About

The arrival of the pandemic on a global scale has radically transformed the ways of perceiving, living and crossing rural areas. One of the most unpredictable reflections linked to these transformations concerns the changes in work practices, which have progressively subsumed rural areas and territories within the comfort space of the capitalist system. The increasingly massive use of smart working is pushing many people to rethink their living and housing needs after the lockdown, so rural places have seen a surge during the spring and summer. Architects, economists, urban planners believe that rural places could be a valid alternative to ensure a high standard of liveability thanks to large and open spaces, at much lower prices than large cities. The pandemic has therefore triggered a new series of colonization dynamics with respect to territories previously marginalized, isolated and considered in contemporary narratives as destined to disappear.

This process places communities and rural territories in front of a challenge which, on the one hand pushes them to be an active part in the active processes of the globalized world, on the other hand, tests the mechanisms of resistance with respect to the dominant narratives that have always marginalized them.

How is it possible to reconfigure the idea of rurality, in the light of the post-pandemic dynamics? And how can the relationship between urban and rural spaces be redefined, within this complex frame of land in transformation?

And, moreover, how does the art world react to this type of processes and territorial transformations, which over the last few months has spent itself in experimenting with spaces for the production and dissemination of culture in which the relationship with the public is resolved in the distance?

How can we articulate this process that establishes a new relationship also with the digital? How does the art world position itself towards the sudden, mass experience of spatial contraction through lockdown in the Covid-19 pandemic within rural areas?

These ideas will constitute the topics which will be discussed during the Liminaria MMXX series of talks to be held online on 21th November and 18th and 19th December 2020 and which will compare artists, curators, designers, academic experts, farmers and inhabitants of rural areas from different parts of the globe, called to discuss to imagine future prospects for these territories after the pandemic.