Who is the competition aimed at and what it asks to reflect on

Superblast is aimed at artists, thinkers, creatives, activists who have the desire to lead change, imagine and redesign the places of culture, for a more sustainable future in the era of climate change through the construction of common relationships and projects. After having explored the relationship between man and the environment in the first edition, which collected more than 700 applications from 48 countries, Superblast II falls in the history of the places and in the time we live, reflecting on the theme of the trace: how past and future coexist in the present? What to learn from the crisis, from the processes of collapse and recovery? What will remain for future generations in the face of the infinite stratification that characterizes the time we live in?

The details to participate

The call for the selection of residences is free and open to adult participants - under 40 - resident in Italy and abroad, individuals or in groups, who they practice artistic disciplines of different nature: sculpture, painting, sound and new media art, performance, choreographic and relational practices, workshop-based projects.

It is possible to participate in the competition from 13 January until 1 March 2022 by following the instructions on www.superblast.it.

The selection will be made by an international jury composed of contemporary art curators, composed of Andrea Lissoni, artistic director Haus der Kunst in Munich, Chiara Parisi , director of the Center Pompidou of Metz, Elena Magini, curator at the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato, Caterina Molteni, assistant curator at the MAMbo of Bologna who will evaluate, for each candidate, both the project he intends to develop at Manifattura Tabacchi, and the portfolio and curriculum vitae.

Dates, appointments and benefits

On 24 April 2022, on the Manifattura Tabacchi and NAM - Not a Museum channels, the artists selected for the residences that will take place from May to July 2022. Each artist will have 5,000 euros available for the production of their work, a studio and accommodation for the period of residence. The first scheduled appointment will be a workshop dedicated to exploring the place and the reference context.

The six works created during the residences will then flow into a collective exhibition which will take place in September 2022 at the premises of Manifattura Tabacchi and in a publication, edited by Nero Editions. The publishing house dedicated to art, criticism and contemporary culture, together with Studio Studio Studio, the laboratory founded from Edoardo Tresoldi, is a partner of Superblast II.

Integrating container and content in a context of urban regeneration

The questions posed by the announcement assume greater relevance in relation to the environment that the artists in residence will encounter in Manifattura Tabacchi, as part of one of the most important urban regeneration projects in Italy, and its program dedicated to the art that takes form through NAM - Not A Museum. Inserted in a hybrid and transforming context , the concept of non-museum stimulates experimentation in terms of spaces and relationships: it integrates container and content, unhinging existing models of cultural production and making use of a multipurpose space that links cultural and social dimensions, promoting the transformative power of art in today's society.

An identity processing device

The Superblast project represents an innovative formula of artist residences, which, by promoting the intersection between contemporary art and the entrepreneurial, cultural and artisan fabric of the territory, also becomes an identity processing device.

A critical, informal and non-competitive stage

The residency program offers a critical, informal and non-competitive environment that places the enhancement of artistic practice at the center of an ecosystem of relationships, with the city and with creativity. Curated by Caterina Taurelli Salimbeni, NAM - Not A Museum sees in contemporary art a tool to stimulate new sensitivities and ways of knowing and intends to bring together interdisciplinary languages to understand critically the present and imagine new possibilities to inhabit it.

Unexplored tracks rethought in a traveling theater

Superblast II invites artists to create an ideal stage, going to find the traces of the world that have remained unexplored, questioning what they can become, becoming itinerant theater, fantastic map and continuous rethinking of the materials of the past to prepare for the future.