NEW (OCCUPIED) CINEMA

The occupation of Cinema Palazzo, from the first days, has been an open space of political and artistic debate. The term agora is effectively the one that best represents this experience and its intentions. The perspective comes from an urgent need for real participation in the making of decisions and opinions, where artistic expressions – whose main function is the narration of the reality and time in which we live – are crushed by a logic of favors and patronage that inevitably end up determining the content and form of representation. The models of financing and orientation of artistic and cultural production in our country (and especially in Rome) are trapped by practices of division that, as in a binary system, leave the artist no choice but to connive in mechanisms of patronage, or to abandon the field in the direction of forms of self-production, often synonymous with true self-exclusion. The public institutions hold rigid positions that leave no space for anything new that might emerge from the complex reality in which we live. All this has abnormal effects in terms of wasting of talent, and represents an elitist, preordained idea of culture that excludes the possibility of expressing all those cultural forms that are not officially sanctioned. Over the last year the practice of reclamation of spaces and speech on the part of entertainment workers and citizens in general have suggested a new model of management of resources in which everyone is directly involved in processes of decision and review of what is financed and what is implemented. It is hard, in the present situation, to imagine where these models may lead; nevertheless, it is possible to outline their trajectory, to get beyond the logic of artistic direction entrusted to big names that are impossible to oust, and to get free of the interference of political parties in the decisions to be made and the use of resources. The experiences of self-government that are emerging in the Roman art world point to the birth of new institutions capable of filling the gap of representation, recognition and decision-making power that characterizes the present structures. This new form of institution immediately speaks the language of federalism, where every experience thrives on its own specific differences and acquires credibility and force, resources and decision-making capacity.

CIRO COLONNA
Member of the Nuovo Cinema Palazzo, in San Lorenzo, Rome, occupied since 2011 by citizens, artists, students, activists and associations. Collaborates with Radio Amisnet and Radio Popolare.