Baitball#02
January 07 / March 15 - 2022
Palazzo San Giuseppe
Polignano a Mare
The second edition of the Baitball project opens its doors from January 17th to March 15th at Palazzo San Giuseppe in Polignano a Mare.
Baitball is an exercise, a hybrid, a crossbreed between a long-term project art fair and a collectively curated exhibition, it is a shared dimension, a way to live and co-evolve together through differences, dreaming up new worlds to become-with-others.
Baitball 02 involves 80 galleries, project spaces, artist-run spaces, collectives, curators and art institutions. Over 300 artists, activists and researchers were called to deal with the metaphorical image of a long table set for an imaginary collective lunch during which unfold speculations around the concepts of collaboration and self-organization through the act of sharing food and the practices of commensalism and conviviality.
Food, and sharing it also stimulates a string of references and connections that range from anthropology to zoology, from religion to the sacred and magic. The very idea of food and nourishment raises urgent questions about the interwoven fabric that covers politics, economics, nature and the structures of power.
When you share your lunch with someone less fortunate or give your friend half of your dessert, does that act of generosity flow from the milk of human kindness, or is it a subconscious strategy to assure reciprocity should you one day find yourself on the other side of the empty plate?
The long table that seamlessly crosses the spaces of the seventeenth-century Palazzo San Giuseppe in Polignano a Mare is conceived as a long snake, a labyrinth or a gut. A single, gargantuan being, with a hive mind. The traces left by the exhibition appear both as object, narration and social bond, never reduced to a simple entity. What matters here is the plurality of the agents and the networks that connect them.
“us and our technologies in one vast system – to include human and nonhuman agency and understanding, knowing and unknowing, within the same agential soup”.
Baitball 02 stages an uninterrupted neural sequence that can only be experienced as part of a whole, only as a single choral installation that arises neither as an object nor as a subject, but as a relationship.
Baitball 02 is a single plural work that works as a mediator responsible not for conveying messages, but for building, rewriting, and modifying their meanings.
Baitball 02 does not symbolize, does not reflect, does not reify relationships, it contributes to shaping them.
*A bait ball occurs when small organisms (fish, birds, insects) move tightly compacted in a spherical formation around a common center. It is a defensive measure adopted to escape the threat of predators, but it is also a cohesion exercise enhancing the hydro-aerodynamic functions.
A coordinated bait ball shimmers in unison, hundreds or thousands of individuals move together apparently under radio control or directed by predetermined choreography, even if there is no leader or hierarchy within them.
The "balls" are formed through that spontaneous emergence known as self-organization. It emerges from the bottom upwards, it is an a-centered and non-linear phenomenon, it is an irreversible process, which thanks to the cooperative action of subsystems lead to more complex structures in the global system.
Projects by 427 Gallery, Riga (LV), Acappella, Naples (IT), ADA, Rome (IT), Almanac, London (UK) / Turin (IT), AlterSide, Seoul (KR), Alyssa Davis Gallery, New York (US), Apparatus Project, Chicago (US), A.ROMY, Zurich, (CH), Artemis Fontana, Paris (FR), Baader-Meinhof, Omaha (US), Bad Water, Knoxville, (US), Berlinskej Model, Prague (CZ), Beverly’s, New York (US), Big Window, New York (US), Biquini Wax, Mexico City (MX), Brockley Gardens, London (UK), Cassata Drone, Sicily (IT), City Galerie Wien, Wien (AT), Clima, Milan (IT), Coaxial Arts Foundation, Los Angeles (US), Cordova, Barcelona (ES), Dark Zone, New York (US), Deformal (New York, US/Online), Discordia Gallery, Melbourne (AU), Display, Berlin (DE), Dungeon, Detroit (US), eastcontemporary, Milan (IT), East Hampton Shed, New York (US), Et al., San Francisco (US), Flip project, Naples (IT), Galleria Monica De Cardenas, Milano (IT), Galeria Wschód, Warsaw (PL), Garthim, Los Angeles (US), Gern en Regalia, New York (US), Ginny on Frederick, London (UK), Giorgio Galotti, nomadic (IT), Giulietta, Basel (CH), Harlesden High Street, London (UK), haul gallery, New York (US), Interface, Berlin (DE), ISSMAG, Moscow (RU), Jargon Projects, Chicago (US), Jir Sandel, Copenhagen (DK), Like A Little Disaster, Polignano a Mare (IT), Lonesome Dove, New York (US), mcg21xoxo, Matsudo, (JP), Mery Gates, New York (US), Mouches Volantes, Köln (DE), Nero Edition + Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, Milan (IT), Nico Gallery, Bari (IT), Nights, Nomadic (IT), Nighttimestory, Los Angeles (US), No Place Gallery, Columbus, (US), No gallery, New York (US), Outo olo, Helsinki (FI), Pina, Wien, (AT), PANE project, Milan (IT), Patara Gallery, Tbilisi (GE), Peach, Rotterdam (NL), Plague Space, Krasnodar (RU), Prairie, Chicago (US), Regatta 2, Düsseldorf (DE), Rivera, Mexico City (MX), Ron Providence, New York (US), Sajetta, Online/Nomadic, Sentiment, Zurich (CH), Shore, Wien (AT), Sydney Sydney, Sydney (AU), Studiolo Project, Milan (IT), SUNNY NY, New York (US), The Gallery Apart, Rome (IT), THE POOL, İstanbul (TR), The Tail, Brussels (BE), Ultrastudio, Pescara (IT), Una Galleria, Piacenza (IT), unanimous consent, Zurich, (CH), Underground Flower, Perth (AU), Uve Studios, Buenos Aires (AR), Vin Vin Gallery, Wien (AT), Window Mine, Reno (US) and many more.
