Black Archive Alliance November 27 h.17.30 Villa Romana in the context of Cantiere Toscana, in collaboration with BHMF Objectives Present archival materials in sites throughout the city broadening the access to the findings Highlight histories that have frequently been omitted from local memory Provide the foundational spark for future research in this field Remedy the state of amnesia that isolates African and African Diasporic presence in the city and country as an exclusively contemporary phenomenon Highlight the research and researchers who have already been doing this work Produce texts and photographic exhibition materials that can later be re-installed as educational resources. Colonial Postcards and Landscape architecture Le Murate Progetti Arte Contemporanea (Emeroteca) 5:30 pm Presentation of the project dedicated to Colonial Postcards from Italian editors and Stamps from the Poste Italiane with the research of the Students of Angelica Pesarini’s Black Italia class at New York University Florence together with the presentation of an artistic project dedicated to Colonial Botanical Gardens by Michele Dantini. Landscape architecture. African city parks and botanical gardens by Michele Dantini For Black Archive Alliance Michele Dantini presents a research rooted in various international archives that investigates African botanical gardens, their colonial conception and their meaning today. The history of African city parks and botanical gardens is interwoven with State political or social vicissitudes, colonization and de-colonization processes, the establishment of new nations, and, in varying ways, with the history of agriculture and the forest. Above all, it is interwoven with a fantasy that is deeply inscribed in the European colonial imagination, that of an African Eden designed for hunting and timeless emotions, and – with the norms, demarcations and prohibitions that led to the creation of natural parks and protected areas – made inaccessible to local populations. Preparing a Recovery Plan Le Murate Progetti Arte Contemporanea 6 pm Preparing a Recovery Plan_Artist Screening of artists working with the archive as form and context with videos by: Lerato Shadi, Kevin Jerome Everson e Alessandra Ferrini (with presence of artists) Sites/Sources/Projects Biblioteca Marucelliana, Via Camillo Cavour, 43, 50129 Florence; 8.30 am – 6.30 pm Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Piazza San Lorenzo 9, 50123 Florence; 9.30 am -1.30 pm British Institute of Florence/ Harold Acton Library, Lungarno Guicciardini 9, 50125 Florence; 10 am – 6 pm Mediateca Toscana, Via San Gallo 25, 50129 Florence; 10 am – 1 pm / 2 – 7 pm Centro Studi La Pira, Via dei Pescioni 3, 50123 Florence, 9 am – 7 pm Fondazione Santa Maria Nuova, Piazza Santa Maria Nuova 1, 50122 Florence; 10 am-1 pm / 3 – 7 pm SACI/ Worthington Library, Palazzo dei Cartelloni, Via Sant Antonio 11, 50123 Florence; 9 am – 9 pm Syracuse University Florence/ Syracuse Florence Library, Piazza Fra’ Girolamo Savonarola 15, 50132 Florence; 9 am -1.30 pm / 3 – 8 pm The other spaces are visitable in their opening hours. We invite the public to pass by the sites to see the shows and collect the pages of the catalogue dedicated to each individual archive free of charge. Villa Romana, as part of the Cantiere Toscana project, supported by the Region of Tuscany - Toscanaincontemporanea2018 and in collaboration with BHMF, is organizing a series of mini-exhibitions, tours and presentations based on private and public archives, collections and libraries throughout Florence with holdings that reflect the realities and histories of African and African Diasporic people and their representation. This series of shows from the 27th-29th of November creates a virtual map of this archival presence in the city. A resulting catalogue intends to assist future research while providing insight to people who visit the range of spaces dislocated throughout Florence and beyond with which we are in collaboration. ——————————————————————————————————— Bios of artists: Kevin Jerome Everson (b.1965, United States) is an artist-filmmaker from Mansfield, Ohio, currently living and working in Charlottesville, Virginia. In his highly prolific career, Everson has made nine feature films and over 130 short films, which have been exhibited internationally at film festivals including Sundance, Toronto, Venice, Rotterdam, Berlin, London, Ann Arbor and Oberhausen. Everson has been the subject of mid-career retrospectives at Modern and Contemporary Art Museum, Seoul, 2017; Viennale,2014; Visions du Reel, Nyon, 2012; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2011; and Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2009. His work has been featured