Reconfiguring Think Tanks as a discursive, social model in contemporary art | Residencies as places of continuity, mutuality, free thinking and independent research
(2015)
author(s): Andrea Pagnes
published in: Research Catalogue
In general, art contains in itself a revolutionary quid, as the artist - through his/her work - provides an opportunity to look at the world in a different way from that to which one was used. The art has a function of perceptive awakening and therefore of sensorial activation. This is revolutionary, because it can change your perception of life that you have had up to that time. Out of this perspective, to reconsider artist in residencies as not mere hosting institutional containers, but as laboratories of continuative production of thoughts and ideas, might also reinforce the concept that a work of art is thus the end result of a specific process – possessing specific forms and aesthetic, and that it serves no purpose except that of channelling a very specific form of energy. It’s always a sort of communicative performance. It allows man to plumb his/her own conscience and to void it, as it’s only within empty spaces that energy can unleash its creative force. For it, it is required great effort and care not just from the artist who's temporarily involved, but from the ones who run the artist in residencies themselves.