20/03/2025, 06.30 PM
Lecture Against Borders by Gracie Mae Bradley & film screening of Monowe by Ludovica Carbotta
20/03 — 22/03/2025
I Come From Outside of Myself
Ludovica Carbotta
20/03 — 22/03/2025
Workshop
Ludovica Carbotta, in collaboration with art historian Vittoria Martini and photographer and assistant director Jacopo Tomassini, presents the workshop titled I Come From Outside of Myself, which explores the different stages of development for the realisation of a cinematic writing project. The workshop is designed both as an educational proposal and as the initial phase of production for a new artistic project focused on the themes of borders, identity construction, and universalism.
The workshop is inspired by the ideas in the book Against Borders. The Case for Abolition by Gracie Mae Bradley and Luke De Noronha, an essay-manifesto that develops a deep critique of contemporary border regimes, while simultaneously identifying critical openings for alternative futures. The book will be presented on March 20 at 6.30 pm in a lecture by Gracie Mae Bradley.
The goal of the workshop is to develop a subject, the first draft of a narrative idea, starting from a fictional scenario that involves a real place, the Giardini della Biennale, and an imagined geopolitical reality: a world without borders. The workshop focuses on the cinematic medium as a reference field and potential formalization hypothesis, and includes working methods such as writing, character development, context investigation, site visit recordings, drawing, and acting exercises aimed at creating a subject to be used in a future project. The Giardini, currently being set up for the 19th Biennale of Architecture, are the subject of investigation and the scenario where the narratives developed during the three-day workshop will take place. What function can this place have in a world without borders? What do the architectures within it represent?
I Come From Outside of Myself (2022-present) is also the title of Carbotta's installation currently on display at Scuola Piccola Zattere. The project began when the artist was asked to imagine an ideal pavilion representing Europe in international events. Carbotta initiates a reflection on the fluidity of European borders, porous for the circulation of goods and people within them, but rigid for those outside. The artist does not propose the construction of a permanent building that contains artworks and people, but rather a potential space, one that can be "contained": a mobile architecture capable of passing from hand to hand, from country to country. These model pavilions thus become amulets and vehicles to open a field of inquiry into borders, rights, and freedom of movement.
PROGRAM
The workshop includes participation in three days of activities with the following schedule:
March 20 from 11 am to 6 pm, including a perimeter exploration of the Giardini. This will be followed by a lecture by Gracie Mae Bradley and a screening of Ludovica Carbotta's film Monowe (2024).
March 21 from 11 am to 7 pm
March 22 from 11 am to 6 pm
HOW TO APPLY
The workshop is free of charge and is designed with a multidisciplinary perspective, aimed particularly at artists, filmmakers, designers, architects, theorists, writers, and curators. However, we welcome applications from individuals from any background.
To apply, please complete this form by March 17.
For more information: education@scuolapiccolazattere.com
LUDOVICA CARBOTTA
Born in Turin in 1982, Ludovica Carbotta is a visual artist who lives and works in Barcelona. Standing on the border between reality and fiction, her works combine installations, sculptures and videos reflecting on the notion of place, identity and participation. She studied Painting at the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti in Turin and holds a Master's degree in Fine Art from Goldsmiths University in London, after attending, on an Ariane de Rothschild Prize scholarship, Central Saint Martins London between 2011 and 2012. She has exhibited in solo shows at institutions such as Fondazione smART - Polo per l'arte, Rome; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; OGR - Officine Grandi Riparazioni, Turin; Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur; MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna. In addition, in 2019, Carbotta participated in the 58th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. Her works have been included in private and museum collections such as Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Rivoli-Turin; MACRO - Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rome; MA*GA - Museo d'Arte Gallarate; Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno - IVAM; Galleria d'Arte Moderna di Torino; La Biennale di Venezia; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Fondazione CRC, Cuneo. She teaches Sculpture at BAU, University Center for Art and Design in Barcelona.
VITTORIA MARTINI
Vittoria Martini is a contemporary art historian (PhD) and independent researcher.
Her research area is the institutional, political, territorial and cultural history of the Venice Biennale, which she analyzes as a micro case study so that it becomes a metaphor for a broader reflection to imagine a different social use of cultural institutions. In this context he has collaborated on research with Antoni Muntadas (On Translation: I Giardini, 2005), Alfredo Jaar (Venice Venice Venice, 2013), Maria Eichhorn (Relocating a Structure, 2022) and published numerous texts including Art is not an Innocent field. Reflections on the borders of the Venice Biennale (Routledge, 2025), The Responsibility of a Cultural Institution. The Venice Biennale must meet its own history, (Neroeditions 2024), The Giardini: Status of the Property (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, 2022). She is the author of the monograph Thomas Hirschhorn: The Bijlmer Spinoza-Festival. The Ambassador's diary (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2022).
JACOPO TOMASSINI
Jacopo Tomassini (Rome, 1979) studies History and Criticism of Cinema at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and begins working as an assistant director in various film productions. In 2010, he turns to the visual arts, collaborating with different artists, interested in exploring new areas of research and experimentation. Since 2012, he has started his artistic research: through the use of various genres and expressive techniques — from still life to collage, from performance to installation, from assemblage to portrait — he investigates the nature, ambiguities, and contradictions of the photographic image, playing with the relationship it has always had with communication media and other visual arts. Between 2013 and 2015, he attends the Master’s program at Fondazione Fotografia Modena. In 2018, he has his first solo exhibition, Braindraining, at the Ex Elettrofonica gallery in Rome. In the same year, he is selected to participate in the Mentoring Programme of the Parallel Photo Platform funded by the European Community; he also participates in the Artissima fair in 2018. In 2023, he collaborates as an assistant director on the film Monowe by Ludovica Carbotta, produced with funding from the Italian Council.
GRACIE MAE BRADLEY
Gracie Mae Bradley is a writer, policy expert, and campaigner focused on civil liberties, state power, Black feminism, and abolition. Bradley is the co-author of Against Borders. The Case for Abolition (Verso, 2022) and has written for publications like The Guardian, OpenDemocracy, and Vice. She has over a decade of experience in creating strategies for systemic change in solidarity with people at the sharpest end of unfair power structures. Bradley holds a BA (Hons) in Philosophy & French from Trinity College, University of Oxford, and an MSc in Human Rights from the LSE. From autumn 2024 she is a James McCune Smith Scholar at the University of Glasgow studying for a Doctorate in Fine Art in Creative Writing. She is currently working on a novel and is the host of the Locating Legacies podcast for the Stuart Hall Foundation.