Archives: Attività

Inhalatorium is a site-specific artwork by artist Cezary Poniatowski, awarded the 23rd Premio Ermanno Casoli, curated by Jakub Gawkowski and Marcello Smarrelli. The artwork was realized at the Elica Group Polska plant in Jelcz-Laskowice, Poland, on the occasion of its 20th anniversary.

Inhalatorium is a large-scale installation composed of several sculptural elements in metal, developed and realized in active collaboration with Elica employees, in line with the tradition of the Premio Ermanno Casoli, whose primary goal is to promote dialogue between art and business.

Conceived on the plant’s terrace with a view over the production lines, the work serves as both an artistic intervention and a shared communal space, transforming the area into a surreal, hybrid environment.

Cezary Poniatowski is known for transforming everyday objects and materials into sculptural compositions that draw on the histories, emotions, and memories embedded in material culture. In Inhalatorium, he engages directly with the materials sourced from the site, the rhythms of industrial production, and with the people who use the workspace each day.

At the heart of the installation stands a majestic, enigmatic figure, an anthropomorphic filter embodying air, the essence of Elica’s production and technological vision. Crafted from raw steel and punctuated with small organic forms, the sculpture references art-historical strategies for embodying abstract concepts, creating a tension between the artificial and the natural. Surrounded by greenery and incorporating elements of a fountain, the figure transforms the factory’s communal space into a setting that is at once clinical and fantastic, functional and metaphysical. While the materials remain rooted in their industrial origins, their reconfiguration opens up a space that defies the logic of production, merging machine aesthetics with unsettling, hybrid forms characteristic of Poniatowski’s practice.

The title Inhalatorium refers to historical therapeutic sites once common in Lower Silesia, a region renowned for its sanatoria, dedicated to treating respiratory illnesses, where healing was believed to occur through the inhalation of saline vapors. The theme of breath—understood as a physiological act, a means of care and circulation—is a powerful metaphor that forms the conceptual backbone of the project.

The installation was realized through a collaborative process that actively engaged Elica employees. Poniatowski’s artistic vision was combined with the technological expertise of engineers, technicians, and skilled workers, using the factory’s own infrastructure and materials. In addition, small cross-departmental groups were invited to contribute feedback throughout the process, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration.

In the final phase of the project, the work was activated through a series of breathing workshops for employees — conceived by the artist in collaboration with sector experts — which echo the central themes of the installation and transforming the space into one not only to be observed but, above all, to be physically inhabited and experienced as a daily practice.

Inhalatorium is an “air sculpture” that not only references the advanced air circulation systems developed by Elica but also invites reflection on how invisible forces—like air—are shaped, managed, and reimagined by humans throughout history.

The powerful intersection between art and industry experienced in this project recalls an important historical precedent in Poland during the 1960s and 1970s: the pioneering collaborations between artists and industry that gave rise to some of the most experimental and interdisciplinary forms of public art, exhibitions, and symposia. These initiatives regarded the factory not merely as a site of labor, but as a space for artistic imagination and civic engagement—a practice reactivated by Inhalatorium in a contemporary industrial context.

The initiative is organized under the patronage of the Italian Cultural Institute in Kraków and the Polish Institute in Rome.

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“Fiori diversi al naturale” is a site-specific artwork by artist Agostino Iacurci, the winner of the 22nd edition of Premio Ermanno Casoli, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, in the headquarters of Airforce, a company belonging to the Elica group, in Cerreto d’Esi (AN).

The artwork was accomplished through a series of actions that actively involved the entire company population – around 100 people with heterogeneous professional profiles, without any organisational distinction – transforming a large portion of the plant, previously only used as a transit area, into a place to stop and meet.

The title of the work, Fiori diversi al naturale (meaning ‘different flowers in the wild’), is a nod to Francesco Mingucci (1570-1642), a painter and cartographer from Pesaro renowned for portraying the Marche region in the 17th century. A forerunner in the study of nature and its correlation with culture, Mingucci depicted the local landscape by highlighting the interaction and continuity between urban and natural elements, as well as between architecture and rock formations.

Landscape and architecture are also central themes in Iacurci’s research. In his artistic practice, he uses painting, sculpture, drawing, light and sound, heterogeneously combining various media to create immersive installations engaged in an intimate dialogue with places. The result is visionary spaces in which stories, personal memories, literary references and vernacular tales freely converge. His large-scale works, which have decreed his international success, take the form of expanded painting interventions, an original reinterpretation of the so-called ‘Architettura parlante’ (meaning ‘speaking architecture’).

During the workshop, theoretical and practical sessions followed one another, as introduced by a conversation between Agostino Iacurci and Marcello Smarrelli on the themes of the project. The lecture by design historian and curator Domitilla Dardi, who related the stories of scientific and fantastic herbariums created by botanists and artists through the ages, was very inspiring. Based on the suggestions received, combined with their own imagination and experiences, each participant drew a picture of a flower, contributing to the creation of a herbarium conceived by the artist as a collective portrait of the company’s population. Like a frieze, the herbarium runs along the walls housing a large wall painting, painted by employee groups, depicting the flowers in this garden. The installation is completed by sculptural elements – the planters with their seats – designed by the artist with the contribution of STARTT – an architecture and land transformation studio.

The garden created in the new Airforce plant becomes a tangible symbol of their common commitment and their desire to take root and grow together as a cohesive and collaborative community.

Switch The Rules is the title of the exhibition curated by Alessandro Dandini de Sylva, in which the most beautiful pictures of the homonymous photographic contest, promoted by Elica and FEC, were exhibited in the Spazio Cerere from 25th to 27th October, inside the Rome Art Week program.

The contest, inspired on the Elica advertising campaign “Upside Down” dedicated to the new aspiration hob NikolaTesla Switch, challenged the participants to free their creativity and present surprising images on Instagram, capable of modifying the usual points of view. Thousands participants fully grasp the essence of the project sharing on their Instragram profiles high quality content with #SwitchTheRules and @elicarianuova.

The prestigious jury composed of Cristina Casoli (FEC President), Francesco Casoli (Elica President); Maria Claudia Clemente (architect, Studio Labics); Fabrizio Crisà (designer); Alessandro Dandini de Sylva (Artistic Director Malaspina Foundation); Rä Di Martino (artist), Marcello Smarrelli (FEC artistic director) selected, for the exhibition, the most interesting and original creations among the thousands gathered during the contest.

During the inauguration was finally announced the winner, Pietro Bucciarelli, aka @buccinson, with the pictures titled “Find something”, awarded with a voucher for the purchase of photographic material.

HAND#4 is the title of the workshop conceived and organised by Francesca Grilli with the aim of making the 25 students who took part in it to understand how one’s personality can be represented by the body, thereby encouraging a more instinctive and free reading.

Indeed, the activity, which is structured as a workshop devoted to the reading of the body, focuses on the interpretation of the lines of the hand, hence the title Hand. Our hands speak volumes about us: they are one of the body parts that are most used to communicate, they seal new knowledge and agreements, they are perfect tools for working. The first part of the day saw a first stage in which the participants learned to use colour in order to take their handprints and have a complete overview of all its lines. In the second stage, we moved on to the study of the hand itself, focusing on shape, colour, softness, feel and elasticity. In the final stage, the participants read each other’s hand: the different stories were collected in a soundtrack which, together with the handprint, makes part of a collection of sounds and images created by the artist and the participants.

The workshop enabled the students who took part in it to work on the value of change, the breaking of patterns and the importance of communication as a necessary tool for teamwork.

HAND#4 is part of the course, completely in English, held by Chiara Paolino, a researcher in the field of Corporate Organization and author, together with Marcello Smarrelli and Deborah Carè, of the book Innovare l’impresa con l’arte. Il metodo della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (Innovating enterprises through art. The Fondazione Ermanno Casoli method), published in 2018 by the EGEA Publishing House.

Visionair is the name of the installation that was carried out by the architecture firm Labics (Maria Claudia Clemente, Francesco Isidori) and curated by Marcello Smarrelli; it was presented by Elica and FEC at the latest edition of Milan Fuorisalone, within the exhibition INTERNI Exhibition House in Motion, which was open to visitors on April 16-28, 2018 at the suggestive venue of Università degli Studi di Milano, Ca’ Granda. This place was designed by Florence architect Filarete and was one of the first Renaissance buildings in town; it was pivotal for the development of Northern Italy architecture.

Visionair is a ‘warning object’, a ‘small’ architecture which was born by a reflection on the topic of the point of view capsizing. This concept underpins the latest experimentations carried out by Elica. It is installed in Cà Granda courtyard, which it borrows the geometrical and spatial matrix from, and it is composed by a wooden pyramidal structure coated with a reflecting material that, as people get closer, reveals and unveils the presence of an unusual space; thus, visitors are carried to a surreal and capsized dimension. The action of crossing a threshold recalls the home imaginary, cozy and protective; on the other hand, it is also a metaphor of a big door that allows to reaching an unknown and suggestive universe that is shaped thanks to the embedded video installation. Such installation involves visitors in an experience which is both emotional and original.

Inside Visionair, as a matter of fact, an embracing space created by Giancarlo Soldi is projected on the floor and reflected on the side walls; this space has welcomed plenty of visitors and projected them to a visionary dimension, by giving them a unique immersive experience. As in a kaleidoscope, internal video images have been decomposed, capsized and recomposed in new shapes, as they created an unexpected tale. The choice of using mirroring materials created an abstract image of the exterior, as changing as the light intensity reflected from the exterior, constantly depending on time and climate variations.

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Elica Love(s) Difference is a project by the artist Michelangelo Pistoletto carried out together with the cultural association he founded, namely Love Difference, and curated by Marcello Smarrelli.

“Love Difference” is a name, a slogan, a manifesto. The movement combines the universality of art with the idea of political transnationality and focuses its activity on the Mediterranean area, as it reflects the problems of global society. On the one hand, the differences among ethnic groups, religions and cultures are the cause of terrible conflicts; on the other hand, a dramatic situation is produced by the supremacy of powers that generate uniformity and level differences (…) Uniformity and difference are the two opposite terms that represent the maximum conflictual tension in the current global reality. A policy that encourages ‘loving differences’ is essential for the development of new perspectives in the entire social structure” (from Manifesto Love Difference, 2002, in “Journal 7”, Cittadellarte, Biella 2002, page 47).

