum.
viadellafucina16: the new international artist-in-residency program within the world’s first Condominium-Museum. An experiment of urban regeneration and collective transformation through the power of art and beauty.
viadellafucina16 is an international artist-in-residency programme launched by Kaninchen-Haus in 2016, with the aim of giving life to the world’s first experiment of a Condominium-Museum.
The residency occurs within a majestic 19th-century building, that we find today in a state of decline, in the heart of the Turin’s district Porta Palazzo, in the city centre, where the biggest open market in Europe rises.
Through an international open call, whose 1st edition received 442 candidacies, artists have been invited to realize their artwork in the common areas of the building, with the purpose of promoting its regeneration and activating a dialogue among the tenants.
The winning projects have been selected by the inhabitants themselves (about 200 of various nationalities, living in 53 apartments) with the support of our scientific committee of curators and insiders, on the basis of the artists’ ability to engage the community in the design and production of the artworks, to interpret the community’s desires and to activate new forms of sociality through a process of co-creation and collective care.
"Condominium" is a Latin word formed by adding the prefix con- ("together") to the word dominium ("domain, property, ownership"). Its meaning is therefore "shared property". It is a place where we experience the first form of democracy, and an intersection point between the public and the private domain. In this context we wanted to experiment how artistic practice can become an activator of aesthetic and social regeneration. The condominium becomes thus a symbolic space where a community can represent itself, in the same way as, in the past, the artwork inside palaces used to represent the prestige of noble families.
The work done so far transformed the complex into a multifunctional hub for artistic production and into a unique workshop for social innovation.
Viadelladellafucina16 hosts works and performances by young artists as well as contributions by important masters such as Michelangelo Pistoletto or Giorgio Griffa.
The artists are hosted in an apartment inside the building and they have access to the office, the meeting room, the bookshop – cafeteria (former doorman’s quarters) and a collective studio facing the shared garden (300 sqm).
Moreover, artists can exhibit and set up their projects and artworks both in the common areas or in the exhibition spaces managed by Kaninchen-Haus, inside the building.
viadellafucina16 constructs itself as an innovative juncture between the artistic practice and the living fabric of a defined community that, by experimenting within a small context, aspires to prove how art and culture can become effective tools to solve conflicts and lead to a collective transformation.
Kaninchen-Haus is now working with the aim to making the project replicable in new buildings and cities.
a project by Kaninchen-Haus
based on an idea by Brice Coniglio