What does it mean ‘to engage’? Who is in a position to engage? Is it a contract, an obligation, a connection?
My research is focused on the creation of collective experiences: visually and physically. My projects are born from specific situations in which the meeting of people and of the space become the matter and the tool of the act of creation. For this reason, my practice aims to be a participatory tool for weaving the urban, social and human reality through a site-specific process.
About the Museum Resident
Chiara Colombi is an Italian artist, who worked on creating the ‘Manual on Universal Engagement‘ as a sixth part to her collection of manuals on various universal actions, as a Museum Resident in the Conflictorium in March, 2018. These manuals offer readers a series of actions to be taken on a daily basis according to a different theme for each manual proposed by different artists. The interest is to have a system to gather different propositions that activate a physical action (performing arts) as a medium through which to expand our way of living space, in different situations, thanks to the act of presence in their daily lives. The topics covered so far are: rescue, escape, parrhesia (telling their truth without fear) and the warm-up. These issues are collected and developed through these books, with the intention to encourage through artistic practice the act of presence and its spreading. The manuals were activated by our audiences on the streets of Mirzapur. You can now purchase a copy of this manual at the Conflictorium.