The neon signs featured in the installation illuminated the façade of the company’s headquarters in Fabriano for over a year. The phrase “Love Difference”, which was echoed in 12 different languages, was an invitation to develop respect and mutual understanding between different cultures, a principle and an ideal on which to base our society, but also a reference to Elica and its branches all over the world. The project highlighted and strengthened the close collaboration between Elica/Fondazione Ermanno Casoli and Michelangelo Pistoletto/Love Difference, which was successfully launched during Breathe Difference, a programme of exhibitions and workshops held at the company’s showroom in Milan during EXPO 2015.

Mass age, message, mess age is the title of the workshop organised by artist Elena Mazzi with a group of fifteen students of the Master’s Degree in Economy and Management of Art and Cultural Heritage of the Sole 24 Ore Business School, held at the Milan headquarters in via Monte Rosa. On this occasion, the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli foundation – which has been a partner of the Sole 24 Ore Business School for years – proposed Mass age, message, mess age, during which the participants, assisted by the curator and the company trainer, had the opportunity to experience the workshop carried out in the Elica company, which was at the base of the project that won the artist the 2018 Ermanno Casoli Prize. Indeed, the goal was to enable the students to have a training experience in a business environment, thereby analysing its contents and modalities.

The Mass age, message, mess age workshop, launched by the artist in 2015 as a work in progress to shed light on the dynamics underlying communication strategies, analyses in depth the transmission, reception, distortion and processing of messages. To do this, the students extracted words belonging to the everyday language of management from their own team building and classroom experiences in order to compile a glossary which would be used in a later moment. Once they had been divided into groups, they created devices that could facilitate or hinder verbal communication through the creative, albeit functional assembly of objects made of various materials, including recycled components of the devices that lie at the heart of Elica production: cooker hoods.

The chosen words and the resulting devices were used in a performance inspired by the game of Chinese whispers, which perfectly conveys how a message can be distorted, confused or interrupted.

Accidenti (Golly) is the title of the workshop conceived by artist Alessandro Dandini de Sylva and carried out together with fifteen participants, namely the teachers, researchers and project managers of the ISTUD – the most relevant private Business School of Italy – supervised by a curator and a trainer.

The workshop, which was based upon a study on photographic mistakes, was entitled Accidenti (Golly). By use of a series of experiments carried out with the avail of instant film, the participants delved into the topics of control, randomness, abstraction and the representation of landscapes. The activities revolved around the simplicity of visual perception and a quasi-artisanal printing technique, which underlay a deep reflection on the nature of photography. The resulting abstract landscapes are the outcome of a process aimed at questioning, breaking and overturning the eternal relationship among photography, reality and presentation.

The workshop ended with an exhibition featuring the framed photographs, which make part of a single, multifaceted artwork that reminds participants of the importance of working together without forgetting one’s individual background, which is paramount in a highly professional and intellectual organisation such as ISTUD.

Sillage is a project that artist Ettore Favini conceived for Elica and FEC on the occasion of
EXPO Milano 2015; it was presented inside the Save the Children pavilion to support their initiatives on education and food security.

The project title, Sillage, is inspired by the perfume terminology: it denotes the scent that perfumes leave all around us, which overcomes boundaries and spreads to the surrounding environment. In line with this definition, Sillage was developed in several steps: the first one took place within the EXPO Save the Children’s Village community vegetable garden, where famous Elica’s hood models (Audrey, Edith, Seashell) were turned into vases to plant barely, oat, almond, fennel, and anise: easily cultivable plants, which are related to the issues dear to Save the Children and, more generally, to EXPO 2015– Feed the Planet, Energy for Life. Once the plants grew, they were transformed into essences to create a special scent for Marie, Elica’s scent diffusor, for which Ettore Favini created a special cover by processing a still life image made by the vegetables composing the scent.

Sillage, the Marie limited edition for Save the Children with its original scent, was presented with a performance that took place in Palazzo Visconti in Milan. A part of the income was devolved to Save the Children’s Every One Campaign, which aims at fighting child mortality in the neediest areas of the Earth.

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Hand is the title of the working class conceived and developed by artist Francesca Grilli together with a group of 35 Visual Arts students of the Academy of Fine Arts of Urbino. The class was held at the Academy headquarters within the framework of the Arte, tra antropologia e orientamento sinestetico (Art at the crossroads of anthropology and synesthetic orientation) project launched in 2016 by the Visual Arts Department and conceived by Professor Massimo Vitangeli. This peculiar educational programme has seen the cooperation of curators and artists such as Filippo Berta, Angel Moya Garcia, Andrea Nacciarriti and Eugenio Viola, who worked on a series of activities aimed at involving participants.

The working class, which took place over two days, began on Monday 30^th October with the public conference entitled Innovare l’impresa con l’arte. Il metodo della Fondazione Ermanno Casoli (Modernising businesses by use of art. The Ermanno Casoli Foundation method), where artistic director Marcello Smarrelli presented the activity of the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli. The afternoon saw the artist speak about her career and works, as well as explain her poetics and technique in order to contextualise the practical activities of the following day, which were structured like a workshop on palm reading, hence the name HAND.

Francesca Grilli provided the students with the possibility to experiment with the part of her research that strays from verbal communication and focuses on the body, with the aim of enabling students to reflect on how one’s personality can be reflected by it, thereby prompting a freer, more instinctive reading. The participants learned how to take hand impressions in order to have a complete vision of all their lines and study their shape, colour, softness, and elasticity. The artist was helped by archetype expert Guido Rossetti, who supervised and guided all chirometry exercises. The final stage of the workshop saw the students read each other’s palm using the basic palm-reading techniques they had learned during the day.

The two intense days at the crossroads of art and training ended with the with the official public inauguration of the Faster than Light installation (2015), where Francesca Grilli focused on the phases delimiting existence, childhood, and old age, thereby discovering the presence of magical creatures enabling us to subvert society.

The working class continued throughout four weekly meetings in which the students could interact with Francesca Grilli and continued recording their stories,  became then five audio tracks forming a unique sound artwork intitled HANDS installed inside the Academy at the beginning of December and signed by all participants and the artist herself.

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Breathe Difference – Aria Nuova dal Terzo Paradiso is a project by artist Michelangelo Pistoletto and the cultural association he founded, Love Difference. On the occasion of EXPO Milano 2015, Elica and FEC presented this project at their showroom in Milan.

In 2003 Pistoletto, who is a protagonist of the “impoverished art” movement, wrote the Third heaven manifesto and drew its symbol: the New Infinite Sign, which is a representation of the infinite mathematical sign. This is the ideal overcoming of the conflict in which nature and artifice are opposed in modern society. On the occasion of the exhibition, Pistoletto created a new version of Nuovo Segno di Infinito in mirroring steel, which will be hung inside Elica’s showroom, creating a reflection trick. Pistoletto’s artwork ideally introduced the issues that the series of workshops and meetings, under the title Breathe Difference – Different kinds of feeding, dealt with from June 19th to June 27th in the showroom. This space was turned into a real ideas lab with the purpose of investigating the relation of mankind, environment and resource exploitation, EXPO 2015 central topics.

The laboratories’ activities resulted in a collective artwork, which was the result of the working days that more than xx young people from all over the world participated to, who answered a call that Love Difference launched, as they coordinated every activity.

Hand #2 is the title that artist Francesca Grilli gave to the workshop she and 26 Sole 24 Ore’s Business School students conceived, along with the curator and the trainer. This workshop took place at Mudec – Museo delle Culture in Milan. On this occasion, Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, which has been partner with Sole 24 Ore Business school since 2012, re-proposed Hand, a project that was carried out in 2015 with a group of entrepreneurs, in order to give students the educational experience that was developed at business level, by tackling and analyzing its contents and modalities.

The workshop had the structure of a body-reading laboratory with a special focus on the hand lines interpretation: hence the title, Hand. Our hands tell a lot about ourselves: they are the body parts people mostly use to communicate; they seal new meetings and agreements; they are perfect working tools. The activity developed in two parts: during the first one, participants learned to take a hand print, through colors, so as they had an overall vision of its lines. During the second part, a hand study was carried out: shape, color, softness, touching, and elasticity. The artist, supported by a palmistry expert, aimed at making participants aware of how a person’s personality can be represented by their body, by encouraging a more instinctive and free reading. During the workshop’s final step, through the basic palmistry elements learnt during the working day, participants exchanged their mutual hand readings: the different experiences that participants lived was recorded in a soundtrack that represents the collective work that artist and participants created: this was the workshop final outcome, namely a  sound and image installation realized by artist and participants.

The experience helped at working on the value of changes and paradigm breaks, as well as on the importance of communication within a company to improve the team work.

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Musica da cucina is the title of the concert-performance that musician Fabio Bonelli conceived; it took place on December 18th, 2014 at Elica’s Headquarters in Fabriano.

The project was conceived by Fabio Bonelli, who is the founder of the creative lab People from the Mountains, of Morbegno, Sondrio province. The project was inspired by the idea of capturing sounds from a kitchen, creating a sound carpet upon which a guitar, a clarinet, an accordion and a voice weaved intimate melodies. The result was a suggestive, unusual music, an ethereal and hypnotic sound body upon which familiar and evocative sounds are inserted: water flowing, a boiler whistle, the cutlery noise on plates, and the glass jingle.

The concert-performance was then turned into an intimate and direct dialogue with the audience, which actively participated by playing pots and kitchen items and living a one-of-a-kind experience.

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Middle-Earth. A journey inside Elica is the title of the project that photographers Fabio Barile and Francesco Neri realized for Elica, curated by Marcello Smarrelli and Alessandro Dandini de Sylva. This is a commission to the two photographers to realize a reportage in three offices of the Elica Group around the world: Querétaro (Mexico), Shengzhou (China) and Fabriano (Italy). The aim is giving complexity back to a multinational whose definition goes beyond the “company” one. It is a context in which people working there have their own identity, which the photographers’ lens investigates without rhetoric. Thirty shots showing faces, working spaces and landscape characterizing the places where the plants are located, document the constant interaction and dialogue of photographers, characters, and setting.

The shots were exhibited at Elica’s Showroom on the occasion of Fuorsisalone 2014, a collateral event to Milan Salone del Mobile; the arrangement was curated by the architecture firm stARTT.

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Esercizi di stile#2 is the title of the workshop created by artist Diego Marcon that involved a group of thirty-six students of the Sole 24 Ore Business School supervised by the curator and the business trainer, which took place at the Bicocca Hangar in Milan. Such occasion saw the Ermanno Casoli Foundation – which has been a partner of the Sole 24 Ore Business School since 2012 – replicate Esercizi di stile#1, which was carried out in 2015 with twenty entrepreneurs from Marche, so as to enable the students to make a training experience which had already been tested inside a company, thereby analysing similar contents and methods.

As the title suggests, Esercizi di Stile #2 was a writing experiment: building on the book of the same name by Raymond Queneau, the participants were told a brief “starting anecdote” from which to develop three variations involving language register, genre and the physical support required to write the text. The students worked within groups, and at the end of the workshop all their contributions, reworked by the artist, were used to make a fanzine in eBook format. The variations developed by the participants were read and discussed together with pop culture, contemporary literature and social communication expert Timothy Small, who stated that form is the key element for content conveyance and explained how the different languages and genres chosen for the variations influenced the meaning and spread of the very content.

The eBook file, namely a real artist book, was numbered and signed, and then given to each participant. Finally, the business trainer ended the day turning the art metaphor into actual organisational behaviours, thereby underlining the role that such type of experience plays in reinforcing innovative thinking.

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Esercizi di Stile #2

Mano d’Opera is the title of the performance concert conceived and curated by Marco Mencoboni – musician and art director of Cantar Lontano Festival – for Consorzio Marche Spettacolo (CMS), with FEC. The event took place on December 19th, 2013 at Elica’s Headquarters in Fabriano.

The core of this project is the interaction between musicians and workers: a new and visionary challenge that featured the Canalgrande Adriatic Baroque Orchestra arch quartet and involved some Elica’s employees. The stage was set up in the Elica logistic center, within a dismantled production line and transformed the environment by bringing the audience to a theatric dimension for listening.

Mano d’Opera was realized with the participation of the Nuova Musica di Macerata Association, Ancona AdriaticoMediterraneo Festival, Rossini Opera Festival, and Fondazione Symbola.

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The Wishful Map #4 is the title of the project conceived by artist Pietro Ruffo, who carried it out together with forty employees of the Distribution department of Euler Hermes Italia (belonging to the Allianz group), including office workers and executives. The curator and the business trainer supervised the works during the two-day period at the La Borghesiana Sports Centre in Rome.

The artist used a peculiar map of the world (inspired by De L’Isle Equidistant Conic, 1745) divided into twenty-four parts. Each participant was asked to work on a part by choosing a country to analyse in accordance with the five main risk assessment factors: economic risk, financial risk, commercial risk, political risk and business environment risk. The colour elements representing the analysis were placed on the examined part of the world, while the symbols representing the currency used in the analysed country were drawn at the base of each portion. The map that Pietro Ruffo made together with the employees of Euler Hermes Italia is but an artistic version of the more common risk maps where colours represent the stability level of each country, but it also uses modern art to represent the company environment.

The piece was placed in the hall of the Roman headquarters of Euler Hermes, from which it reprises the lines giving shape to its frame.

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Canzone (povera patria) is the title of a performance that FEC commissioned to Francesco Arena, on the occasion of Poiesis – Festival of poetry, art, music, cinema, and theater fifth edition, which took place in Fabriano on May 25th-27th 2012.

In the performative action, on the artist’s “order”, a worker hit with a sander a metal pole that had been installed under a Middle-Age cloister arch: this created short and long sparks, which matched the Morse’s alphabet point and line. In this way, the worker “wrote” the lyrics of Povera Patria, one of the most popular songs by Italian singer Franco Battiato. With this song, the author describes Italy in a very lucid and critical way, by expressing his scorn with harsh words (“Poor homeland! Squashed by power abuse of infamous people …”), yet launching a hope and redemption message (“It won’t change, it won’t change yes it will change, you’ll see it will change”).
The screeching of the action, which is very familiar to those who work in workshops, obliged spectators to cover their ears with their hands to mitigate the annoying noise.

With this performance, FEC paid tribute to work, as an essential component of people’s life and of a fairer society; it was also aimed at thinking of an issue that has been shaping Fabriano’s identity for years, which today has to be re-invented through new boosts and ideas.

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The Wishful Map #3 is the title of the project conceived by artist Pietro Ruffo, who carried it out together with thirty-five employees of the Banca di Credito Cooperativo of Bellegra, including office workers and executives. The curator and the business trainer supervised the works during the two-day period at the San Francesco cloister in Bellegra (Rome).

The workshop saw the artist use a 10,000 lire bill dating back to the ‘50s that was preserved in the bank offices. Such bill was drawn upon and enlarged by the participants, who then turned into a map. The next phase saw the participants place different colour elements corresponding to projections, studies, forecasts and calculations taken from a hypothetical financing plan they had drawn up so as to develop a local farm. The bill was chosen by Ruffo for the symbolical value it has for the Bellegra BCC: the thirty-two founding members of the Bellegra Cassa Rurale did so by allocating 10,000 lire each, thereby enabling the creation of a modern bank which then became a driving force in the economies of the villages of the Valle del Sacco high valley.

The resulting piece was then placed in the San Vito Romano branch to represent the values shared by the Bellegra BCC employees.

The Wishful Map project was the result of the cooperation between artist Pietro Ruffo, trainer Piero Tucci, specialised in the training and development of human resources, and the Ermanno Casoli foundation. The aim was to create a series of concept maps able to represent the identity and values of companies through a shared work of art. The companies that participated in the project include: Angelini Acraf Spa (2015), Sole24Ore Business School (2015), Euler Hermes Italia of the Allianz group (2016).

Aspiranti Aspiratori is a project that Sissi realized for Elica, based on a personal and original theory. The artist is constantly present within the company and she generates a continual, incessant osmotic exchange that creates a new identity: Organindustria, namely the company turned into the very artist’s body.

Starting from these bases, Sissi committed into re-thinking the air purification concept, a pivotal issue to Elica’s research; to do this, she had her atelier built inside the Headquarters’ Prototype Labs. The Cubatrice – that is the peculiar name that was given to her working space- is a protected, limited place, yet open for any interaction. Here, the company’s employees witnessed the artist’s artworks creation, as they turned into participants and partners of such genesis. From this delicate contamination and exchange process, drawings, collages, sculptures, and thoughts were created. The story that Sissi told has a mythology flavor and deals with the genesis of a family of ten Aspiranti Aspiratori (aspirators to be): ten potential characters whose ambition is becoming purifiers, each one with a well-defined identity and named after a key concept, consistently with its shape and functionality.

Among the ten Aspiranti Aspiratori that were designed, three were realized and exhibited, along with the animation video Casting. This video describes the aspirators’ creation and was exhibited at Elica’s Showroom on the occasion of Fuorisalone 2012, which is a collateral event to the Milan Salone del Mobile; the arrangement was curated by the architecture firm Salottobuono.
Furthermore, this project was presented to two major events promoted by FEC in collaboration with Elica: the presentation of the artist book published by Corraini that documents every procedure step, at MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, within the IX edition of the Bologna Artelibro Festival 2012; and the artist personal exhibit, held at the Aike-Dellarco Gallery in Shanghai, from July 6th to August 15th, 2013.

Aspirantiaspiratori.com

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Da bambino camminavo mettendo i piedi solo sulle mattonelle nere, ora che sono
grande quando cammino non so più su quale colore di mattonelle mettere i piedi is the title that artist Francesco Arena gave to the workshop he conceived and led. Literally, it means When I was a child I used to walk on black tiles only, now that I grew up I don’t know on which color to walk upon anymore. It involved twenty participants, including entrepreneurs, institutional representatives and young artists. It took place within the third edition of Business Meets Art – an international event dedicated to art and enterprise, which is curated by ETRARTE association, and is a chance of networking between cultural projects and business sector.

For this occasion, Arena divided the working day into 3 “exercises” that investigate the individual-memory relation, by trying to understand the way in which personal experiences and memories get lost in the collective memory flow. In the first “exercise”, participants were asked to confront with the gaze of a public figure they chose. They had to put the image in line with their own gaze. For the second one, a collective space map was realized by uniting the rooms that every participant had chosen according to the importance they had in their lives. As for the third exercise, participants chose the date of a special event in their lives and united all of them to arrange a calendar.

The artist worked side by side with the curator and the trainer and interacted with the diverse group by stimulating the reflection on collaboration, style and working method diversity through the participants’ experience as they realized a participated artwork.

Less than air is a project that artist Andrea Nacciarriti realized for Elica, on the occasion of Fuorisalone 2010, a collateral event to Milan Salone del Mobile.

The idea comes from the artist’s desire to visualize air, which is usually invisible and perceivable to the sight solely through the effects it produces when is turned into wind and the molecules pressure meets the matter. Andrea Nacciarriti, together with Elica Tech Lab –the company Research and Certification Lab- carried out a series of experiments, trying to give a shape to what is naturally invisible: making air tangible.
The attempt to make air molecules malleable and manipulable revealed to the artist the possibility of activating them and feeling their movements. They were used as a physical and conceptual potential indicator of the most unpredictable and vital “material”, to which none of us can escape.

As a witness of this long experimentation and research period, different artworks were installed inside the Elica’s Showroom. Such artworks were a sort of devices able to spread air flows in different -often surprising- ways, by modifying space perception and actively involving spectators.

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Andrea Nacciarriti website

Esercizi di stile #1 is the title that artist Diego Marcon gave to the project he conceived with twenty entrepreneurs from the Marche region; they were helped by the curator and the company trainer. The project was held at Fabriano’s Museo della Carta e della Filigrana.

Esercizi di stile #1, as the title – Style Exercises #1- suggests, was a writing experiment and was inspired by the homonymous book by Raymond Queneau. Participants were provided with a short “basic anecdote” and they had to develop three variations, according to the linguistic register, the literary genre and the physical support upon which they re-wrote the text. Experienced managers and young entrepreneurs worked in groups; once the workshop ended, every contribution was re-processed by the artist, who composed a fanzine in eBook format; a true artist book, published in a numbered series that was given to every participant. Finally, the trainer concluded the work by transposing the art metaphor into real organizational behaviors, and highlighted the value of this experience: strengthening the innovative thinking.

