Pandemia: The project in a nutshell
We are a group of young artists that started working together in October 2020 to create what later became Pandemia.
This project has the aim of creating collaborations between artists of different art forms around different topics: each month we present a new theme to use as inspiration to create poems, photos, paintings and so on. Also, two artists can decide to work together at long-term projects called “Serie”, where they create a series of episodes around a theme of their choice.
Pandemia opened as an Instagram page and website in May 2021 and has now become an official nonprofit organization. The most important thing for us is to organize events where artists can meet in person: up to now we have hosted two different events, one in September 2021 and one in February 2022.
We have just launched the new theme: The farewells, those who go, those who stay. If you would like to participate in the project and send your artworks, you can email us at info@pandemia-art.com.
You can find out more about us and about the theme below.
What is PANDEMIA?
Pandemia is a nonprofit organization founded by young artists and poets with the intention of creating a dialogue between different art forms.
It all begins with the consensus about the fact that art is the deepest means we have to get in touch with the world, with others and with ourselves in the most direct and real way possible.
Our name “Pandemia”, indeed, refers to the Greek root pan-demos (all the people), so as to have the name of the project remind us that truth lies at the basis of our idea and it is something that precedes it; pandemia, first of all, means closeness, union and not separation and distance.
A year ago, Pandemia was born as a website and an Instagram page. From that moment on, we have planned events joined by anyone interested in the theme or in cooperating with other artists. The themes we choose concern topics that question us, the time we live in and man as such.
THE FAREWELLS; THOSE WHO GO; THOSE WHO STAY
Starting from this month and up to July, Pandemia has decided to tackle the theme “Gli addii. Quelli che vanno. Quelli che restano” (The farewells. Those who go. Those who stay), from Umberto Boccioni’s series of three paintings “Stati d’animo” (States of mind).
The strokes in the three paintings draw a farewell embrace at a train station, the movement of those who go and the stillness of those who stay.
Those who go, they pass along. They leave behind traces of their lives, unable to see the end of their exodus. Those who stay, they watch them go but they don’t follow: they remain attached to the ground that generated them. The farewell is the first phase of parting, it involves both stillness and movement. To say goodbye (God-bye) is to lose and commend at the same time. What happens in a farewell?
How to leave your people and your home? How to stay forever?
From May up to July 2022, you can present us artworks directly inspired by Boccioni’s paintings, by the theme of the farewells, of those who go and those who stay, focusing on the state of mind of the people who go through these different stages.
You can take inspiration directly from the paintings or cooperate with other artists that want to address the same theme by trying to translate (each one through their art form) what farewells mean to you. Let’s say an artist paints a farewell and a musician sees the painting and uses it as inspiration to create music. It’s a way of looking at the theme through the eyes of another person.
We have thought about doing so to nourish what our project truly wants to do, especially at this time: ensuring that the work of a person inspires someone else’s. This dynamic, united with the theme, means that one’s state of mind in relation to a farewell can help another one define what the farewell means for them. And, perhaps, to say something about what a farewell truly is.
How to collaborate
Here is how collaborations work: any artist (be them a photographer, painter, poet, writer, actor, dancer, musician) can decide to send his contribution to the project by writing an email to our address info@pandemia-art.com and attaching their artwork (it could be a picture, a text file, a video and so on), remembering to include a brief presentation about the material in the core of the email.
If an artist wants to collaborate with an Italian artist, they can write to the same email address and explicitly ask to be put in contact with the artist they would like to work with (and that wants to work with them).
We will hold a meeting on April 28th, at 9 pm, to discuss the theme. It will be possible to follow the meeting via Instagram live on our profile @pandemia.art.
The final event
At the end of the three months, we will have the chance to present some of the works at a final event which will take place in Rimini, on July 24th. We might discuss possible performative moments during the event to bring to life the collaborations that have bloomed over this period.
For Ukrainian artists
Pandemia has opened collaborations with Ukrainian artists for this specific theme because art without life is mute. At this time, your lives strikingly call for farewells: you are being pushed to say goodbye to your home, your people, and your land; you are those who go and those who stay. Therefore, we feel the need to invite you to participate directly, as we have done in the past with Italian artists and as we will do with anyone who has something real to say about this theme, regardless of their nationality.
We are doing this because we think it’s important for this “something real” to be tied to the present. We do this because art, if it is such, can express things that words alone cannot. We do this so that your farewells can stand alongside other experiences of farewell. Life always puts experiences of farewell before us because life itself is made up of farewells, of people leaving and people staying. Because life is made up of things that end and things that we love.