Part-time Resistance
Stories of resistance to labour and segregation narrated through gestures that were devised to emancipate oneself from a state of constraint through acts of sabotage
Nico Angiuli, Alfabeto Carcerario, 2022. Photo by Sara De Santis. Visual documentation by Gianluca Di Ioia
Nico Angiuli, Performance, 2020. Photo by Sara De Santis
Nico Angiuli, Part-time Resistance, 2022, MACTE Collection, Termoli. Photo by Gianluca Di Ioia
Initiator(s)
Nico Angiuli
Description
Part-time Resistance aims to disseminate stories of resistance to labour and segregation that have germinated in various historical, political and geographical contexts. The work is inspired by three events dating back to the 20th century. Each of these three stories unfolds through three components: a photographic triptych (3 photos, 70 " 50 cm each), a sound piece (about 4 minutes long, to be listened to through headphones) and an in-presence workshop held by a human book (with a duration of at least 3 hours, and a maximum of 15 participants). The core of the project revolves around the generative transmission of practices of resistance, assimilated by those who join the workshop guided by the human books – i.e. the artist or a participant from a previous workshop, who agreed to contribute to the dissemination of its contents.
Context
Part-time Resistance presents three episodes concerning gestures that were devised to emancipate oneself from a state of constraint – of body, labour or freedom – through acts of sabotage. The first episode "Prison Alphabet" concerns Albanian political prisoners who, during the communist dictatorship, adopted a code that allowed them to communicate secretly by tapping knuckles, bones and fingers on the walls of their cells; the second episode, "The Seamstresses of Ravensbrück", brings to light the story of women forced to work in the Ravensbrück concentration camp who invented ways of sabotaging the SS tailoring line with faulty stitching in the officers’s garments; the last one, "Slow Workers", refers to the strategy of ‘working slowly’ that began to spread in the late 19th century among exploited workers in the countryside in Malaysia and England.
How to use it
The MACTE Museum is the institution in charge for the activation of Part-time Resistance. Other institutions or organizations interested in activating the project will be asked to host at least one story – or all three stories – with its three components. The project travels thanks to human books. The costs for their travel, hospitality and attendance fees, as well as those for the presentation of the photographs and sound pieces, are to be covered by the project host.
Goals
The work is now part of the collection of the MACTE Museum but it stays alive thanks to the commitment of the human books, those who will decide to host the project and the participants of future workshops, who will help to incorporate new methodologies and stories to the inherited ones. The newly developed acts of resistance will nourish an open repertoire, becoming part of the shared intangible legacy of Part-time Resistance.
Beneficial outcomes
Each group participating in the workshop enacts the original gestures of resistance together with the new ones devised by those who participated in former workshops, generating a choral space. In doing so, the selected movements of resistance will acquire new forms of use and other meanings, thus being interpreted as transmissible forms of knowledge that can continue to exist.
Location
Italy
Field
Repurposing, Use-It-Together
Strategy
Space Hijack, Workers Rights
Users
Everyone who experience a state of constraint of body, labour and freedom
Maintained by
Initial supporters were PAC2020-Piano per l'Arte Contemporanea promoted by the Italian Ministry of Culture and it is now maintained by MACTE Museum
Duration
2022 - ongoing
Category
Scientific
Pedagogical
Politics
Urban Development
Economy
Environment
Social