The workshop was carried out within the “Cult Lab – Impresa culturale spin off”, promoted by Meccano Spa, Università di Urbino “Carlo Bo” and Università di Macerata. It was a networking occasion between cultural projects and the enterprise sector, encouraging development opportunities that this meeting might lead to.

Pescecappa x Pescetrullo is the title that artist Gaetano Pesce gave to the project commissioned by FEC and curated by Marcello Smarrelli in collaboration with Elica and Caterina Tognon Arte Contemporanea; it was presented at Elica’s Showroom on the occasion of the Milan Salone Internazionale del Mobile 48th edition on April 22-27 2009.

The artist proposed a new image of the suctioning hood starting from its previous version: the chimney hood. Actually Pescecappa is a suctioning hood prototype, the first sample of a series of fiveteen pieces numbered and signed by the artist, that was conceived for Pescetrullo kitchen, which is a ground-breaking, unusual living space that Caterina Tognon realized in the Apulia countryside. The original project was made by the very Gaetano Pesce. Simple products are the hood main components: vegetables, fruit and legumes that represent the bond with the land, by keeping simple yet old flavors and smells, which symbolize a healthy and environment-friendly life.

The hood designed by Gaetano Pesce was shown in the exhibition Cucine & Ultracopri at Triennale in Milan, during Expo 2015. Pescecappa is included in the Collezione Farnesina Design, a collection of Italian company and designer products that was founded to give an international reach to the cultural aspect of the Italian design and is exhibited at the Italian Ministry of External Affairs.

Pescecappa.it

La Triennale – Cucine&Ultracorpi

Hand is the workshop title that Francesca Grilli conceived and carried out, along with the curator and trainer. This event was directed to thirty-four students and entrepreneurs from the Marche region and took place at Polo Museale di San Francesco in Montefiore dell’Aso, Ascoli Piceno.

This workshop was structured as a body-reading laboratory and was especially focused on the hand lines interpretation, hence the title, Hand. Hands say a lot about who we are: they are one of the most used body part in communication, they seal new meetings and agreements, and they are perfect working tools. The activity was split in two steps: firstly there was a painting phase, in which participants, through colors, learned how to take a handprint, in order to have an overall vision of all of the hand lines. During the second step a hand study was carried out: shape, color, softness, touch, and elasticity. The artist was aided by a palmistry expert and they pursued the goal of making participants aware that a person’s personality can be represented by his or her body, by stimulating a more instinctive and free reading. During the workshop final step, through the palmistry basic elements learned during the day, participants exchanged mutual hand reading: the different stories have been recorded in a soundtrack that, along with the handprints, composed the final workshop outcome: an audio/video installation made by the artist and the participants.

The workshop was carried out within the “Cult Lab – Impresa culturale spin off”, promoted by Meccano Spa, Università di Urbino “Carlo Bo” and Università di Macerata. It was a networking occasion between cultural projects and the enterprise sector, encouraging development opportunities that this meeting might lead to.

Verdecuratoda…voi is the name that artist Ettore Favini gave to the installation that FEC commissioned to him; he answered with an artwork that was presented to the Naturalmente festival – Terre del buon vivere fourth edition. This event took place at Parco del Santuario di Santa Maria in Monsano, Ancona province back in 2008.

The festival main purpose was promoting the fair economy growth, by focusing on organic agriculture, renewable energy and responsible tourism related issues, through a series of permanent initiatives.
Verdecuratoda…voi, a particularly relevant installation for this context, is part of a wider project to build the biggest vegetable sculpture in the world, by identifying unused public spaces and redevelop them through arboreal essence tree planting. During the festival a vending machine prototype that dispensed seeds of easily cultivable plants was presented; everyone could collect and plant the seeds as long as they marked the point on a map hosted by the Website www.verdecuratoda.com. In this case, the total amount of seeds within the spheres that the machine dispenses would be sufficient to grow a lawn that could meet the oxygen daily need of a human being.

The project is still ongoing within Elica’s Headquarters in Fabriano, where the vending machine can be used, as well as in other places identifiable from the site www.verdecuratoda.com

The Wishful Map #2 – Pocket Museums is the title of the project that artist Pietro Ruffo realized together with thirty-eight students from the Master in Arts and Culture Economics and Management of Sole 24 Ore Business School, at MUDEC – Museo delle Culture in Milan. The project was developed from the ongoing changes due to the Italian Ministry for Arts and Culture reforms supported by Minister Dario Franceschini. With these reforms, new directors and supervisors were appointed.

The artist led the activity together with the curator and the company trainer; he invited every participant to write their own statement for directing one of the twenty-six museums belonging to the AMACI – Associazione Musei d’Arte Contemporanea Italiani circuit. They could use five key concepts that were chosen from a list, plus one they would decide; based on these concepts they would write the guidelines for directing the institution. Furthermore, every participant has identified an image representing the institution (an artwork from the collection, an architecture detail, the logo etc…) to be turned into its symbol.
To direct students to the design, Andrea Viliani – Naples Museo MADRE director – was invited to speak about his experience, the way in which an application should be structured, the guidelines upon which a museum cultural planning should be based. During the workshop second part, every participant created their “symbolic map”, which made visible the different and personal strategies applied for directing the different museums through lines and colors.

The thirty-eight maps, real artworks resulting from a working day, were installed in the Milan Master venue.

The Wishful Map is a project arisen from the collaboration of artist Pietro Ruffo, the human resource education and development specialized trainer Piero Tucci and Fondazione Ermanno Casoli. Their goal is creating a series of conceptual maps that can represent companies’ identity and values, through a shared artwork.
The companies that have already participated in the project include: Angelini Acraf spa (2015), Bellegra Banca di Credito Cooperativo (2016), Euler Hermes Italia of the Allianz insurance group (2016).

The Wishful Map #1 is the workshop title that Pietro Ruffo conceived for sixty employees –managers and supervisors- of Angelini Acraf spa; the event took place at Lanificio Luciani in Rome and aimed at making the company globally known again through an artwork, by highlighting its culture and founding values.

The two working days were led by the artist and a company trainer. The workshop started with a reflection on the possible ways in which a planisphere could be realized; this led to choosing a world projection on a regular icosahedron through which recreating a complete atlas, divided into twenty equilateral triangles.
The equilateral triangle is an explicit reference to Angelini logo, and has been the working module for the participants; they were divided into groups and, through a shared process, they matched a color to each of the thirty keywords that were identified to describe the company; then they were written on the map with watercolors. Later, every participant realized a colleague portrait with a pencil. The sixty portraits were a further map identity element, as they strengthened the idea that the human capital is a true company added value, as well as the greatest potential for its growth. The great planishpere, The Wishful Map #1, was later put in the Santa Palomba plant lobby.

The Wishful Map is a project arisen from the collaboration of artist Pietro Ruffo, the human resource education and development specialized trainer Piero Tucci and Fondazione Ermanno Casoli. Their goal is creating a series of conceptual maps that can represent companies’ identity and values, through a shared artwork.
The companies that have already participated in the project include: Sole 24 Ore Business School (2015), Bellegra Banca di Credito Cooperativo (2016), Euler Hermes Italia of the Allianz insurance group (2016).

Oggetti Sociali is the title that artist Ettore Favini gave to the workshop he conceived and led along with the trainer, the curator and Fifteen Jungheinrich managers. This company is the Italian branch of the German multinational Jungheinrich AG, European leader in warehouse logistics. The workshop took place at Villa Panza di Biumo in Varese.

The training process began days before the workshop, when participants received a letter in which they were asked to identify a personal object they were fond of, which they would have to give up. The objects were inserted in an envelope that made them unrecognizable and were the focus of a debate about the identity issue and about the way it can be conveyed through objects. During the workshop second step, participants designed a shelving unit upon which the objects would be exhibited, according to a layout they had decided.

The elements underpinning the project were the attention to the work creation method -the artwork was created and later exhibited in the company- and the documentation of the group internal dynamics to which the artist applied his filter. Oggetti Sociali was included within the Jungheinrich program entitled Logistics Systems Build Together.

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Underdrawing is the title that artist Francesco Barocco gave to the workshop he conceived and led with twenty-eight students from the Master in Economics and Management of Arts and Culture issued by Sole 24 Ore Business School. Participants were supported by the curator and the trainer and they challenged themselves with drawing using the old chequering technique. The artist guided them so as they could realize accurate copies of the works of great Italian painting masters.

The workshop first step was an actual drawing lesson, aimed to allow students to experiencing the meaning of sketching a sheet, as well as to becoming more aware of the techniques and the basic artistic tools. On the other hand, the second step was aimed at creating a copy: each participant was given a basic kit -pencil, sheet, rubber- and some drawing models to be reproduced, so as everyone could choose their own according to their sensitivity.

The drawings were re-processed and photographed by the artist, who turned the shot into a matrix to print a copy of each. This was the testimony of an actual “four-hand artwork”.

Working is Networking is the title that artist and filmmaker Marinella Senatore gave to the workshop she conceived and led. The participants were twenty-two employees of Angelini A.C.R.A.F spa – an Angelini international group company, a leader in healthcare and well-being industries. The workshop took place at Palazzo Cavalli Fraschetti, in Venice.

Participants were divided into groups and supported by the curator and the trainer. They realized a short film in which they showed their work vision, with the related problems and future perspectives. After dealing with all the working steps – from writing to footage to direction and editing – artist and employees shared their skills to acquire new ones. In this typical outdoor activity, participants were proposed a series of collateral activities aimed at discovering Venice rich artistic heritage.

The project boosted the ability to address the individual commitment to a common goal, where intervention areas of each component were handled to improve collaboration and team work.

Condominium is the title that artist Margherita Moscardini gave to the workshop she conceived and led with thirty-seven students from the Master in Economics and Management of Arts and Culture issued by Sole 24 Ore Business School. They were supported by the trainer and the curator. For this occasion, Fondazione Ermanno Casoli – Sole 24 Ore Business School partner since 2012 – proposed a project entitled Condominium (Or the Merck Index), which had already been experimented with ten employees from MSD company back in 2012; it aimed at making the Master students live an experience within a company, analyzing and dealing with contents and methods.

