Bologna, this year Arte Fiera goes digital and becomes PLAYLIST

Italy’s longest-running contemporary art fair, Arte Fiera, forced to skip the 2021 edition due to the health emergency caused by the pandemic, is reinventing itself and starting to propose itself on the web by launching, from January 21 to 24, 2021, the digital initiative PLAYLIST, a project based on the idea of “selection by.” Usually, in fact, the word “playlist” indicates a sequence of music tracks compiled by a DJ or musician (or by anyone on the many music programs on the web): in this case it has been used to indicate a format that is very widespread in contemporary culture, that of the “favorites list,” in which the reason for interest is as much the content proposed as the person who proposes it.

PLAYLIST will be a transversal, free and inclusive initiative (a kind of homage by Arte Fiera to its audience as well as an invitation to mark on the calendar the dates when the fair typically opens its doors to its audience: it will return to do so physically in January 2022). Transversal because PLAYLIST hosts modern and contemporary art exhibitions proposed by the galleries that participated in Arte Fiera 2020 (plus some guests) but also conversations, films, and books about art, art of the present and the past, fashion and design. The figures asked to propose their playlists are not only critics, curators, and artists, but also personalities from culture in general: a filmmaker, a writer, a children’s publishing expert, a fashion collector, and others. The initiative is divided into five sections, created in collaboration with Istituzione Bologna Musei | MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, Corraini Editore, and Flash Art.

The sections of PLAYLIST are: Exhibition. Zig zag among the works in the company of Stefano Arienti (in collaboration with Istituzione Bologna Musei | MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna); In the room. Visions of art at 360° (in collaboration with Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna); In the bookstore. Readings on demand (in collaboration with Corraini Editore); In conversation. