The “Spazio Instabile” project transforms a newsstand in Siena into an art gallery

Agathe Rosa, Giacomo Ricci, Martina Marolda And Nicola Machetti they are the artists behind the collective Making Local Mind, born in Siena in 2015. Their objective is to search for spaces, contexts and situations in which to activate processes of cultural contamination, inviting artists to create site-specific works and to involve the public as part of the curatorial project called Unstable Space.

The artist started the initiative in 2020 Laura Pugno with The wait, housed in an industrial building under the Ponte di Spugna di Colle di Val d’Elsa, in the province of Siena.
And in the city, a few years later, Unstable Space has identified another place where it can take shape, the newsstand in the Petriccio district in the Terrazze area (abandoned for thirty years) which hosts the work until 15 June 2024 Daily for the Daily of the artist Clarissa Baldassarri (Civitanova Marche, 1994).

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Clarissa Baldassarri for the Terrazze newsstand in Siena

Daily for the Daily, the site specific project conceived by Baldassarri for the Sienese newsstand intends to renew the exchange with the inhabitants of the neighborhood who, knowingly or not, will be protagonists creating content transmitted on the display set up in the space.
Through recoded Artificial Intelligence software (thanks to the intervention of the information engineer Simone Esposito) everything that happens near the newsstand is filmed and returned in the form of descriptive text on the screen, mending the link between the kiosk and the passer-by. A relationship that is strengthened thanks also to the exit of Daily for the Daily, a paper publication that collects the documentation produced by Artificial Intelligence, acting as a spokesperson for collective everyday life. These extracts then flow into a small newspaper, which will be distributed in the neighborhood’s shops throughout the period of the exhibition. So the newsstand, thanks to the artistic project, returns to being a newsstand.

The Terrazze newsstand in Siena: from abandoned kiosk to art gallery

With the intervention of Clarissa Baldassarri, an urban regeneration process is underway for the Terrazze newsstand which includes a partial restoration of the small building and its redevelopment as a space serving the community and a cultural centre, in collaboration with the local association Mint Yellow. “From the experience of Spazio Instabile, which functions as a temporary container capable of re-activating a space in order to bring it back to the attention of a community, a new independent exhibition space will be born, an artist run space with a name and its own identity very precise“, explains Giacomo Ricci of Making Local Mind. “At the end of June, once Clarissa Baldassarri’s project has been concluded and after a light renovation of the newsstand, a program of contemporary art exhibitions, installations, interventions and actions will begin (probably in September/October 2024) which we will organize in collaboration with curators, artists and other independent spaces”.

The future of “Spazio Instabile”. Word to the Fare Mente Locale collective

Meanwhile, the project continues to search for new spaces to reactivate: “We have decided that Spazio Instabile will become a biennial event, so the third episode will take shape in 2026”, explains the collective ad Artribune. “This allows us to take the right time to develop a careful analysis of the territory in search of the spaces that interest us most and continue with the nomadism that characterizes the project. We already have some ideas on the type of space to tackle in the next episode, but for now they are only hypotheses. Once the space to work on has been identified, the artist will be invited.”

Valentina Muzi

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