authors
NAC (NewAgency Collective)
Rachela Abbate – Frankfurt Am Main, 1971, artist, Italy – Germany
Emma Houlihan – Ireland, artist, Ireland – Sweden
Giuseppe Pansa – Italy, artist
Angela Zurlo – 1982, Foggia, artist, Roma – Milano
contribution
NAC at Piazza Sant’Oronzo, 30 September, 2011
documentation material of participatory public art, map
received 30.09.11 special project for Default Masterclass in Residence Ramdom Association – Archiviazioni.org
notes
News Agency Collective is focused on deconstructing all forms media and aims to create a space forthought and conversation around the media and its relationship to government. In mapping sites of influence, creating ‘clouds’ of information through dialogue and conversation and utilising the power of the performative gesture NAC attempts to map these invisible relationships of power, control and the governments infiltration of knowledge and information. Knowledge and information are key elements of democracy and provides citizens with the power to make decisions around policy. For this reason the flow of information should be guaranteed, uncensored and provide differing opinions and points of view from all strata. NAC has observed that over the last 16 years in Italy the For this reason media become more and more an instrument of control and manipulation; for power.
In Italy we find remarkable example how media is influencing knowledge and the participation on politics. The Prime Minister Berlusconi owns several newspaper, magazines and TV stations. Media become a wall of filtered and distorted information influencing the public opinion.
Because of the strong influence and authority of media a space of thinking independently in an alternative way is almost absent. Newspaper antagonize the Italian tradition of the “Piazza” is a place of interaction, information flow and social practicing which becomes weaker and meaningless. With the participating public art project News Agency we tried to rethink the meaning of information by deconstruction. To deconstruct physically a news paper brings straight to the essential elements of information: words, advertisements and pictures. Handing out the cut words next to the news agency incites people to ask and to discuss about politic and information.
Description:
Next to a news agency in the centre square Piazza Sant’Oronzo is set up a table, a chair with a large box in which are collected cut words out of the newspapers. Next to the cut pieces are laying newspaper of different political tendencies. One person is sitting behind the table cutting paper stripes in single words. On the floor another participant is cutting blocks of word out of the newspaper in a way that only the images remain, shown on a cardboard next to the table.
Here some Statements of the persons who choose words. MAPPING the News Agencies:
If newspaper is as a symbol of control, political power, the news agencies in the city symbolizes the distribution and the net knot of information flow. The action above described should be repeated on the central news agencies in Lecce in a way to highlight in a map not only the information flow but also a map of deconstruction the information symbol and create by this way an interactive space of information building. The map shows both: the information wall and the information flow.
