Stare, is an Italian association of Artist In Residences which aims to valorize residential practices as research and production process for contemporary art. Stare is born out of the initiative of ten Italian residencies, intending to create a coordinative and representative team which speaks for context specific contemporary art projects activating interaction and participation with the communities.The ten founders of Stare are: Cantieri d’Arte (Viterbo), Diogene Bivacco Urbano (Torino), Fare (Milan), Guilmi Art Project (Guilmi, Chieti), Interzona/LIminaria (San Martino Valle Caudina, Avellino), Limiti Inchiusi (Limosano, Campobasso), Ramdom (Castrignano de’ Greci, Lecce), The Blank Contemporary Art (Bergamo), Viaindustriae (Foligno), Associazione Culturale Vincenzo De Luca (Latronico, Potenza).
STARE foresees series of formative sessions on the themes of residencies, the construction of national and international partnerships; dialogues with local authorities and with the Ministry of Culture for the legitimation and recognition of artist residencies as primary cultural institutions for contemporary art productions and promotion, which adopt collaborative and co-evolutionary approaches in specific contexts.
Being in residence for an artist means more and more sharing a role in territorial social processes, questioning landscape and contexts by taking care of the complex interrelations between environment and human settlements. For this reason the residential practice is worth as a cultural artistic process of great value in peripheric and marginal contexts, where it becomes means of co-creation and imaginaries collective transforming action.There has been an exponential growth of cultural territorial projects in the last ten years, which have massively contributed to the promotion of artists and the production of new artworks; yet from an institutional point of view there has been no recognition of the role that this heterogeneous constellation of artistic realities has accomplished to rebalance the structural problem of access to culture in marginal contexts. This is why Stare wants to enhance and narrate a dynamic and innovative Italian geography of art, which is increasingly attracting research in the fields of art history, architecture and social studies.