Confiscated Properties: Architecture, Ideology and Performance, curated by Valentina Sansone, initiates a process of activation and re-appropriation of a confiscated property, through musical and performance practices, with the participation of local communities.
Magazzino Brancaccio hosts a calendar of events and self-organised activities open to all, which will run continuously for 140 days (from 16th June to 4th November 2018).
Magazzino Brancaccio opened to the public for the first time, almost twenty years after its seizure. Today, it aims to represent a new and permanent facility for the neighborhood and the city.
For the project’s opening event, on 16th June 2018, the collective of musicians The Great Learning Orchestra (Stockholm) has invited composers Tony Harris and Barry Russell (UK) to develop participatory forms of experimental music for properties confiscated in Palermo. A new piece of music, collectively composed and performed by an ensemble of around 100 people, will be presented on the day the warehouse is re-opened.
The complex issue of the management of assets confiscated from organized crime in Italy pinpoints the limits and potential of a resource that cities are not yet able to assimilate. What are the benefits of collective participation in this immense patrimony of which, in Palermo alone, there are ca. two thousand confiscated properties?
More than a year ago (March 2017), in collaboration with visual artists, cultural operators, teachers, journalists, students and activists, the project Confiscated Properties: Architecture, Ideology and Performance, launched a preliminary investigation on episodes of self-organization, local cultural production and the city’s heritage. All this led to the identification of a space and its history, and to a specific request: the restitution of the property to the community and to make it accessible to the public.
Music Curator and animateur: Robin McGinley (The Great Learning Orchestra)
Composer and animateur: Tony Harris
Composer and animateur: Barry Russell
The Great Learning Orchestra feat. Tony Harris and Barry Russell, performance in collaboration with the participants, June 16 2018 Magazzino Brancaccio, Palermo. Photos: Luca Savettiere.
