“The artists – says Vitone – are not creatives, but creators”, they invent something that didn’t exist before, without the urgency and need of creatives to respond to an end product or to promote a cause in search of a popular consensus. In this regard the artist focused on one of his previous publications, Effemeridi Prini1, which illustrates the relationship between artists, between art and society and, finally, between the artist’s project and its creation (a process that can sometimes last much longer than expected).

At the end of these discussions, Luca Vitone proposed a project to young artists involving the creation of six flags of variable formats, which were to be hung on one of the flagpoles at the entrance of the building. The flags would be completely white, like the flags that were planted on the moon by NASA between 1969 and 1972, but which have now lost their colour through their exposure to solar rays. On 20 March 2019, the installation of these flags meant that the action that the universe had carried out on the American flags was replicated at the Manifattura Tabacchi. Alongside the flags, six other banners were individually created by each resident artist, starting from the concept of geographical identity, represented by the menus of restaurants from different ethnicities.

Mohsen Baghernejad Moghanjooghi,Matteo Coluccia, Stefano Giuri, Lori Lako, Gioele Pomante,Tatiana Stropkaiová

These flags have been to the moon and back

2019

Longlife, hooks and white banners, variable dimensions

This work was created at the end of the workshop. It is made up of six flags of variable formats, all six completely blank, installed on the flagpole at the entrance to the building. Between 1969 and 1972, during the Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 missions, NASA placed six American flags on the moon. As the moon does not have an atmosphere capable of absorbing solar rays, the flags that were planted by the Apollo astronauts have now lost their colour. On 20 March 2019, at Manifattura Tabacchi, we saw here on Earth the same action that the universe has applied to these flags.

Ph. OKNO Studio

Mohsen Baghernejad Moghanjooghi,Matteo Coluccia, Stefano Giuri, Lori Lako, Gioele Pomante,Tatiana Stropkaiová

No memory, no remembrance

2019

Longlife, hooks and white banners, 130×400 cm

This collective work was also created at the end of the workshop. It is made up of white banners which have been printed with graphics taken from multi-ethnic fast food outlets. The idea was to remove the hegemony of identity symbols from national flags, and replace it with a representation that integrates the paradox of an increasingly international culture, which seeks and finds its own identity symbols in the mixture of signs that carry within them, as a simulacrum, the cultural identity of a place and a relationship with the global economy.

Ph. OKNO Studio