Faenza, Italy

Can a small town capture the energy of the international art world?

Say Bilbao and the market in the same breath and you have what most cities see as cultural policy in contemporary art. After the Guggenheim Bilbao successfully transformed its local tourist industry, small towns all over Europe started erecting their own kunsthalles and museums to attract the better-heeled cultural tourist to their remote part of the countryside. Or lacking the money for a building, they’ve set up art fairs or biennials to cut a little of the energy (and money) of the international art scene for themselves. Rather than trying to erect a museum, costly and slow to the say the least, or attract an art fair, which is damn near impossible in this oversaturated market, or even start a Biennial (there are over 200 slouching along now, their economic and spiritual power blunted), the town of Faenza has set a unique event, something with the look of an art fair but the contents of an academic conference called the Faenza Contemporary Art Festival

Not unlike any of the music festivals that dot Europe now from Glastonbury to Sonar, the curators, critics, artists, collectors, editors, and professors will show up and perform. No products for sale, very little art on display, it’s really about talking. Though Hans Ulrich Obrist seemed to invent the conversation as performance genre, Faenza hopes to be able to make what would otherwise be a stodgy conference into something with the energy of an art fair, a biennial, or music festival, with just a few less drunk lads pissing in their rose bushes.

Mission Report

Despite the declarations of some Faenza festival organizers, I had my suspicions about whether this pre-packaged festival descending on this rural village was a good idea. Talking with Matteo Zauli, the director of the only local museum, which tries to bridge ceramics and contemporary art, have been enlightening.
This is the first edition of the festival and the involvement of the local actors could be enhanced in the forthcoming years. The main disadvantage of an art conference without actual art is that talking about art without actually seeing anything becomes boring after a quarter of hour, especially if the audience is not composed of experts. In order to be popular and to be able to involve such a varied audience (kids, elderly, tourists, craftmen…) the conversation becomes inevitably trivial.
One of the unquestionable advantages of the festival was reuniting a lot of international contemporary art celebrities in a few days, and this was an attractive point for a lot of fine arts students who attended the event.
Nonetheless the questions about why choosing Faenza (and not another town) and about the sensibleness of employing art as key of development of a destination remain open as we didn’t find evidences that strongly motivated the way this operation has been organized.
In order to develop this kind of research I think it may be interesting to assess the assets of other towns where “cultural festivals” have gained ground for the last years and evaluate the effects in the local economy and wellbeing of the population.
Patricia Buffa