at the 2008, 2012 and 2017 Whitney Biennials and the 2013 Sharjah Biennial. Everson is currently Professor of Art at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Lerato Shadi lives and works in Berlin. She earned a M.A. (Space Strategies) from Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee in 2018 and she received a B.A. (Visual Art) from University of Johannesburg in 2006. From 2010 to 2012 Shadi was a member of the ‘Bag Factory artist studios’ in Johannesburg. Her work was featured at the Dak’art Biennale and in the III Moscow International Biennale in 2012. She is a fellow of Sommerakademie 2013 (Zentrum Paul Klee). Shadi was awarded with the mart stam studio grant, Berlin in 2014 and received the Alumni Dignitas Award of the University of Johannesburg in 2016. She presented her solo show Noka Ya Bokamoso at the South African National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in 2016. Shadi participated in The Parliament of Bodies, the Public Programs of documenta 14 and was awarded with the AFRICA’SOUT! residency program (Brooklyn, NY) in 2017. Shadi is fellow of the German Villa Romana Prize in Florence (Italy) for 2018. Alessandra Ferrini (Florence, Italy, 1984) is a London-based artist-filmmaker and researcher. Her work has featured in international exhibitions, screenings and conferences, including: Manifesta 12 Film Programme (Palermo, 2018); the 6th Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition (2018-19); Villa Romana (Florence, 2018 and 2019); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin, 2018); the 16th Rome Quadriennale (2016-17); the Royal Anthropological Film Festival (Bristol, 2017), Document Film Festival (CCA Glasgow, 2017), A-i- R Wro (Wroclaw, Poland, 2016); Festival dei Popoli, International Documentary Film Festival (Florence, 2015). She is the recipient of the London Film Festival’s Experimenta Pitch Award 2017 and the Mead Residency 2018 at the British School at Rome. Alessandra is an AHRC PhD candidate at the University of the Arts London, is affiliated with InteRGRace (Interdisciplinary Research Group on Race and Racisms), and is currently collaborating with Archive Books/Kabinett in Berlin. Michele Dantini è uno storico dell’arte contemporanea, critico e saggista, insegna all’Università del Piemonte orientale ed è visiting professor presso università nazionali e internazionali. Laureatosi e perfezionatosi (Ph.D.) in storia della filosofia e storia dell’arte presso la Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa; Eberhard Karls Universität, Tubinga; The Courtauld Institute, Londra; Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, collabora con i principali musei di arte contemporanea italiani ed è responsabile del Master MAED al Castello di Rivoli. Scrive di arte contemporanea, politiche culturali e dell’innovazione, tecnologia, Rete e digitale. Tra le pubblicazioni recenti Geopolitiche dell’arte italiana. Arte e critica d’arte nel contesto internazionale (Milano 2012); Arte contemporanea, ecologia e sfera pubblica (Roma 2012); Humanities e innovazione sociale (Milano 2012); Apple cosmica. Come le narrazioni fantascientifiche modellano il design e il marketing della Mela (Milano 2012); Horses and other herbivores (Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem 2010). Coautore dei manifesti TQ “università e ricerca” e “patrimonio storico-artistico e ambientale”, è interessato ai temi della diversità culturale e del cosmopolitismo postcoloniale. Il suo Diario Namibiano (e/o, Milano 2003), inchiesta sulle trasformazioni delle abilità tradizionali in Africa australe all’ingresso nel mercato globale condotta in collaborazione con la National Gallery di Windhoek, è stato finalista del premio Paola Biocca|Società Italo Calvino nel 2002. Suoi reportage e fieldworks sono stati presentati alla Fondazione Merz, Torino; CCCS Strozzina, Firenze; Centro di arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato; Centre de la Photographie, Ginevra; MAO, Torino. Collabora a L’Huffington, Alfabeta2, Doppiozero, ROARS, Il giornale dell’arte, il manifesto. Lista degli istituzioni/archivi: Agenzia Italiana per la Cooperazione allo Sviluppo, Archivio Enrico Romero, Archivio Leonard Bundu/ David Weiss, Archivio Storico Fratelli Alinari, Biblioteca Marucelliana, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, British Institute of Florence/ Harold Acton Library, Cineteca di Firenze, Collezione Palli, Fondazione La Pira, Fondazione Santa Maria Nuova, Gli Uffizi, Kunsthistorisches Institut Florenz, Le Murate Progetti Arte Contemporanea/ MUS.E, New York University Florence/ Villa La Pietra Poste Italiane, SACI/ Worthington Library, Sahara Desert, Syracuse University Florence/ Syracuse Florence Library