The artist triggered a reflection on visionary ideals within the company setting. She took the ‘standard’ concept as a model for improving the daily life. She identified as actual example of modern “Ideal working village” the Villaggio Crespi d’Adda, which was built during the late XIX century by entrepreneur Cristoforo Benigno Crespi. Starting from the question “Which residential model would currently meet a large company employees’ needs?” every employee drew on relief his or her ideal environment. This had to match or summarize their residential needs or their concept of public space.

The drawings they produced during the workshop have been collected and bound to compose a volume of relief images: these are the metaphor of a condominium, an actual artist book issued in signed and numbered editions.

Condividere è connettere is the title that artist Ettore Favini gave to the workshop he conceived and led along with ten employees of Bricocenter Srl – the largest DIY chain in Italy. The workshop took place at the company sales point in Cinisello Balsamo, Milan. The employees were chosen among those who had followed a path entitled Vision during the two previous years, which was aimed at imagining the company in the year 2020.

Participants were supported by the curator and the trainer and were asked to share their “long-term vision”, by extracting a series of meaningful words from the story for the company future. These terms were later put into a software for network analysis: every story became a drawing, an abstract picture that collaborators recognized as part of themselves and reproduced with the materials the company sells. The individual contributions allowed to reaching a common goal: making contents and emotions from the Vision path visible, along with the issues and the reflections they dealt with as working with the artist. Finally, every workshop step was documented in a website the artist created with the participants’ help.

Ettore Favini’s work aimed at collecting experience and emotions that this project generated, through a participated artwork that represents everyone contribution to the company.

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Drawing After Architecture is the title that artist Tomaso De Luca gave to the workshop he conceived and led, along with ten employees from the pharmaceutical MSD, leader in drugs production; it was held at the Roman company headquarter.

To realize his project, the artist chose to use drawing as an educational tool. Drawing underpins his artistic production because it has always allowed to shape and represent abstract concepts and ideas, giving visibility to the invisible. As a matter of fact, De Luca shared with the participants, who were supported by the curator and the trainer, some special techniques, such as the “blind drawing” or the “hindered drawing”: he suggested their use as a method to translate the relation between them and the company space into graphic signs.

He aimed at inverting the architect practice that starts from a 2D design/drawing to reach a 3D result. In this way, the artist made the drawing visible solely at the end of the process, as the result of spacial building, instead of its premise.

E-STRAORDINARIO for MSD was divided into three workshop days and involved thirty employees from the pharmaceutical company MSD Italia, as well as three artists: Tomaso De Luca, Margherita Moscardini, and Alberto Tadiello. Each day was dedicated to one of them and ten company employees, belonging to different company functions.

Condominium (or The Merck Index) is the title that artist Margherita Moscardini gave to the workshop she conceived and led, along with the curator and the trainer, as well as ten employees from the pharmaceutical MSD, leader in drugs production; it was held at the Roman company headquarter.

The artist triggered a reflection on visionary ideals within the company setting. She took the ‘standard’ concept as a model for improving the daily life. She identified as actual example of modern “Ideal working village” the Villaggio Crespi d’Adda, which was built during the late XIX century by entrepreneur Cristoforo Benigno Crespi. Starting from the question: “Which residential model would currently meet a large company employees’ needs?” every employee drew on relief his or her ideal environment. This had to match or summarize their residential needs or their concept of public space. The drawings they produced during the workshop have been collected and bound to compose a volume of relief images: these are the metaphor of a condominium, an actual artist book issued in signed and numbered editions.

E-STRAORDINARIO for MSD was divided into three workshop days and involved thirty employees from the pharmaceutical company MSD Italia and three artists: Tomaso De Luca, Margherita Moscardini, and Alberto Tadiello. Each day was dedicated to one of them and ten company employees, coming from different company functions.

Things Go On With Mistakes is the title that artist Alberto Tadiello gave to the workshop he conceived and led, along with ten employees from the pharmaceutical MSD, leader in drugs production; it was held at the Roman company headquarter.

Participants were supported by the curator and the trainer and were given different materials to invent instruments, by leveraging the simple functioning mechanisms of rotations and frictions that generated sounds or noises. Every participant carried out a short personal research to create an audio entity from which a collective action developed; this was composed by a series of elements that simultaneously worked as a small orchestra composed by the pieces they produced. The artist’s project title relates to a track belonging to an album that resulted from the collaboration between two American bands (“In The Fishtank”, The Black Heart Procession + Solbakken); the project aimed at creating sound elements to foster cooperation among participants.

E-STRAORDINARIO for MSD was divided into three workshop days and involved thirty employees from the pharmaceutical company MSD Italia and three international level artists: Tomaso De Luca, Margherita Moscardini, and Alberto Tadiello. Each day was dedicated to one of them and ten company employees, coming from different company functions.

Filming the process #2 is the title that artist Marinella Senatore gave to the workshop she conceived and led with thirty-five students from the Master in Economics and Management of Arts and Culture issued by Sole 24 Ore Business School. They were supported by the trainer and the curator. For this occasion, Fondazione Ermanno Casoli – Sole 24 Ore Business School partner since 2012 – proposed a project entitled Filming the process #1, which had already been experimented with twenty employees of Biotronik Italia spa back in 2011; it aimed at making the Master students live an experience within a company, analyzing and dealing with contents and methods.

The workshop focused on triggering and fostering participation and aggregation processes through the film making practice, which is the artist’s favorite expressive modality. Students were engaged in realizing a short audiovisual content, for which they worked in groups and covered every step of the process, from the writing to the footage, to the direction and the final editing.

The project boosted the ability to address the individual work towards a shared goal and a collective thought, where intervention areas of each component and every single skill were handled to improve collaboration and team work.

IL PERSONALE is a site-specific artwork created by collective artist Claire Fontaine winner of the 21st edition of Premio Ermanno Casoli, curated by Marcello Smarrelli.

The new luminous installation was conceived for the most iconic location of Elica’s headquarters in Fabriano, stemming from the reflections generated during the workshop “Lavoro femminile visibile e invisibile”, held by Claire fontaine and attended by a group of 30 women who hold managerial roles within the company. In the light of some fundamental concepts of feminism –that the artistic duo has been exploring since its beginnings – the participants were asked to express themselves on the theme of female empowerment, with the aim of highlighting their difficulties in reconciling work and family.

The emotional challenges that emerged during the work with the artist inspired the luminous activation of the powerful quote, “The personal is political,” the title of a pamphlet by US feminist activist Carol Hanish from 1970. With this text, Hanisch created a milestone of feminism by refuting the idea that sexuality, physical appearance, abortion, childcare and the division of domestic labour are personal issues without political dignity.

The work thus becomes a reflection on the status of women in the professional and social context, bringing to light their value and emphasizing the importance of a broader political vision to promote equality and respect for women’s rights as transformative agents of society.

As is usual in Claire Fontaine’s work, words break out of their usual usage and become something else, changing perception and meaning of the contexts in which they are found. In this case, in the Italian phrase “il personale è politico”, an ambiguity persists that is not present in English, since the word ‘personale’ means both ‘personal’ and ‘personnel’. This ambiguity can be understood as a statement referring to the role of the employees of a company like Elica – where Diversity & Inclusion and Gender Equality strategies are the object of a special attention that emphasizes their importance in both the professional and social contexts.

In addition to confirming the importance of language within Claire Fontaine’s research, the work also reiterates her stance on appropriation. Indeed, the very title of the book, ‘The personal is political’, was not claimed by Carol Hanish, who attributed it to other feminists who in turn, when questioned on the issue, decreed it to be the result of the anonymous and collective intelligence of slogans.

Project supported by Regione Marche – Assessorato alla Cultura

MARSHY is a site-specific and environmental artwork conceived by Eugenio Tibaldi, winner of the 20^th edition of the Premio Ermanno Casoli award.

After a period of residency in the Marche region, the artist decided to implement his project at the EMF FIME headquarters, an Elica group company, in Castelfidardo (AN), in the green area between two formerly competing establishments and the Jesina provincial road. MARSHY is a monumental permanent and site-specific installation placed by the artist in a plot of land. A border space that is not useful for production and mobility, yet is extremely evocative, especially considering its its view on Castelfidardo’s old town centre.

MARSHY takes the form of a 12-metre diameter circular body of water, with three walkways indicating three directions in space and referring to as many components, which the artist has identified as being characteristic of the area under examination: nature, history and industry.

Vegetation characteristic of a marshy environment – shrubs, bamboo, flowers – emerges from the water, populated by a colony of 200 birds; all of the above was built using waste from the company’s production and involving for the first time not only the employees of said factories, but the entire Elica world, the production platform of which is spread over seven sites in Italy, Poland, Mexico and China, with over 3,200 workers.

The choice of marshland is not random: usually considered as a mix of land and water, a liminal and complex area, it constitutes an anomaly in the landscape; it is considered of little value, never used for settlement unless first reclaimed, and in fact always ‘discarded’. Yet, marshes have one of the highest rates of biodiversity in the world and are fundamental to evolutionary processes and the survival of the general ecosystem.

With MARSHY, Eugenio Tibaldi intends to add a new layer to his long-standing research on borders by recreating a space inspired by the most marginal of natural environments – a place of suspension in which every definition of what we see and feel is both reassuring and misleading, capable of accommodating a multiplicity of readings; a place where reality is not called into question and can only be understood through perception, as part of the immersive experience of crossing, where messages intersect and overlap, responding to the personal cultural experiences of the audience.

The installation is completed by a sound insert reminiscent of birdsong, which the artist designed with musician Andrea Naspi and performed on an accordion thanks to the contribution of the historic Castelfidardo company Pigini Fisarmoniche. This choice further highlights the very close bond of this work of art with the local area, as reinforced by the inclusion of its inauguration among the main events of the PIF (Premio Internazionale Fisarmonica, International Accordion Award).

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Project supported by Regione Marche – Assessorato Beni e attività culturali.

Agìta – Istruzioni per un’agenda non funzionale is the title that artist Cesare Pietroiusti gave to the workshop he conceived and led. It was divided into two steps with fifteen participants supported by the curator and the trainer; they included entrepreneurs and managers from the mechanic industry in the Ancona province, as well as representatives from the local public administration cultural sector.

