INCOMMON has pioneered an archival service that is technically and culturally responsive to the needs of dispersed artistic experiences that put a high value on oral memory and first-hand testimony.
We have used innovative methodologies in relation to new humanities-specific ways of modelling the knowledge and interpretation of the artistic movement of the counterculture related with the sociological analysis of creative networks.
To do so, the team has designed a novel research practice through its web archive useful to trace, interpret, narrate and visualize relational aspects of performing arts scenes.
The clearest breakthrough is the INCOMMON Atlas developed, currently collecting more than 3000 single items, found in private archives and collections mainly scattered around Italy. The private holdings integrate, intersect and interpolate information contained in public repositories, sometimes resulting in a fully renewed understanding of notorious and extensively researched events, illuminating the social, political and artistic time considered far beyond the state of the art. The archive introduced significant innovations both in terms of collecting/metadating and in terms of visualizing networks and relations.
INCOMMON recognizes that the claims for community and shared creativity experienced by performing arts over the 1960s and 1970s should be considered as precursors of the social media revolution. Therefore, it is not until now that we are able to imagine the formats of an archive for performing art practices. With the emergence of Web 2.0 we are facing a process of continuity: networking, which was previously a narrow artistic practice among the counterculture, has found a much wider audience today and is becoming a common mode of interaction. Accordingly, the digital Atlas of INCOMMON is the first example of an archive documenting the practices and results of collaboration among artists. Moreover, this archive incorporates the network structure into the data visualization itself, giving users an overview of the whole ‘constellation’ of relationships at stake in the performing art movement analysed.
Visualizations of its digital atlas provides an avant-garde and modular model that could be adopted in other archives of Performing Arts and, broadly, in any Cultural Heritage Archive.
The project has made available its results to a broad community of scholars, students, artists and curators, contributing to the creation of a new consciousness around the issues analyzed. At the same time, it challenged the mono-disciplinary approach as well as those analysis concentrated on a single artist in favor to an approach oriented to collaboration and community among artists.
A number of national and International events, conferences, workshops and talks has disseminated the project’s results, as well as several scientific publications. Among them the books: A. Sacchi, I. Caleo, P. Di Matteo (edited by), In fiamme. La performance nello spazio delle lotte (1967-1979); S. Tomassini, New York Furioso. Luca Ronconi e «quelli dell'Orlando» a Bryant Park (1970), M. Baravalle, L'autunno caldo del curatore. Arte, neoliberismo, pandemia.
