A.I. THE ARTIST’S TABLE

February 7  , 2019

All ‘A.I. Artisanal Intelligence. The Artist’s Table, the invitation of the curators Clara Tosi Pamphili and Alessio de’Navasques is to sit down at the table to “do” and discover the thrill of working with the hands together with four contemporary masters.

For its 16th edition, the artist’s and artisan’s table becomes the signifying, therefore symbolic, space of a real atelier of arts and craftsmanship at the Basement  in the heart of Rome in via Nicola Ricciotti 4. This is a self-sufficient exhibition space active since 2012, dedicated to experimentation, discussion and production of exhibition projects, presentations, conferences and publishing initiatives in collaboration with artists, curators, independent and institutional actors. An object and a place, the table, where art is done with the hands and which brings attention to the precise act of doing and the practice that generates a language and the craft of those who create. When the hands on the table elaborate, they generate their own experience and their own memory. It is no coincidence that the word “text” is a past, the past of “weaving”, while “practice” instead defines something “in the present”, something that is done “while doing it” (Cf. Devoto, 1996 ). Making a garment or making a fabric, building and restoring, caring … are precise acts that identify roles and identities in specific figures (masters) like those of the cards listed in the Encyclopedié or Reasoned Dictionary of the Arts and Crafts of Diderot and d ‘Alembert, acts of memoir of the ideals of the Enlightenment. The atmosphere that reigns at the Roma Basement exudes the past Enlightenment empiricism of doing things, of using the hands as tools around a table in the perfect interweaving of experience and practice of languages ​​and meanings.

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