Nuovo Grand Tour is a residency project for young European talents under the age of 30 that takes place in Italy and France, realised by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, in cooperation with the Istitut Francais and the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris. The large-scale artistic programme promotes cultural dialogue and European values of exchange and sharing.
The Nuovo Grand Tour traces a symbolic ‘map of the heart’, reflecting the strong and enduring cultural ties between Italy and France by revisiting the historical tradition of the Grand Tour which, in the 17th and 18th centuries, allowed young intellectuals, artists and writers in Europe to travel to discover the artistic heritage of the peninsula and to further their education.
The protagonists of Nuovo Grand Tour: Yosra Tourki, Eléa Jeanne Schmitter, Christopher Amm, Rosalie Piras, Elisabeth Verrat and Alban Magd.
Yosra Tuorki‘s project, Takbir, is a collective performance, an open discussion, in which everyone responds to ALLAHU AKBAR and tries to discover the beauty of that moment. An invitation to the residents, the artists and the BASE community to collectively deconstruct the prejudices attached to specific expressions, once perceived as symbols of hatred, but which have the potential to take on new linguistic and semantic meaning. Developing a sound performance centred on ‘Takbir’, to restore its positive power and magnificence.
Eléa Jeanne Schmitter has been working on a new project that seeks to define masculinities in sport: the ‘official’ history of modern sport has largely been written by men, for men and about men. In the 1980s, critical feminist theory led to a shift in research, with scholars highlighting how sport constructs and reinforces gender-based power relations. Even today, the strength required by many sports is read as material and symbolic proof of men’s biological superiority. The research will be the starting point for a visual and performative exploration within the residence.
Christopher Amm – visual artist, uses murals, drawings, artist’s books, works on paper, objects and films. Amm worked on the project Circular in a network of intersecting lines. In his work and collaborations – lectures and theatre productions – he questions the correlations between the arts and social and historical issues.
Rosalie Piras deals with the design of spaces and objects, working on the concept of social design. She questions alternative ways of inhabiting the city in everyday life. She creates common spaces, ephemeral modules, favourable to encounters, social interactions linked to the territory, its inhabitants, their desires and needs. During his residency, he worked on the projects, ‘The emancipation and chance game’ and ‘The communal oven’, two urban games within the project ‘How can we meet?’.
Elisabeth Verrat, artist and photographer, is oriented towards photography and storytelling. Her research explores the hidden details of the landscape, changing the perception of reality through her observations, trying to connect the earthly world to the cosmos, interweaving past, present and future, and proposing new perspectives to question the history and memory of a place. Alban Magd, an artist and designer, specialises in design. His works are rooted in urban landscapes and arise from a process of drifting and casual observation of the city, aimed at identifying new practices and uses for each place. His practice develops on different scales to intervene in the territory, tracing new metropolitan itineraries and routes. This approach allows him to explore the environment and suggest new ways of living and inhabiting urban spaces.
During their residency, they worked on the project: ‘98800, resurgens-résurgences-rebirth’, a work at the intersection of art, the city and its inhabitants, proposing a new reading of history.
