Informal Tabula rasa 2008 after design project for Manifesta 7

Tabula Rasa: 111 DAYS ON A LONG TABLE

DENIS ISAIA, IN CONVERSATION WITH RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE, MANIFESTA 7

DESCRIPTION

Tabula Rasa – blank slate – a situation awaiting a presence, an act or an inscription – a space of potency, ripe with anticipation, ready for imminence.
Tabula Rasa is a special project of Manifesta 7 within The Rest of Now. It is intended to animate a series of interactions and a network of conversations with the people of Bolzano / Bozen and the broader region. The project will be realized over 111 days on a long, clean table – a “blank slate” – in the empty space of Room 124 in the ex-Alumix building. It consists of a series of events embodying many modes of gathering, talking, sharing, viewing and making things together. The only condition is that each event must start in an empty room, on a clean table.

 

A workshop in “after-architecture” animated by Eugenio Tibaldi. 
Eugenio Tibaldi, an artist based in Naples, is interested in the practice, common in Southern Italy, of “regularising” informal and illegal constructions by drawing up retrospective architectural plans. This practice could be considered a form of “para-design,” or “after-architecture.” In Informal Tabula Rasa, Tibaldi invites the people working in the ex-Alumix factory during the exhibition – guards, ushers, guides and ticket staff – to build a construction parallel to the long table in Room 124, using unwanted objects and materials from their homes. This construction is then rendered as a drawing, as a collective exercise in “after-architecture”. The drawing is exhibited along with the improvised, built form.