How I long to be one of them! To see with their eyes, to hear with their ears, to understand how they experience time, how they learn about death, how they feel love, and how they perceive the world.
To be one of them, and sobe come a brighter messenger of light, in these dark days.
(Cassiel to Raphaela in the film Far So Close by Wim Wenders, 1993)
The third edition of Baitball involves 25 realities active in the research of the visual arts and in the production of contemporary languages operating in the Apulian territory, called to confront, represent and manifest themselves collectively.
Through very different stories, practices, research, backgrounds and thoughts, the project seeks to create a scenario that can reflect and interpret the present and future Apulian artistic scene.
Baitball is a place to live together through the difference and to dream of new worlds to evolve-with-others.
Baitball speculates on love, friendship, generosity, trust and "doing together", which are always something more and always something less than awareness and knowledge.
A bait ball occurs when small organisms (fish, birds, insects) move tightly packed in a spherical formation around a common centre. It is a defensive measure adopted to escape the threat of predators, but it is also a cohesion exercise enhancing the hydro-aerodynamic functions. A coordinated bait ball, moving and shimmering in unison.
A mesmerizing image; hundreds or thousands of individuals moving together as if under radio control or following a pre-established choreography. They are even more surprising considering that within the bait ball, there is no leader or hierarchy.
The "balls" are formed through that spontaneous emergency known as self-organization. It emerges from the bottom upwards, it is an a-centered and non-linear phenomenon, it is an irreversible process, which thanks to the cooperative action of subsystems leads to more complex structures in the global system.
A bait ball rotates, contracts, expands, separates and returns all one, without interruption - single individualities with a hive mind. A massive coordinated "ball" is made up of thousands of individual actions that make up one collective movement.
Baitball is a performative exercise which is aiming to keep egocentrism aside. It's a stage of our evolution, a strategic mechanism to avoid extinction, fooling death?!
With:
Cell Online Art Project (Ceglie Messapica, Brindisi / Online), Doepelgeanger (Bari), Esposizione Sud Est (Conversano, Bari), Exchiesetta (Polignano a Mare, Bari), giardino project (Trepuzzi, Lecce), Goodnight (Nomadic, Puglia), Kora - Centro del Contemporaneo / Ramdom (Castrignano de' Greci, Lecce), Kunstschau (Lecce), Lamia Santolina (Carovigno, Brindisi), Like A Little Disaster (Polignano a Mare, Bari), Linea (Lecce) Microba + Achrome (Bari), Misia Arte (Bari), Nico (Bari), Progetto (Lecce), Sajetta + Julie Grosche (Torre Santa Susanna, Brindisi / Online - Richmond, VA, USA), Spazio Murat (Bari), Spazio Sale (Lecce), Spazio Su (Lecce), Studioconcreto (Lecce), Vessel (Nomadic, Puglia), Vettor (Bari), Voga Art Project (Bari)
+ Archivio Chiara Fumai (Milano / Polignano a Mare, Bari)
+ Berlínskej Model (Praga, CZ)