During the first step, which took place at Pinacoteca Civica in Jesi, the artist held a workshop which purpose was removing the rational and emotional blockages that hold back creativity. During the second step, which took place at Confindustria Ancona headquarters, participants were given an artist book edited in thirty copies, numbered and signed, entitled Agìta, in which the contents that arose from the previous working day were collected. Pietroiusti focused on the quick and superfluous thoughts that daily cross our mind in different moments; they are difficult to recall as they do not relate to any action. The artist defines them “Non-functional thoughts” and he has been collecting them for years in the website pensierinonfunzionali.net he specifically created to set them.

Agìta, a non-functional organizer, is the tool to note down one’s own “non-functional thoughts”; this is done in a dedicated spot at the end of the organizer, in which the “non-functional thoughts” arisen during the workshop were documented, according to the means and methods participants deemed adequate. This section also included the thoughts that Cesare Pietroiusti has collected for the last thirty years.

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Filming the process #1 is the title that artist and filmmaker Marinella Senatore gave to the workshop she conceived and led. Twenty employees of Biotronik Italia spa were supported by the trainer and the curator during the event that took place in Milan at DOCVA – Documentation Center for Visual Arts and was organized by Careof and Viafarini associations within Fabbrica del Vapore.

The workshop focused on triggering and fostering participation and aggregation processes through the film making practice, which is the artist’s favorite expressive modality. Participants were engaged in realizing two short movies, for which they worked in groups and covered every step of the process, from the writing to the footage, to the direction and the final editing.

The project boosted the ability to address the individual work towards a shared goal and a collective thought, where intervention areas of each component and every single skill were handled to improve collaboration and team work.

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Titolati vestiti is the title that artist Sissi gave to the workshop she conceived and led with twenty employees of Artsana Group multinational, 20 specialized designers of the clothing and children products industry; it took place in the company offices of Grandate in Como.

The artist was supported by the trainer and the curator and led participants to analyze the clothes they designed and liked most to identify a peculiar feature. This allowed to creating a clothe classification and to giving clothes new meanings and names, that is to re-entitling them. During the workshop second step, some parts of the analyzed clothes were cut and united according to new criteria, so as to trigger a hybridization process that generated something new: the single parts were re-entitled and sewed to create a new clothe, which symbolized a family, friend or colleague group. This was composed by different identities that are connected and united by a strong link, even though they’re not similar to each other.

The workshop triggered a creative process in which participants felt free to re-consider reality and re-name it: they broke pre-defined concepts and stimulated ideas that bring cutting-edge solutions.

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The winner of the Ermanno Casoli Prize, which has now reached its 19^th edition – the first to be held at the ElicaMex headquarters in Querétaro (Mexico) – is artist Jorge Satorre (Mexico City, 1979).
Satorre is joining the world of Elica with the project Pelusa (Fluff), which has been curated by Francesco Pedraglio and Marcello Smarrelli. The work is the result of an articulated process that has involved over seventy ElicaMex employees through drawing, engraving and sculpture.
In view of his interest in the dialectic between industrial and artistic production, Satorre reflects on the nature of the traces workers leave on the products they help to create. Unlike works of art, objects made on production lines are standardised and follow strict criteria linked to functionality and design. The artist has focused on the contrast between personal expression and rules, between instinct and quality assurance, between subjective proposals and functional standards. The title of the project, namely Pelusa (Fluff), underlines Satorre’s interest in what is considered as ‘waste’ or ‘scrap material’, which he uses as a starting point to interpret the production process and develop his artistic project.
During his long stays at the company, Satorre utilised the practice of live drawing to document a series of moulds used to make kitchen hoods, namely matrixes that had become unusable due to wear and tear and changing market needs. The artist, now enthralled by this archive of precious, albeit useless objects, turned the drawings into a series of 19 engravings using scrap metal plates resulting from the working of the hoods as matrixes.
The central theme of the project – objectivity and subjectivity in industrial production processes – was the subject of a workshop that the artist held with ElicaMex workers, focusing his attention on the portion of the WCM (World Class Manufacturing) system that enables workers to propose improvements to the working environment and to the use and operation of machinery. The ‘suggestions’, which can also be made by means of drawings, inspired Satorre to run a live drawing course, thus showing employees the narrative potential of this technique, which he used to produce the engravings.
In order to display the 19 engravings, the artist produced four large metal sculptures, on which he also placed a selection of ‘suggestions’ from the WCM. The sculptures were mimetically integrated into the interior of the factory and designed as a continuation of the pre-existing structures, namely stairs, protective fences and pillars. These structures, now prolonged and enlarged, become formal residues of technical devices that have permanently lost their functionality.
At the end of the process, which lasted over a year due to delays caused by the pandemic, Satorre collected the results of the entire process in a hybrid book – halfway between a catalogue and an artist’s book – that presents the 19 engravings alongside a photographic tour of the factory, thereby documenting the presence of the sculptures. The format and layout of this sui-generis archive imitate those of a traditional book of engravings, thus suggesting a further key to interpreting the project, which can be identified in the personal and emotional relationship created by the artist with the works, the factory space and the people who work there.

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Matteo Fato won the 18th edition of the Ermanno Casoli Prize with the project Gentile come un ritratto, a title that is deliberately reminiscent of the alleged self-portrait that painter Gentile da Fabriano (Fabriano 1370 approx., Rome 1427) included in his polyptych the Adoration of the Magi (1423), now in the Uffizi Gallery.

Matteo Fato’s challenge was multifaceted: building upon a masterpiece of the past closely linked to the talent and beauty of the Marche region to collectively conceive a collective work able to talk about the present by moving from Gentile’s self-portrait to a relevant portrait of Elica. This creates an ideal connection that links, with a short time circuit, the Renaissance workshop of the historic painter with a company that, thanks to the passion of its founder Ermanno Casoli, has distinguished itself worldwide in industry and design.

In a particularly difficult time in which even the relational dimension of work is being put to the test, the project presented by the artist has been chosen for the sensitivity and effectiveness with which it has been able to deal with this aspect. Fato has decided to open his authorship to a collective operation, translating the pictorial gesture, namely a distinctive feature of his work that “happens” in the silence and solitude of his studio, in a “joint effort”, recreating an intimate and deep sense of closeness with others. The work, which in its plurality and abstraction is capable of representing all those who have contributed to its realisation, is the result of a temporary painting workshop, lasting a week and set up in the company spaces of the Fabriano and Castelfidardo Elica offices, conducted by Matteo Fato, in which 159 employees were invited to leave their mark on a single canvas. During the workshop, the participants had the opportunity to interact with Fato personally, reflecting together on the nature of portraiture as a form of expression that represents not only an individuality, but also the era that characterises it. Indeed, in order to portray a subject, it is necessary to be able to reach a “familiarity” with the historical, cultural and social context that surrounds it. With this in mind, each participant received from the artist the key to leave their mark, in search of a similarity based on their personal experience and daily life. The portrait, as is customary in the artist’s modus operandi, becomes part of a more articulated installation, composed of other devices linked to his work process. From this collective action, other canvases have been produced, taken from the cloths used to clean the brushes at each change of hand and colour, which in turn are framed and placed inside their respective transport crates.

“The initial title of the workshop, in its becoming a definitive installation, has taken on a necessary plurality: Gentili come un ritratto. This change to the first and perhaps most important word of the title is indispensable to pay homage to the kind eyes and hands that have gifted us their story; a precious story that has become the landscape portrait of our time”. Matteo Fato

Gentili come un ritratto thus becomes part of the Elica Corporate Collection, a special collection of all the works created by artists and employees of the company during the activities promoted by Fondazione Ermanno Casoli.

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The Relay is the title of the site-specific artwork produced by Patrick Tuttofuoco and curated by Marcello Smarrelli in order to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the creation of the  Ermanno Casoli Prize.

The large neon installation revolves around the most important themes that have characterised Patrick Tuttofuoco’s artistic research over the years: family relationships and generational exchanges, the mechanisms and bonds that characterise and bring together communities. The title makes explicit reference to the only athletics discipline that is structured as team sport rather than an individual one, namely the relay race. In said Olympic discipline, athletes are to run a pre-set distance carrying a baton before passing it onto the next runner. The athletes’ hands, which touch each other while passing the baton, are the real protagonists of this artwork: they are one of the most important parts of the body and enable us to socialise, work, establish relationships and manifest our feelings. In this installation, the simple gesture of holding an object in one’s hands is expanded upon and shown in all its stages, thereby giving a spatial dimension to the notion of time. The act of receiving something and being able to pass it onto another human being becomes a metaphor for exchange, generosity and recognition, but also the changing of generations and life itself.

The Relay, which the Foundation donated to the Museo Premio Ermanno Casoli 1998-2007 museum, thus enriches the collection of the artworks acquired over the course of the first ten editions of the Prize that Gianna Pieralisi, wife of art-lover, artist and founder of the Elica company Ermanno Casoli, instituted together with her children Francesco and Cristina. The artwork, which has been installed in the entrance corridor of the Museo Premio Ermanno Casoli 1998 – 2007, serves as a silver thread between the first phase of the prize and the second one, which began in 2007 with the foundation of Fondazione Ermanno Casoli.

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Mass age, message, mess age (Elica 2018), is the title of the project carried out by artist Elena Mazzi, the winner of the 17th edition of the Ermanno Casoli Prize, and curated by Marcello Smarrelli, which saw the active participation of twenty employees of the Elica company.

The project, which is part of a work in progress launched in 2015 with the aim of studying and highlighting the dynamics underlying communication strategies, included an open talk and a workshop dedicated to Elica employees within the framework of E-STRAORDINARIO. Both took place in Fabriano, at the company’s headquarters. The artist’s research builds upon the analysis of the word “revolution”, intended as a radical change in social structures occurring in different historical periods and fields of knowledge, which cannot overlook the analysis of the way individuals belonging to the same community communicate.

Consistently with the goals of said research, Elena Mazzi and Diego Agostini, a trainer specialising in company training from the Commitment consultancy company, invited the 20 participants in the workshop to directly experience the interruptions and diversions that messages can be subject to when being transmitted from a sender to a receiver. Together, they worked in order to pinpoint words taken from everyday management language, their own team building experiences and the relationships they share within the working environment in order to draft a glossary to be used during a performance inspired by the game of Chinese whispers. The participants, who had been divided into small groups, created devices for verbal communication by creatively and functionally assembling materials typical of the company production, which they used during the performance.