Works by Joshua Abelow, Manuel Arturo Abreu, Torre Alain, Artjom Astrov, Mariantonietta Bagliato, Nara Bak, Balfua, Bank of Bad Habits (Johanna Kotlaris & Thomas Moor), Don Bardsley, Aaron-Amar Bhamra, Karolina Bielawska, Colleen Billing, Hannah Bohnen, Szilvia Bolla, Paul Branca, Emma Bruschi, Sam Buchanan, Clifford E. Bruckmann, Anna Budniewski, Casey Callahan, Victoria Campbell, Federico Cantale, Mikkel Carlsen, Filippo Cecconi, Ana Chaduneli, Shelby Charlesworth, Urbain Checcaroni, Mengqi Chen, Ivan Cheng, Rosa Ciano, Edoardo Ciaralli, Ciriza, Pierre Clement, Gianluca Concialdi, Julia Colavita, Nicole Colombo, Gerardo Contreras, Daniela Corbascio, Trent Crawford + Stanton Cornish-Ward, Alex de Roeck, José De Sancristobal, Federico Del Vecchio, Luca de Sousa Oliveira, Rachel Dickson, Derek MF Di Fabio, Michael Dikta, Anthony Discenza, Dove Perspicacius (Claire Wallois), DUNA GROUP, Claudia Dyboski, Sessa Englund, Lara Ferrari, Julie Favreau, Ella Rose Flood, Patricia Fort , Javier Fresneda, Noah Furman, g. olmo stuppia, Paolo Gabriotti, Manuela Garcia, Alberto Garcia Rodriguez, Tommaso Gatti, Alizée Gazeau, Arthur Golyakov, Santiago Gomez, Hasler R. Gomez, AB Gorham, Noah Greene, Joe Greer, Kaspars Groševs, Maëlle Gross, Diego Gualandris, Valentina Guerrero, Rebecca Guez, Kara Güt, Mike Hack, Alma Heikkilä, Maya Hottarek, Kristin Hough, Annette Hur, Cathrin Jarema, Jason Blue Lake Medicine Eagle Martinez, Irak Morales, Gvantsa Jishkariani, Gareth Kaye, Raza Kazmi, Jake Kent, Baharen Khoshodee, Michaela Kisling, Stefan Knauf, John Knight, Eliska Konecna, Taka Kono, Susan Kooi, Can Küçük, Madeline Kuzak, Dasha Kuznetsova, Keith Lafuente, Dominik Lang, La Gousse (Cécile Bouffard, Roxanne Maillet, Barbara Quintin), Mandy Lee, Giuseppe Leogrande, Lucia Leuci, Amanda Lewis, Kate Liebman, Aron Lodi, Abby Lloyd, Stas Lobachevskiy, George Henry Longly, Henry MacDiarmid, Fiona McElhany, Taichi Machida, Ana McKay, Maria Maea, Andrea Magnani, Antonis Magoulas, Umber Majeed, Lukas Malte Hoffmann, Daria Makarova, Philip Markert, Anderson Matthew, Josep Maynou, Till Megerle, Paolo Mentasti, Qeu Meparishvili, Ally Messer, Mia Middleton, Jimmy Milani, Mario Miron, Giacomo Montanelli, Julie Monot, MRZB, Slava Nesterov, Melissa Newbery-Welcome, Siân Newlove-Drew, Thuy Tien Nguyen, Valerio Nicolai, Jakup Nilsson, Bernardo Nuñez, Matthias Odin, Aniara Omann, Catalina Ouyang, Cem Örgen, Pamela Orrico, Paola Paleari, Giovanni Pedote, Anna Luisa Petrisko, Cesar Piedra, Lub Poeem & Kate Stevenson, Austin Pratt, Gianna Virginia Prein, Psychoegyptian & Michael Intile, Andy Ralph, Linus Rauch, Marta Ravasi, Jessy Razafimandimby, John-Elio Reitman, Kendy Rivera, Dana Robinson, Jack Ryan, Fabio Santacroce, Mike Sarich, Kira Scerbin, marcus scott williams, Jake Shore, Aleksandra Sidor, Anastasia Sosunova, Manuel Stehli, g. olmo stuppia, Kamil Sznajder + Hugo Kaszyki, Filippo Tappi, Alex the Brown, Victoria Todorov, Natasha Tontey, Federico Tosi, Philip Ullrich, Hanna Umin, Israel Urmeer, Valentina Vaccarella, Julian Van Der Moere, Vanya Venmer, Dan Vogt, Karolína Voleská, Xiaowei Wang, Noemi Weber, Graham Wiebe, Tom Wixo, Valerie You, Guanyu Xu, Qianqian Ye, Malte Zander, Alice Zhuang, Julia Znoj, and many more.