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Fellowship

Fellow 2017/2018

Luigi Coppola

Luigi Coppola is an artist who works in performance, video, and public art. He researches participatory practices and politically-motivated actions, starting by analyzing specific social, political, and cultural contexts, as in Parco Comune dei Frutti Minori (2014‒ongoing), Castiglione d’Otranto. Coppola has developed projects, performances, and exhibitions in international contexts, including: Fondazione Merz, Turin, 2018; Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, 2017; Teatro Continuo, Milan, 2016; Parckdesign, Brussels, 2016; Athens Biennale, Athens, 2015; Teatro Valle Occupato, Rome, 2013; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, 2012; Steirischer Herbst, Graz, 2012; and Democracy Biennale, Turin, 2009. Coppola lives and works in Brussels and Lecce.

Luigi Coppola

Luigi Coppola is an artist who works in performance, video, and public art. He researches participatory practices and politically-motivated actions, starting by analyzing specific social, political, and cultural contexts, as in Parco Comune dei Frutti Minori (2014‒ongoing), Castiglione d’Otranto. Coppola has developed projects, performances, and exhibitions in international contexts, including: Fondazione Merz, Turin, 2018; Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, 2017; Teatro Continuo, Milan, 2016; Parckdesign, Brussels, 2016; Athens Biennale, Athens, 2015; Teatro Valle Occupato, Rome, 2013; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, 2012; Steirischer Herbst, Graz, 2012; and Democracy Biennale, Turin, 2009. Coppola lives and works in Brussels and Lecce.

Fellowship Research Trajectory

News from Nowhere, the title of Luigi Coppola’s artistic research trajectory, is inspired by William Morris’s eponymous utopian novel from 1890, which describes a society that is based on collectivism and the democratic control of means of production. The project includes the ongoing Scuola di Agriculture (School of Agricultures), a pedagogical platform led by Coppola in Castiglione d’Otranto, Puglia, Italy that combines agro-ecological learning with artistic strategies of theater, philosophy, and music, and builds upon the participatory and commoning dynamics of the community of farmers and activists who formed the cooperative Casa delle Agriculture (House of Agricultures). In a region brutally affected by industrialized agriculture, the Scuola connects to the cooperative’s work of recovering and revitalizing abandoned land, generating solidarity-based economies, and strengthening community. In collaboration with migrant and asylum-seeker associations, local elementary and secondary schools, agricultural institutes, and associations for the elderly, the Scuola is an experiment in social solidarity. This extended community of farmers, migrants, artists, activists, and citizens carry out actions and rituals arising from workshops conducted at the Scuola, to be documented in the film News from Nowhere.

Evolutionary Populations: Seeds of a World Waiting to Germinate

With the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011, agronomist and phyto-geneticist, Salvatore Ceccarelli was forced to end his 25-year research period in Syria where he had been working with local farmers experimenting with a revolutionary agricultural method that develops participatory plant breeding, a type of breeding done in collaboration with farmers to breed […]

Shela Sheikh: Colonialism, Cultivation, and Nonhuman Witnessing

As part of the Fellowship weekly intensive in November 2017, Fellow Luigi Coppola convenes a number of discussions including a seminar with lecturer and researcher Shela Sheikh on 24 November 2017 to talk about colonialism, cultivation and nonhuman witnessing and resistance to the colonial mode of organizing, appropriating and extracting value. In the afternoon session […]

Program