Objects and words were used to produce an installation entitled Mass age, message, mess age (Elica 2018), namely a sculpture comprised of two elements in cast aluminium, the summary of the ten communication devices produced during the training activity, and a wall painting containing the words selected and “played with” during the performance.

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Vitriol is the title of the project that artist Andrea Mastrovito designed for the XVI edition of the Ermanno Casoli Prize together with 100 employees of the Angelini Acraf Spa pharmaceutical company of Ancona.

The Vitriol acronym stands for a Latin phrase that was popular among alchemists, namely Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem, which means “visit the inside of the Earth and you shall find the hidden stone”. Such phrase inspired the artist to make seven engravings on the walls of the Ancona headquarters of the company, where the activities linked to the award took place.

The artist and the working group, which was divided into teams, created the Vitriol series by engraving the walls of seven rooms of the Angelini plant during a seven-day period.  Such engravings represented emblematic figures, which came to life through the colours of the pre-existing wall layers, thereby showing the passing of time and achieving some sort of space archaeology. The dust resulting from the engravings was collected and displayed as an integral part of the final piece, as though it were the “soul” of the engraved figures, or their “active principle” – with a close link to Angelini’s productive activity.

The 100 employees involved in such team building process were lead by business trainer Piero Tucci and actively helped the artist and the curator in the making of Vitriol, which shall be permanently displayed inside the company.  
The initiative is part of the activities of the DCE project (Distretto Culturale Evoluto, Developed Cultural District) of the Marche region entitled “La Valle della creatività”.

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Disguise is the title of the project that Chinese artist Yang Zhenzhong conceived for the Ermanno Casoli Prize XV edition; this work was carried out during the two-month residency that the artist realized in the Shengzou, China, Elica’s plant. There, he worked closely with more than fifty employees and realized a series of workshops with them.

Disguise evokes a theatric atmosphere, which is highlighted by a series of masks reproducing the involved employees, created through 3D scanning. Each mask was later worn by the very employees in a performance that took place within the company. Employees wore the masks during the normal daily work and the video footage was used to create a multi-channel video-installation. This and the masks were presented during an exhibition held at Shanghai Elica’s Showroom.

“I asked employees to wear the mask they had created during the workshop first step through their faces scanning, during their working shift” – Yang Zhenzhong tells. “The video shows the employees working and, simultaneously, staging the productive process. They express a kind of performative dynamic action despite they have to respect their roles’ rules within the company. With their faces covered by masks, their movements are always connected to the assembly line but, thanks to this metamorphosis, they acquire the grace of a freedom dance. Differently from what could be thought, the atmosphere during the workshop did not change the daily production potentiality; on the contrary, it turned it into a sort of theatre and added spirituality. Personally, this whole practice and creative procedure was a new extraordinary experience”.

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The Game – una partita di calcio a tre porte (ie: a three-goal football match) is the title that artist Danilo Correale gave to the project he conceived for the Eramanno Casoli Prize XIV edition, which he won. The protagonists were more than 80 employees form three major companies in the Siena province – ColleVilca srl, PR Industrial Srl, and Trigano Spa. They were engaged in a football match, half sport event and half performance. The artist was inspired by the Danish Situationism painter Asger Jorn (1914-1973), who used the three-goal football match model to theorizing on what happens after the passage from a two-element system to a three-element one to overcome the competition and foster the strategic creation of alliances. Thus, The Game becomes a metaphor to read and interpret human relations.

In collaboration with three companies’ employees, Correale shaped the three teams identity:
REAL CRISTAL (ColleVilca Srl team), GLADIATORI (PR Industrial Srl team), ESUBERANTI 301 (Trigano Spa team). After a preparation period that took them more than six months, on December 8th, 2013 at the “Gino Manni” Stadium in Colle Val d’Elsa, they played the game with a referee, artist Cristian Chironi and their fans.

The final result is a movie documenting the whole creative process of The Game- una partita di calcio a tre porte, from the artist meeting the employees, to trainings, to the fan organization, to the match. The movie was projected in the three companies’ headquarters and was presented to the public on March 4th, 2014 in Siena, at the movie theater Nuovo Pendola. Finally, it was acquired by Museo MADRE of Naples and included in its permanent collection.
The Ermanno Casoli XIV edition activities were part of Pier Luigi Sacco’s project for nominating Siena European Culture Capital 2019.

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Rock-Paper-Scissors is the title of the video-installation that Anna Franceschini realized for the Ermanno Casoli Prize XIII edition.
The artist was charmed by the natural landscape quality of the Fabriano territory and by its social and economic implications, and she decided to stay there for a long period, during which she collected images and suggestions that later composed the Rock-Paper-Scissors artwork; this was conceived according to the rock-paper-scissors combination rules: the images characterizing the different territory identity aspects constantly overlap and shuffle.

To permanently install the artwork inside the Logistic Center of the Fabriano Elica’s Headquarters, a video pavilion was built, which was designed by the architecture firm Salottobuono; this is externally coated with steel sheets, which reflected the surrounding working environment and perfectly concealed the structure.

For Elica’s employees and for everyone living in the territory, the artist carried out an educational work, which focuses on the video-art: she curated an exposition entitled Images Moving Images and involved artists Dina Danish, Rebecca Digne, Diego Marcon, and Jean Baptiste Maitre in a projections and talks series that took place in Ancona on November 16-18 2012, in collaboration with the white.fish.tank association. This project allowed participants to enhancing their knowledge about Franceschini and the other artists’ work. They are all related to the experimental movie industry and this triggered an intimate dialogue on the interests that are currently pivotal to the contemporary art production, to its language and its conception. Artists and audience had the chance to join an open debate.

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I Saettatori is the title of the artwork that Francesco Barocco realized for the Ermanno Casoli Prize XII edition with 45 Elica’s employees; it refers to a drawing by Micheal Angelo in which nine archers are represented without bows nor arrows, turned into tools of a strength that goes beyond will and consciousness.

The artist interprets the employees’ engagement in realizing an artwork (as the Award guidelines establish) not as direct participation, but as conceptual and emotional sharing of the artistic experience. Francesco Barocco’s intervention is made by several levels (a lab demonstration, an engravings exhibition and the creation of some site-specific works). The artist presented a series directed to the world knowledge, made of ideas and hints that artists inspire to, by sharing their repetitiveness and daily routine, their rises and falls, the typical artistic and creative work doubts, making it very similar to other jobs in many facets.
The project first step took place at Fabriano’s Museo della Carta e della Filigrana, where the artist held a series of engraving classes, showing how tool knowledge and technical proficiency underpin the artistic work, as well as any other job.

Francesco Barocco then arranged a permanent exhibition in Fabriano Elica’s Headquarters. His works and a series of engravings by great art history masters were exhibited (from Dürer to Carol Rama). He trained participants to guide other employees and guests to an exhibition tour. Just as the archers from Michael Angelo’s drawing stretch an arrowless bow and seem to simulate a frontward throw, the small army of artists that Barocco chose and the artist himself seem willing to start a journey through space and time.

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Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

Teste is the title that Francesco Arena gave to the artwork he realized with xx Elica’s employees for the Ermanno Casoli Prize XI edition.

It focuses on the value of the past as iconographic inspiring source for artists. As a matter of fact, they have been dealing with the issues of time and history since the ancient age, constantly looking for the most suitable language to representing and conveying the memory of certain crucial moments or making immortal those characters that marked the mankind fate.

On these bases, through a long reflection path guided by the artist, the working group identified six relevant characters in Marche history. A clay sculpture portrait was realized for each one of them. The six busts were placed in six passing spots inside and outside the Fabriano Elica’s headquarters. Through an original hydraulic system for collecting and scattering rain water, the sculptures were exposed to a natural corrosion procedure. A clear metaphor of the time passing by and the subsequent memory corrosion and dispersion, with a positive value: the fact that rain water brings the memory to the Earth, which will be able to generate new possibilities. Six years later, the artist worked again on his work: he replaced the utterly ruined sculptures with marble gravestones with the six characters’ names.

By entrusting the people’s memory to the time passing by, the contrast between the evanescent memory nature and the artwork one, which can make it current and persistent, was highlighted.

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The Place Where I Live is the title of the workshop created by the artist duo Bianco-Valente (Giovanna Bianco and Pino Valente) for the E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids seventh edition, which was attended by over fifty children aged between 6 and 10 of Elica employees.

Some places, both imaginary and dreamlike, occupy a special place in our hearts, as they are the setting of our lives and feelings. This “journey” to discover the role that places play within us, began with touristic and geographical maps as well as photos that the children collected during the summer, with their families, upon artists request. During the workshop, the images were mixed up in order to form a single chaotic mass representing a sort of collective memory from which everyone was able to draw inspiration, create a drawing or build a story. The maps were randomly cut and assembled in order to make new ones, testifying the individual stories of each participant. It was therefore clear that the personal life story of each one of us is made up of interwoven places and experiences, which in turn are interwoven with the places and experiences of many other people.

The result was the creation of three large maps that, once deprived of their original function of showing places, represent a new geography of the soul in which the experiences of all participants are mixed.

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Family Feeling is the title of the workshop that the artist Patrick Tuttofuoco  conceived for the E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids 6^th  edition, dedicated to the children aged between 6 and 10 of Elica employees and curated by Marcello Smarrelli.

The Family Feeling project saw Tuttofuoco analyse, together with 50 children, the concept of family, namely the first form of social organisation understood as a group of individuals bound by kinship ties or a sense of belonging (to the school, the workplace, a group of friends, etc.), and the role it plays in the definition of one’s identity, thereby leading to a reflection on the importance of interpersonal relationships and the growth processes that transcend the mere biological family.

The artist built upon the analysis of one of the most popular devices of Art History, namely the portrait, and invited the participants to experience the many forms of this artistic genre by experimenting with its different approaches, media and techniques.

Moreover, Tuttofuoco  selected a series of drawings made during the workshop, which have been reproduced on the body of a model of cooker hood produced by Elica. The resulting sculpture became part of a large choral artwork symbolising the great Elica family, which is composed of the people who work there and their children.

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The Big Archive is the title of the workshop that the artistic duo Perino & Vele (Emiliano Perino and Luca Vele) conceived for the E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids fifth edition. Participants were about eighty children, who were Elica’s employees’ children and students form the bilingual kindergarten Iris Garden in Fabriano (the latter have exceptionally invited to participate).

