L'idea non era male, l'impresa si collegava ad un giornalino bisettimanale (se ricordo bene, "Events") ed ha effettivamente realizzato qualche bella mostra, prima di esaurire, nel corso di qualche anno, la propria spinta, per lo meno sul fronte mostre, mentre la parte web continuerà ancora diversi anni, grazie ad un vivace "forum" che essa conteneva.
Questo rendeva gli artisti (limitatamente a quelli allora raggiungibili, degli altri nulla posso dire) essenzialmente delle "monadì", che potevano collaborare soltanto su aspetti piuttosto bassi della faccenda, quali l'autopromozione collettiva, l'organizzazione di mostre, l'accesso ai "media" legittimanti.
II - E proprio l'accesso ai "media" legittimanti è risultato tenacemente presidiato, così come sono risultati impermeabili all'interazione gli artisti strettamente "tutelati" dal (piccolo) giro locale delle cosiddette gallerie d'arte. Rifulse in questa tenacia il glorioso giornale friulano "Messaggero Veneto" che si rifiutò anche a fronte della fornitura di materiale qualificato, di pubblicare anche soltanto una riga nella cronaca locale - non pensiamo neppure alle "pagine culturali" (alle quali aveva invece agevole accesso, ma per i fatti suoi, Renato Calligaro).
The home page of the website reported this concept:
This site does not aim to provide space for artists to set up their own "electronic showcases" - there are already many others on the web for that purpose. Rather, it is a somewhat informal space that supports the projects, attempts and interactions of a group of artists. However, it is an "open" group and space since anyone can take a look at the materials present here and then interact in ways they find most congenial to themselves. The site also contains the personal, self-managed pages of some group members. If someone else, once acclimatized within the group itself, wanted to do the same, they would be welcome - we would share the modest rental costs equally. Interacting within this group does not involve alignment with any specific ideology, except for a certain conviction about the usefulness of dialogue and openness in artistic work. No manifestos or statutes, positions, memberships, cards or other unjustified burdens. No promises of initiatives, exhibitions or successes. The group is geographically moored in the upper Friuli area but does not discriminate on that basis: simply because direct interaction among participants plays an important role, it is naturally oriented toward that area. But remote collaborations via Internet can also give much.
The idea wasn't bad, the enterprise was connected to a bi-weekly newsletter (if I remember correctly, "Events") and actually realized some beautiful exhibitions, before exhausting its drive over the course of a few years, at least on the exhibition front, while the web part would continue for several more years, thanks to a lively "forum" it contained.
The lessons learned from the experience were essentially two:
I - In contemporary art, there is no "separable" technical component around which those exchanges of experiences and skills can occur that could substantiate some collective "progress." Every "technical" element is an integral and inseparable part of the "poetics" implicit in each artist, and it is therefore not possible to formulate any "advice" that is not at the same time an affront to it. Nor, on the other hand, did there seem to exist a level of intellectual interaction in that community, despite the strenuous efforts in that direction by Renato Calligaro, who couldn't understand how "young people" didn't find stimulating and provocative the questions he posed in the "TempoFermo" project, chronologically quite overlapping with "Arteadesso."
This made the artists (limited to those then reachable - I can say nothing about the others) essentially "monads," who could collaborate only on rather low aspects of the matter, such as collective self-promotion, organizing exhibitions, access to legitimizing "media."
II - And precisely access to legitimizing "media" proved tenaciously guarded, just as the artists strictly "protected" by the (small) local circuit of so-called art galleries proved impermeable to interaction. The glorious Friulian newspaper "Messaggero Veneto" shone in this tenacity, refusing even when provided with qualified material to publish even a single line in the local news - let's not even think about the "cultural pages" (to which, however, Renato Calligaro had easy access, but for his own affairs).
