From April 8th to 10th, 2024, Drugo more is hosting a workshop The Invented Institution – Hommage to Franco Rotelli. This gathering is inspired by the legacy of Franco Rotelli and the innovative paths of care that emerged in Trieste in the context of the deinstitutionalization movement, exploring the rich intersections of cultural practices and social care.

Program is held in English and is open to the public, with free admission.

In 1988, Franco Rotelli (1942-2023) proposed the ‘Invented Institution‘ as a strategy to persist the institutional experience of Trieste, where, following the abolition of asylums led by Franco Basaglia, the process of radical imagination of other forms of care led to a profound re-signification of welfare in general. Specifically, new community care services for people with mental health problems were implemented in the 1970s, and then – throughout the 1980s – cultural laboratories, housing projects and labour cooperatives were set up in a social-public partnership to support the social rights of people in situations of vulnerability, breaking beyond the boundaries of the psychiatric discipline. In the 1990s, this process of radical institutional design reached the rest of the health system and welfare in general. The transversality of this endeavour makes it significant in the field of radical institutional practices in general and specifically in the contemporary challenges of radical cultural practice.

Starting from a shared reading of Rotelli’s text – considering its shortcomings or contradictions, as well as the potentialities and the openings it affords – the participants will engage in a collective discussion on the practice of art and culture for social and institutional change today. They will be asking themselves at which extent and how the mental health critique of Franco Rotelli can be a counterpart for our social, political and cultural action.

Franscesco Salvini (Pantxo Ramas) from Conferenza Basaglia and Valeria Graziano, DAAD Lecturer at Institute for Applied Theatre Studies, Justus-Liebig University, Giessen, are facilitators of the workshop.

Participants: Sanja Bojanić, executive director of the Center for Advanced Studies for Southeast Europe (CAS SEE); Claudia Delso Carreira, activist and consultant at Barcelona Research Institute (IDRA); Janna Graham, Co-Director of the forthcoming Centre for Institutional Analysis at Goldsmiths University where she leads the BA Curating; Gabriel Hensche, School of Commons at the Zurich University of the Arts (CH); Lepa Mladjenović, activist and co-founder of Women in Black; Luca Negrogno, Gian Franco Minguzzi Institution of the Metropolitan City of Bologna; Bojana Piškur, curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana; Ana Rodriguez Armendariz, researcher and cultural worker; Mirela Travar, coordinator of Operation City, Zagreb; Irene Turiel García, primary care doctor in Asturias and activist.

PROGRAMME:

8th April 

Arrivals

15 – 18 – Presentations round & Introductions

9th April 

10 – 13 – Collective translation of The Invented Institution

14 – 16 -Theoretical inputs & discussion

10th April 

10 – 13 – Collective translation of The Invented Institution part 2

14 – 16  – Final discussion