This educational day through contemporary art focused on the memory, the way it works, the way in which it is structured to build our identity.  The project had a preliminary collaboration step between parents and children, who were invited to collect any kind of paper material that could be useful to compose an archive: from newspapers to magazines, from medical prescriptions to ice-cream paper, from train tickets to shop tickets, to comics and old exercise books. That paper has been cut into pieces and kids composed colorful papier maché, which has been used to decorate wooden boxes – those used to store fruit and vegetables, as well as archeological evidence. Once piled, those boxes revealed a playful image, a stylized representation of the animals that the artist had previously realized, in perfect harmony with the childhood environment.

The idea was melting different materials that tell both our daily life, which is made of habits, and large scale events that often intertwine with daily events, in a wide choral historical tale. The day ended with the installation and opening of the great artwork The Big Archive that was presented to adults, institutions, parents and contemporary art fans.

SHAPING THE WORLD – Plasmare il mondo is the title of the workshop designed by the Vedovamazzei duo (Stella Scala and Simeone Crispino), where seventy-six children aged between six and ten, namely the sons and daughters of Elica employees, were asked to rethink the factory where their parents work and turn it into an ideal space for creativity.

The workshop, which took place at the headquarters of Elica Fabriano, was divided into three phases: an initial one, where the young participants were explained the topics underlying the activities and how to use the material around which the day revolved, namely clay. The second phase saw the children design their ideal factory and the most suitable uniform for entering it. The work group was divided into couples that were given a white coat to decorate following the sketches made earlier under the supervision of artists.

Later, all the children were given a lump of clay to handle using their own fantasy. The resulting pieces were displayed on a large base so as to create a sculpture able to represent the ideal place for collective action, namely the working and living environment anyone can contribute to by using their hands and following their passions. It was a beautiful metaphor of how everyone’s contribution, when aimed at common good, can “shape the world”.

The opening ceremony of the exhibit, which took place at the end of the day, saw adults wear the coats made by their children, which were required to enter the ideal space represented by the large clay sculpture.

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Il Grande Baccano (Big Bang). Ovvero 763 strumenti per 763 bambini is the title of the project that artist Chiara Camoni designed for the kindergarten, first-grade and second-grade students of the three comprehensive schools of Fabriano, namely east-area comprehensive school Aldo Moro, comprehensive school Fernanda Imondi Romagnoli, and comprehensive school Marco Polo, for a total of 763 children.

The project was conceived within the framework of Eco Fantasy – I bambini e l’utilità del riciclo with the aim of enhancing the re-use of the industrial waste produced by the companies of the Fabriano area. The entire school year saw Chiara Camoni and the teachers guide the children in the creation of percussion instruments made exclusively with the scrap materials provided by the companies that participated in the initiative. Such instruments, which stimulated the creativity and fantasy of the younger children, came in different shapes and sizes, were coloured and upholstered creatively, and were played during a live performance held on 27^th April 2016, when the young musicians gathered in Fabriano’s Piazza del Comune square and gave life to the Grande Baccano, a peculiar, powerful concert conducted by the artist. It was a metaphor of the possibility and hope the Fabriano area has to emerge from the crisis it is experiencing by culturally investing in younger generations.

The audio-visual recording of the performance, together with the instruments made by the children, gave life to an installation which was displayed at the Bruno Molajoli Civic Art Gallery of Fabriano.

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Prototipi is the title that Elisabetta Benassi gave to the third edition of the E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids workshop, which involved ninety Elica and Fileni’s employees’ children. Fileni is another important company in this territory.

During the educational day, the artist and the participants re-processed and customized Elica’s products, in an imaginary fashion. They relied on Elica prototype experts and designers’ “technical advice”. Children were “prototype experts” for one day, and provided the company with a new viewpoint on models, functionalities and possible uses of Elica’s hoods. During the workshop kids learned the hoods suction process, re-created a personal user’s manual and worked with the artist to create a collective sculpture.

Final result: a huge installation that was obtained by assembling different hood models and parts. This work was completed by a liberating, spectacular art act, inspired to the dripping technique that artist Jackson Pollok made famous: kids fully expressed their creative energy.

This initiative was included in the project DCE – Distretto Culturale Evoluto, namely Evolved Cultural District, of Regione Marche’s “La Valle della creatività”.

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Mini Italia is the performance title that Marcello Maloberti conceived and realized for E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids #2 together with fifty kids, who were Elica’s employees’ children, along the Fabriano historic district streets.

Firstly, participants were taken to the exhibition “Da Giotto a Gentile” that was held at Pinacoteca Civica Bruno Molajoli in Fabriano; later they joined a practical workshop in which they realized special “backpacks”, from cardboard boxes decorated with collages of images collected from magazines and newspaper, portraits, items drawings, artworks, monuments and typical Italian landscapes. There were extracted from an archive that kids and their families prepared months before the workshop.

At the workshop end, the collective performance took place, in the town historic district: a colorful and cheerful procession that enlivened streets and squares; kids, along with the Fabriano marching band, paraded with their backpacks/archives bringing a more-than-20-meter-long flag; this was decorated with the national colors and the red and white texture, the typical tablecloth pattern seen on Italian tables. This activity was a moment for reflecting on the Italian cultural heritage, both in its “high” history and its popular traditions, which are a powerful identity element for every generation.

After crossing the historic district streets, the cheerful procession swept a part of via Dante and reached Elica plant: this marked the inauguration of the street portion dedicated to Ermanno Casoli, Elica’s founder.

This initiative was included in the project DCE – Distretto Culturale Evoluto, namely Evolved Cultural District, of Regione Marche’s “La Valle della creatività”.

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Opera is the title of the video resulting from the workshop of the same name, conceived and led by artist Grzegorz Drozd with thirty Elica employees, supported by the trainer and the curators, and held at the Elica plant in Jelcz-Laskowice, Poland.

The project aimed at giving value to every single intervention within a collective action. It highlighted the worker community’s creative potential. It did it by introducing unusual elements in the plant daily routine, yet maintaining its working method and organization. After entering the factory life through an auto-introduction, the artist realized a music performance with participants, using toy instruments. As in the company setting, where every individual is part of a wider and more complex system and the collective action aims at a shared goal, namely the production, every employee committed to contribute to reach a shared purpose: generating a collective artwork in which everyone is author and protagonist.

For the final outcome, Drozd realized a 7 minutes video by using the footage that was made during the performance, whereas the music instruments were given to charity.

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Le memorie dell’elefante (The elephant’s memories) is the title that artist Mario Airò gave to the workshop that he carried out along with forty kids aged six to ten, who were Elica’s employees children.

The workshop aimed at getting its participants to know some key elements of the history and identity of Fabriano, through the game. It has been split into two parts: a more educational one, in which participants were taken to a guided tour to the Fabriano Museo della Carta e della Filigrana; there, they attended a workshop with a paper master, so as kids would understand the productive steps to creatively produce their own paper.

During the second part, Mario Airò, starting from the paper sheet upon which every participant had drawn free outlines inspired by middle-age bestiaries, led kids to furtherly process them. They had to take into consideration both the historic combinatory art and the current cartoon one, using colors and the frottages and grattages techniques.

During the final workshop phase, Airò and the kids created a sculpture with all the paper outlines they produced, by fixing them on a balsa wood skeleton; this was freely inspired to the complexity of Olympia Chryselephantine Zeus statue, which is a famous artwork by Athenian artist Phidias. This is considered as one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. The artwork is the result of team work and was arranged inside Elica’s Headquarters in Fabriano.

Intervallo is the E-STRAORDINARIO for Kids project title that artist Ettore Favini conceived for seventy students from Fabriano’s Liceo Artistico E. Mannucci. This title refers to both the recreational moment at school and the Intervallo RAI, a historical TV program from the national broadcasting network that used to fill the pauses between one program and the other, by showing postcard images of Italian cities and landscapes.

The artist focused on the often conflictual relation between man and nature. He turned it into a reflection on the landscape, on its various definitions and on how different cultures differently perceive and interpret landscapes. Students were boosted to conceive their own reflection upon this issue and to propose ways for representing landscapes. They had to choose the most suitable contemporary language to them (drawing, photography, graphics, music, etc…). The workshop was focused on the importance of education and of the alternative learning methods during new generations growing path, as well as the art function as a tool to interpret reality and social contexts.

The artworks they realized during the workshop have been exhibited at Fabriano’s Ex Magazzini Latini, which were exceptionally re-opened on this occasion. The exhibition was entitled Panorama and included the students’ works and artworks by Ettore Favini and Andrea Nacciarriti, as well as an installation that architect Giacomo Fava produced with dj Giorgia De Robertis. The exhibition title is based on the “panorama” term ambiguity, which relates to both the landscape and one of the major Italian weekly magazines. The title was also used for the site-specific artwork that Nacciarriti and Favini realized: the Ex Magazzini Latini shop windows, a symbol of Fabriano past economic wellness and industrial development, were completely covered with the Panorama magazine covers; in this way, they suggested an overall gaze on our Country beauty, which is made of history and contradictions.

Ricordare è conoscere is the title of the workshop series that artist Francesco Arena conceived and led with twenty-two Elica employees; they were supported by the curator and were engaged in a reflection path dealing with the modalities and mechanisms that underpin memory. The event took place at Elica Headquarters in Fabriano and was realized through three collective works.

Oggetti legati all’11 settembre 2001 momentaneamente riuniti su un pallet is the first work, a temporary artwork that relates to 9/11 and tells the story of that day through a specific object, to underline that no gesture dissipates and that every action and every thought join and contribute to create the great history.

With Alla stessa altezza degli occhi, the artist tackled the portrait topic: the gaze we give to other people and the way it comes back to us in deformed, widened and crystallized concepts and stories. The image gallery that this workshop generated is currently exhibited in Fabriano Elica Headquarters.

For Ritratto di gruppo in un interno, the portrait idea was tackled by relating the individual with a work team internal dynamics. Participants were asked to create a sculpture starting from the same material -a 25 kg clay piece-, the same tool -a wooden board- and the same time -11 minutes.

The resulting artworks preceded Teste, the work that Francesco Arena realized for the Ermanno Casoli Award XI edition. They highlighted how simple daily objects can be turned into tools to record a memory and to re-interpret the present time.

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