So we find ourselves, our ways of telling unbalanced, trapped inside a runaway narrative, headed for the worst kind of encounter with reality. In such a moment, writers, artists, poets and storytellers of all kinds have a critical role to play. Creativity remains the most uncontrollable of human forces: without it, the project of civilisation is inconceivable, yet no part of life remains so untamed and undomesticated. Words and images can change minds, hearts, even the course of history. Their makers shape the stories people carry through their lives, unearth old ones and breathe them back to life, add new twists, point to unexpected endings. It is time to pick up the threads and make the stories new, as they must always be made new, starting from where we are.
Source: Uncivilisation – The Dark Mountain Manifesto
It was whilst reading this paragraph, that I had one of those moments when two things I had put into separate boxes suddenly click, and come back with a new, enticing twist. Aesthetic expression can take us to a time beyond the narration of history, and enable us to establish a connection with wells of archetypal wisdom, ripe with images of overcoming and renewal, from which new meaning can be breathed into efforts to co-create a more beautiful world. As such, reclaiming spaces to tell and sing new stories and experiment with creative dramatisation is both an act of political insubordination, as well as a tribute to the ability of art to craft the world anew from its ruins.
These thoughts reminded me of the (ongoing) experience of the Teatro Valle Occupato in Rome, a theatre that was occupied after it faced closure and privatisation upon the shutting down of the Italian public funding body for theatres, Ente Teatrale Italiano. Beyond mere physical occupation, however, the dwellers of the Teatro Valle have undertaken an intriguing experiment in self-managing its activities. Today, the Teatro Valle Occupato hosts a regular programme of eventsand workshops, and is – in my opinion – one of the most interesting experiments in the rebuilding of new commons underway. In so doing, they have effectively managed to fuse political and aesthetic struggle, creating a space where art meets Occupy.
If you find this intriguing, below is a link to a documentary on the Teatro Valle (in English), produced by the International University College of Turin (by my friends Saki Bailey and Tommaso Dotti).
Filed under: Anarchism, Articles, Mythology by Luigi
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