– The Land of Our Birth Is a Woman –

“If we want to create new forms of feminism, we need intergenerational solidarity, but above all we need to maintain the quality of relationships between those who were, those who are and those who will be”.

Alex Martinis Roe, in To become two

The first collective practice, called “The Land of Our Birth Is a Woman”, presented itself as a space of care, transmission and listening for women with a migrant background, residing in different South Tyrolean cities.

The meeting included the drafting and realisation of a collective patchwork, sewn by several hands.

Why a patchwork?

Textiles and sewing are vital and cultural elements that unite all communities around the world. Sewing is an ancestral practice of transmission that often involves women. The symbolism behind the act of joining different pieces of fabric, one with the other, is the foundation of the first collective practice, that is, uniting women from different communities and invisible.

The intention of this moment is to raise awareness and discuss the figure of the body of marginalised women, de-constructing the multiple stereotypical representations that support certain lines of thought.

Among the various objectives of this practice, we see “raising awareness” and “questioning” the perception and the multiple stereotypical, patriarchal and Eurocentric representations of women’s bodies.

The objectives of collective practice I:

– Local inclusiveness, as a vision that goes beyond gender, geographical and identity boundaries
– Sense of community, integrity and empathy
– Create safe, sensitive spaces based on courage, collaboration and horizontality
– Using the universality of Art

Key words from ABC South Tyrol:

– Fears
– Taking sides
– Foreign body
– Mixing

– We are Potluck –

The meeting included a collective dinner, cooked by several hands and several ingredients. Why the choice to base the whole evening on food? Ingredients and cooking practice are vital and cultural elements that unite all communities around the world. The potluck is a communal meal in which all guests actively participate. Originally, potlucks were meals created in religious and non-religious communities to emphasise the importance of sharing.

The objectives of Collective practice II:

– Local inclusiveness, as a vision that goes beyond gender, geographical and identity boundaries through cooking
– Sense of community
– Creating fluid, sensitive spaces based on courage, collaboration and horizontality
– Dialogue and confrontation through one’s own experiences
– Using the universality of art and food

Key words from the ABC South Tyrol:

– Assimilation
– Ethnicity
– Mixing
– (right of) home/living
– Nature

 – Living Young, Wild and Free –

The Collective Practice III Living Young, Wild and Free opened up a space for the exchange about the living experience of the second-generation youth in South Tyrol. For one evening, in the TILT youth center in Merano, key words from the „Südtirol ABC Sudtirolo“ were reflected upon in relation with their own biographies. Afterwards, these reflections were written down and read aloud collectively.

All participants in the collective practices were invited to fill out a questionnaire in advance, which the artist Binta Diaw had formulated based on keywords from the “Südtriol ABC Sudtirolo” by Alexander Langer. In the exhibition, visitors can work on one of these questionnaires themselves. The thoughts and suggestions will be part of the publication planned for 2022 on the project “Collective Practices: A Living Experience of Feeling Listened”.

Collective Practices: A Living Experience of Feeling Listened 
Dates: 11–26.11.2021
Opening: 11.11.2021 at 19:00 with the artist Binta Diaw and the curators
Breakfast with the artist: 13.11.2021, 10:00 to 13:00
Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 14:00 to 18:00, and by appointment via info@lungomare.org

Foreign elements, domicile (rights), showing your colours, ethnic, mixed, prejudiced — many of the words and phrases from the Südtirol ABC Sudtirolo, an unfinished fragment from the late 1980s by politician and activist Alexander Langer, are still as relevant as ever to contemporary debates about culture, identity and living together.

Binta Diaw has selected certain terms from this document of contemporary history in order to re-examine them in light of current socio-political issues. Three collective practices produce new readings and cross-references that allow us to reflect on and rethink the concept of community for our post-migration society. The artist has consciously chosen to open up intermediate spaces without predetermined roles, identities or dynamics, places where interactions can happen. The installation “Collective Practices: A Living Experience of Feeling Listened” translates the collective acts of narrating and listening, sewing, cooking and writing into a multimedia artistic landscape that attempts to construct new frames of reference and to collectively define their parameters. The exhibition negotiates cultural identification, social participation as well as the democratic constitution of the region.

As anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing has argued, we are no longer in a position to relate to stable communal structures; we exist within shifting frameworks that change us and those we come into contact with. In this precarious state, unexpected encounters can be transformative. In this sense Binta Diaw’s collective practices are proposals for living together. They are temporary spaces set up in opposition to a world that reproduces singular power dynamics, spaces that promote difference and where the dichotomy between familiar and foreign can be elaborated and overcome.

Alexander Langer’s key terms – from fear and violence through opposition and survival – reach right down to the present and are re-animated in Binta Diaw’s collective practices, which put them in the service of a society that goes beyond narrow definitions of nationality, ethnicity and culture. Journalist Simone Zoppellaro has given a good description of what Alexander Langer’s texts and ideas can do for us now, in the year 2021: they compel us “to question our limited view of the world, to overcome our boundaries, our hesitancy and our unwitting complicity.” Ultimately they are a call to action. In the works created during her residency at Lungomare, Binta Diaw has taken up these challenges and imagined collective visions of how living together in future might look.