Luigi Fassi from Nuoro

Museums and galleries have reacted to the moment with digitalization and virtuality. What are his "strategies" to establish new relationships? How your way of working has changed?
During the months of lockdown, digital initiatives by museums and institutions multiplied, with an abundant offer whose nature is still to be interpreted. It was an ephemeral phenomenon dictated by the need of the moment or a real revolution in the ways in which content was constructed and offered.? Marketing or cultural production? The MAN Museum also proposed different formats, from online laboratory workshops for children, by our mediators, to the project Quarantine Diary, a contest for children and adults which stimulated the sending of artistic creations from the domestic space to that of MAN's social networks, rewarding the most brilliant and capable of capturing the spirit of the moment. With the project Inventive Connections we have, then, started, together with the ICA of Milan, a series of digital lectures with Italian personalities from the world of philosophical and cultural research. It is now important to reflect on how many of the museums' digital projects could mark a change in institutional working practices in the near future, thus leaving a lasting development impact beyond the Covid emergency, and how many are destined to vanish, relegated to the tactical need to maintain visibility in a moment of social closure.
The project Inventive Connections at MAN we will carry it forward by continuing it even after the summer. The reasons? The clear feeling that it is now more vital than ever to collaborate at an institutional level, favoring sharing over competition, to join forces and grow the ambition of the ideas and activities in the field. And with digital tools we can bring content to everyone without logistical difficulties. Con Inventive Connections we are inviting Italian researchers resident in various parts of the world to speak and it would be unthinkable, even in a normal phase, invite them to the institutions for a thirty-minute live lecture.
So, I believe that beyond the home-working mode and physical distancing, the profound changes in the way of working will only settle in the near future and in a year we will perhaps be able to understand what new dynamics have arisen and what real changes they have brought about. It will count, as always, everyone's willingness to look forward rather than backwards and in the context of public museums, their ability to truly think of themselves as civic institutions, serving its community of reference. Engines of social relations, inspirers of vocations and innovations, for the benefit of as many people as possible and above all of those who live permanently in the museum area.

We are realizing that we can live with less mobility? How do you imagine the world, when everything will start again?
It's an open question, civil aviation could take a step backwards of at least two decades for a considerable period of time, in terms of increased costs and more limited supply. There will be not only more prudence and reticence in tackling long journeys but I think also the feeling that it was not entirely normal to travel between continents with less than 100 Euro. At an institutional level, consolidated relationships will count more, come anticipavo, I am convinced (it is also a sincere hope) that collaboration will acquire greater value as a mutual enrichment and form of solidarity. What has been happening in recent months has revealed a fact that we had partially obscured, fragility as a constitutive element of humanity and not as an accident to be overcome. Norberto Bobbio spoke about some emblematically human emotions, such as meekness, for example (to whom he dedicated a very well-known essay), revealing an idea of ​​vulnerability which must be recognized as essential and common to all and which if fully understood can change the way of experiencing human relationships.

Luigi Fassi (Turin, 1977) he is artistic director of the MAN museum in Nuoro. Visual Art Curator at the Steirischer Herbst Festival in Graz, Austria, from 2013 to the 2017, from 2009 to the 2012 he was artistic director of the Kunstverein ar/ge kunst in Bolzano. Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow al Whitney Museum ISP di New York nel 2008-09, he has organized exhibitions for various institutions internationally, In Europa, United States and Africa. His articles and texts have appeared in Mousse, Domus, Flash Art, Artforum, Camera Austria, Site. From 2010 to the 2017 he was editor of Present Future at Artissima, Turin. In 2016 he was a fellow of the Artis Research Trip Program in Tel Aviv, curator of the Curated_by Festival in Vienna and of the XVI edition of the Rome Art Quadrennial. He is a member of the steering committee of Artorama in Marseille and since 2020 project curator Tomorrow/Todays presso Investec Cape Town Art Fair in Sud Africa. www.museoman.it