By Mike Watson
Teatro Valle, Rome
In Rome, few things are as constant as its near incessant heat. As for governments, both on a national as well as local level, the only thing that seems constant about them is that they constantly change. Italy has had 46 different governments since 1946, as opposed to, for example, just 14 in the UK.
On the level of local infrastructure, things remain barely more consistent. The Comune di Roma – Rome’s Council – is effectively the same office that was already presided over by the Emperors of Ancient Rome. Whilst the intricate machinations of power may not be as brutal now as they were then, the common tendency for incoming, new mayors to demonstrate their will to change things by sacking all of the directors of the city’s cultural and heritage spaces, followed by a slow re-selection process, inevitably proves damaging to continuity. In the months since Mayor Ignazio Marino entered office, in April 2013, such a situation has had a detrimental effect on Rome’s contemporary art scene, leaving the MACRO– Rome’s museum of contemporary art – with a caretaker director and a makeshift programme. The last director, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, was asked to clear his desk in July 2013, two years after taking over from his predecessor, Luca Massimo Barbero. With Rome’s former cultural hub now operating a barebones programme run by a skeleton staff, its four resident artists – Guglielmo Castelli, Nemanja Cvijanović, Anna Franceschini, and André Romão – have managed against the odds to produce impressive residency shows. However, this was not enough to save Rome’s assessor of culture Flavia Barca from being relieved of her position on May 26th following eleven months of obfuscation over the MACRO’s future.
MACRO museum, Rome
With the Comune di Roma’s debt standing at over 850 million euros, people have naturally been left asking if there might be alternative forms of management for the arts, which can sidestep the Kafkaesque machinations of State and regional governance. In Italy in the last three years, just such an alternative has been seen in action with occupied spaces such as Teatro Valle (Rome), MACAO (Milan), Teatro Garibaldi Aperto (Palermo), SaLE Docks, Morion and Teatro Marinoni (Venice) who have all to varying degrees explored the notion of the ‘commons’, or bene comune (‘common good’).
This idea of bene comune finds its roots in article 43 of the Italian Constitution, which provides for the management of ‘essential public services, energy sources or monopolistic situations which have a primary public interest’, by the State, public entities or communities of workers. That article has become the focus of intense debate, since a group of theatre workers occupied Teatro Valle – Rome’s oldest functioning theatre, built in 1726 – in June 2011 and declared it a bene comune one day after the public voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to make the water system a common good, rather than privatizing it. The theatre worker’s unique solution has been to establish the theatre as a private foundation – the Fondazione Teatro Valle Bene Comune ¬– open to and owned by anyone and everyone, with status as an associate with decision making status costing a nominal ten euros (with this money being raised to cover the cost of establishing a foundation). After living relatively comfortably alongside the right wing administration of Giorgio Alemanno, the left wing mayor Marino has asked Teatro Valle’s occupiers to lower the curtains and vacate the building, so that it may be publicly tendered – effectively auctioned to the highest private bidder. Marino does so despite Teatro Valle’s provision of an ongoing free programme, involving contributions from renowned international actors, artists (Tino Sehgal, as well as the collectives Chto Delat? and VOINA), activists, academics and politicians (amongst them former Italian presidential candidate Stefano Rodotà), activities that have ignited no less than a Pan-Italian bene commune movement. As Teatro Valle remains defiant, the outcome of the developing battle for its future will be crucial in shaping Italy’s cultural landscape.
The mayor’s call for eviction followed the occupation, by around 50 theatre workers from Teatro Valle, of the offices of Rome’s assessor of culture on July 3rd, where they held a press conference detailing their summer programme. The ‘happening’, entitled ‘Summer Holidays’ was not least held to highlight the fact that Rome’s council had at that point been without an assessor of culture for over one month, hampering the delivery of a programme of contemporary art in Rome. The occupiers – dressed in beach gear and holding parasols, buckets and spades and other beach paraphernalia – also repeated calls for a direct meeting with Marino, before returning ‘home’ to Teatro Valle in the evening. One day later the Mayor’s office issued a simple statement saying that, following a period of uncertainty in Teatro Valle’s management, which ‘the previous Mayor has not wanted to deal with’, it is now necessary to ‘return the theatre to the Roman public’. To this effect a sale of the theatre will be held in conjunction with MiBACT (Italy’s ministry of culture and tourism). This decision ignores guidance for the theatre’s future detailed in a 97-page document commissioned in March 2013 by the serving minister of culture. That dossier, subsequently compiled by a panel of experts under Marino’s tenure, in conjunction with Teatro Valle’s occupiers and respected theatre directors, concluded that: ‘It’s important to allow the values and experience that Teatro Valle Bene Comune has produced to become part of the genetic code for a future management solution.’ In response to the Mayor’s statement effecting the sale of Teatro Valle, the activists replied the following day saying that if the Mayor sees no value in ‘any kind of encounter or dialogue’, then he must take responsibility for any eventual forced removal by the police. Given the dire situation within the arts in Italy, with museums often running without a direction or budget – as is the case not only with Rome’s MACRO, but also, for example, with Turin’s Castello di Rivoli – closing the innovative and highly influential Teatro Valle would send a profoundly detrimental signal for the future of the Italian arts both at home and abroad.
Article 9 of the Italian constitution states that ‘The Republic promotes the development of culture and scientific and technical research. It safeguards landscape and the historical and artistic heritage of the Nation.’ In this light and given the success of Teatro Valle Bene Comune as a unique cultural space with an international reputation, the battle with the Council of Rome has effectively become one over who has true legitimacy with regard to arts management in a city with a rich cultural history. A new assessor of culture, Giovanna Marinelli, was appointed on 14 July. One day later, she called for a ‘return to legality’, convening a meeting between herself, Marino, occupants of Teatro Valle, and Ugo Mattei, a legal scholar at the forefront of the Bene Comune movement at Teatro di Roma. Since then, Marino’s absolute determination to put an end to what has been a rich and productive cultural phenomenon has been made even more clear. This is hardly surprising as, after all, Teatro Valle and the bene commune movement not only make the case that culture is an inalienable human right, but set a precedent whereby if an art space can be run as a bene commune, so too could possibly a hospital, a school, even perhaps a financial system. They therefore directly challenge the traditional definition of ownership and the role of the State or governing body: in this case the Rome Council.
On 28th July at a meeting attended by Giovanna Marinell, Marino Sinbaldi – the President of Teatro Roma – and occupants of Teatro Valle, the latter’s request to continue managing Teatro Valle at least in collaboration with Teatro Roma and the Rome Council was refused. The occupiers of Teatro Valle – who have vowed to contest their eviction peacefully – left the theatre itself on 11 August, but continued occupying the foyer to press for further negotiations. From 12 August Teatro Valle has been closed, with the keys handed over to the Comune of Rome. It is unclear what level of involvement the occupiers will have in its future, but negotiations and campaigning will continue to ensure that a valuable experience will not be forgotten. What seems possible, following Mayor Marino’s demands that Teatro Valle be ‘returned to the public’, is that his own office will continue or end depending on his ability to convince the public that it is him – and not the theatre’s occupants – who are acting in the public interest. But in any case, a new convincing model of cultural management has been born in Italy, which sets a precedent that may go far beyond culture alone.
Mike Watson, while he did not have an active role in the development of the theatre and delivery of its programme, is an associate supporter of Teatro Valle, under the terms of the statute which can be seen here (Italian only).