Utopia Just Left The Building
Installation, 2014
Isola Utopia, or: Utopia Just Left the Building Utopia! From the beginning we have been desperately seeking her. We never met her, but she was always close to us:
– when we occupied the former factory "La Stecca" and started to create a new kind of center for art, philosophy, music and neighbourhood activities, confronting international real estate companies, bankers, weird politicians and timeserving architects;
– when we sang songs by Adriano Celentano to the decision-making city officials (in a choir with the Isola kids in the Zone Council);
– when during the Isola-Rosta project, Solvita sustained us from Riga and Dan sent us his first drawing, "art (get real) estate," from Bucharest to put on the shutters of Punto Rosso;
– when Christoph made, during the night, his wall painting, "Strategic Embellishment," on the Isola kiosk,
– when we threw seed-bombs over the metal fence with Oliver, in order to conquer the closed Isola Pepe Verde area which we wanted so much;
– when we occupied the Galfa skyscraper and hung the banner "Si potrebbe anche pensare di volare" (you could even imagine flying) on its facade;
– when we tried to take back the horizon of the Isola district using Nikola’s solar cloud;
– when we tried to coin new concepts for our activist art practice such as "fight-specific art", "dirty cube", and "dispersed center",
– when we created the amazing Isola Art’s Club Band with Steve.
And then suddenly, just as we all started to believe we could recover Paul Signac’s "Time of Anarchy" this summer in San Mauro Cilento, we saw Utopia fly laughing over our heads in an Ape-car. We are convinced that she will follow us to Riga. Maybe you’ll meet her looking at our art pieces in Utopian City /Survival Kit #6...
(Bert Theis and Camilla Topuntoli for Isola Art Center)