Dear Friends,
sorry for cross-posting.
some time has passed since, in 2012, we launched the "La Cura" project when I was diagnosed with a brain cancer. The action turned out to become an emergent, worldwide participatory performance aimed at redefining the word "cure", bringing it out of hospitals, administrations, bureaucracies and the ingenuities of e-health approaches, and bringing it back into society.
Thousands participated (also many of you all, for which I thank you).
We were all able to draw upon the rich culture of biopolitics, antipsychiatry, feminism and gender studies to collectively build an active reflection to confront with the separation, encoding, privatisation, access and inequalities of current medical approaches, putting in place new models and patterns in which health is a commons built upon an high-quality relational environment which is inclusive, accessible, caring, cooperative.
Dozens of publications have been produced, and thousands of artworks, texts, poems, images, videos, artistic performances, articles on major news headlines, and more, establishing a wide, active, trans-disciplinary action which connected arts, design, sciences, humanities and the everyday life of thousands of people in the search and enactment of new ways in which to "cure" by considering people's health something which we all can actively participate to, using everything from advanced technologies, knowledge, relations, presence and hugs ;)
All of this has enormous implications on the economies and power-schemes of health. In the age of data, quantified self and of hyperconnectivity, this is also a metaphor for processes which can happen elsewhere in society, to confront with complex issues such as education, energy, finance, labour, and more.
To continue the process, we have transformed "La Cura" into a book:
The book, for now, is only in Italian, and we're trying to get it translated in other languages, as well (and please do propose if you want to collaborate to the translation: it would be a great help)
In the objective of the participative performance, the book also has a strong online presence built through the fact that we're collaboratively designing the ways in which this type of action could be replicated in many other forms and in relation to multiple other domains.
We're working with schools, universities, student groups, rural communities, citizen groups, activists, children, elderly and, well, many other types of people. In Italy, for now, but we are starting the process of momentum building so that all of these efforts can lead to international, interconnected results which we can all work with to provoke impact and change.
Here are just three of the many initiatives which are already going on:
We've started from education. In the knowledge ("Conoscienza") section of the website (
http://www.la-cura.it) we are assembling the materials for the education program which is being contributed by all participants to the action. We currently have materials on interface politics; biopolitics; food; energy; data; privacy; autobiography; self-representation; building collaborative knowledge-bases; handling large-scale emergent p2p communication processes; fighting cancer while maintaining autonomy, dignity and self-determination; social networks strategy for activists; filter bubbles; the evolution of medicine; information overload and health; open data and medicine; open science; the implications of algorithmic patients. And some more.
All the materials and knowledge are currently hosted on GitHub (you can go to the links from the website), as we're setting up alternatives which can be more independent, sharable, replicable, and free.
Why am I telling you all of this?
For a number of reasons. The first of which is a call for participation.
First: there are many of you on the list who do things which would be of fundamental importance for the process.
We ask you all: if all of this resonanates whith what you do and care about, please get in touch! We will find a way to do things together.
Second: let's figure out how to create momentum internationally. We are working on translations (of the book, of the knowledge base, of the workshops materials, of the software tools... ), and on getting people, organisations, schools, universities, institutions, governments involved, in Europe and in the rest of the world. There are no fixed models for this: we get in touch and create something meaningful together, then we make it happen and release the knowledge so that if it is useful of helpful for other people they can repurpose, reuse, expand, change it as they please, as long as they share the knowledge and tools in these accessible ways.
If you are interested in creating any of the workshops, in creating one, in creating some other kind of action: please, get in touch!
Third: a festival in Bologna.
An incredible thing is happening: a 3 day festival is forming practically autonomously in Bologna on La Cura, and it will take place on July 8-10.
When we decided to do a little participatory reading marathon of the La Cura book in Bologna and we got in touch with the city administration and with some of the local organisations to make it happen, momentum started building up autonomously, so much that everything has grown into a full-blown festival lasting 3 full days and which is gathering contributions in ways which are completely emergent.
This is truly a thing of beauty for us, as we don't have any control on it, and we're just welcoming people in to make sure that their proposals fit into the objectives and values of La Cura. A city based committee has formed for this process, and this as well is an open collaboration, so that anyone is welcome there, too.
So, if you want to join in to that, as well, please do and get in touch.
And, Fourth: a summer school.
We have reached an agreement with Milan's Design Triennale and with the "Condividi la Conoscenza" event to host an artistic production which will reflect upon the idea of a "new sensibility": the possibility to imagine a new sense, along Gregory Bateson's idea of art as that process which creates the aesthetics, the sense of beauty, for what "interconnects", for "difference". We will create the artwork collaboratively in a summer school in Florence, with the collaboration of ISIA Design, the design university where we teach, and the result will be exhibited in downtown Milan at the Triennale's locations.
More info about this will follow soon, but if you're interested already feel free to get in touch.
That's a lot of things: sorry for the long message.
I hope this finds your interest and that you will consider participating in any form you can.
All the best to you all!
Salvatore
--