VENICE.- Scuola Piccola Zattere is a non-profit space for research and continuing education in the expanded field of contemporary arts. The programme is developed through exhibition projects, commissions, residencies and research grants, workshops, seminars, discursive and performative events, with a methodological approach that integrates the different lines of action in order to foster reciprocal influences between the formats of study, production and fruition. Open to the research of cultural operatorsə from all over the world, Scuola Piccola Zattere addresses in particular its activities to the artistic communities that live, study and operate in the city of Venice.
The name of the space is inspired by an emblematic institution in Venetian history, the scuola piccola, a peculiar model of civic organisation, widespread and inclusive, a fluctuating institution, autonomous from the governmental and ecclesiastical power structures of the time. Active from the Middle Ages until the end of the Republic, the scuole piccolle were lay brotherhoods dedicated to good works and devotional practices, sometimes linked to the practice of arts and professions, sometimes to the support of a specific foreign community. They were open associations which, without distinction or hierarchy, included people of different socio-economic backgrounds, men and women, aspects which distinguish them from the more well-known model of the scuole grande, now celebrated for their important monumental and historical-artistic heritage. Smaller in size and economic and political influence, the small schools nevertheless represented a model of social architecture so widespread that they became the true connective tissue of the city.
The historical model of the small school is the starting point for defining a field of investigation that opens the first season of activity of the new institution, which will run from November 2024 to November 2025. Entitled One Year Score, the research programme intends to explore the forms of aggregation, conflict and negotiation that characterise the dynamics of sociality, examined in the light of the relationship established between space and body, between architecture and performative action.
The spatial politics of belonging and exclusion, hierarchy and horizontality, rigidity and porosity, materiality and immateriality, will be the focus of a reflection common to the various disciplines and formats of residency, study and programming, informing a process of collective research extended over time. The concept of score, a score, becomes a conceptual tool for investigating the open relationship between education and action, a central theme for both art and performance disciplines and for reflection in the pedagogical field.
The activities will start on 22 and 23 November 2024 with the opening of a group exhibition and a rich programme of activations, performance events and talks. On the occasion of these open days, the participants will be introduced to the first residency sessions and the training offer that will develop in the following months, workshops and seminars conceived and led by the artistsə present in the exhibition and in residence. The artistic direction of the project is entrusted to Irene Calderoni, contemporary art curator, formerly chief curator at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin.
On the occasion of the launch of the new institutional project, the Palazzo was the subject of an architectural intervention commissioned to Fosbury Architecture, a design and research collective founded in 2013 in Milan. Their project was designed to characterise and adapt the spaces to the new functions, favouring flexibility and adaptability to the multiple needs of the planned programme of activities.
The new course of the project is also underlined by a visual identity that reflects the contemporary character and is signed by Giga Design studio.
