Art is our Daily Bread

Art is our daily bread. In October, as lockdown is looming over the city of Ruvo di Puglia in the south of Italy, a planetary cluster of galleries has descended from cyberspace to its historic center. There, the scent of fresh bread from the local bakery leads us to discover an exhibition where art and bread are interlinked.

Bread in Italy has a strong cultural value. It is the main protagonist of the Italian meals. The bread is shared among the diners, the same way artists working online are sharing their knowledge, intentions, online space and time. Wheat, bread and art are the building blocks of culture. Both bread and art sustain us physically, mentally and spiritually.

We bring art to the table

“We bring art to the table,” states the artist Zsolt Mesterhazy who coined the linkage of online art and bread. Based on his idea, the local bakery is placing the QR barcodes of the exhibiting galleries on their bread loaves in October. The online galleries are distributed along with the bread to the local people. Art is presented as sustenance, indeed, art is our daily bread. Mesterhazy says: “It is art that nourishes the body and mind, art that nourishes knowledge, conversations, cultural confrontation, dialogue and more.”

Art accessible to all

In addition to the bakery, the online galleries are distributed among the different shops, coffee-houses and bars. Each gallery is represented by a poster with a QR barcode that people can scan with their phone and get a link to the online exhibition. In this way, shopping  has the potential to transform into a cultural event, an inspiring exchange of material and spiritual goods.

Curating as taking care

The exhibition is the brainchild of the artist, lecturer and curator Domenico Barra, the founder of White Page Gallery/s network. WPG/s is a decentralised and distributed art network for artistic sharing made up of artists, curators, academics, festivals and cultural agents who independently display creative projects on their WPG websites free of charge. The WPG/s network is based on values such as solidarity, hospitality, inclusion, altruism and mutual support, and curating as taking care.

In the current exhibition, the virtual White Page Gallery/s break into the physical space of Linea Festival, and aim to create a dialogue with an urban environment deeply tied to traditions by providing a network model of online art community.

The novel idea of curating as taking care has been amplified by the coronavirus and its prolonged presence in our lives. I curate the White Empathy Box, which is part of the  WPG/s network. For the current exhibition, I asked the artists of my gallery to address the pandemic momentum. Their responses have amounted together into powerful messages of hope, compassion and healing.

Gaia – The Immortal 

After Chaos, Gaia – The Immortal is a digital artwork video by Sonia Lara, which is featured in the exhibition. It depicts the generative powers of Gaia, the Earth. Life forms are seen created out of particles and  molecules. Biological processes transform chaos into balance. The world is reborn out of Nature. The Tree of Life stands tall at the heart of the Garden.

Watch the video

White Page Gallery/s

Lila Moore Member since August 28, 2020

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Dr Lila Moore is a pioneering artist film-maker, working in the transdisciplinary field of screen dance and technoetic arts, cyberperformance and mixed and extended reality. She is a lecturer, thesis supervisor, for the Alef Trust/MSc Programme in Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology, and teaches on the Transpersonal Psychology module as well as teaching the option course: Spirituality and the Imaginal. She is a theorist of technoetic arts as well as the intersection of the arts and the spiritual and occult. She began her explorations as a multimedia performance artist in the 1980s and her PhD from Middlesex University (2001) was the first practice-based PhD in Dance on Screen and the art form of screen dance in the UK and world-wide. She formulated a theory of Cybernetic Futures as a foundation for her Cybernetic Futures Institute, explicated in her article: The Shaman of Cybernetic Futures: Art, Ritual and Transcendence in Fields of the Networked Mind, published by Cybernetics and Human Knowing Journal (2018). The Cybernetic Futures Institute (CFI) was formed as part of her post-doctorate at the Planetary Collegium of Plymouth University. Her post doctorate's Director of Studies was the visionary and influential Prof. and artist Roy Ascott. The CFI involves digital learning environments and online exhibitions based on holistic principles and second-order cybernetics. Dr Lila Moore encourages compassionate and innovative approaches amongst learners, whilst attempting to explore and counteract the dominant narrative of violence. In addition, Lila Moore holds an MA degree in Independent Film and Video, and MPhil on the formal integration and evolution of screen-based art forms from Central Saint Martins, London, and a B.Ed. degree in Fine Art & Art History. She is a UK-certified self-development coach. Additionally, she was a lecturer at the Department for the Study of Mysticism and Spirituality at Zefat Academic College from 2013 until its closure in 2022. As a lecturer, she taught pioneering and rarely available academic courses on topics such as spiritual cinema, the spiritual in modern art and digital art, and film and ritual. She received the Outstanding Lecturer Award in 2022 for a decade of excellent and devoted work at the Department for the Study of Mysticism and Spirituality. Dr Moore regularly participates in academic conferences, and her articles and writings were published in academic journals and books. Lila Moore articulates her explorations in her films, screen dance, cyberperformance, mixed reality and digital artworks. She participates in juried and curated exhibitions, as well as curates online exhibitions via Cybernetic Futures. Lila Moore’s digital artworks and theoretical writings are archived by SIGGRAPH and ADA – Archive of Digital Art. For more information and updated contents visit her websites and subscribe to her newsletter: cyberneticinstitute.com Online exhibitions and films by Dr Lila Moore cyberneticfutures.com https://thefield.aleftrust.org/my-profile/lila-moore

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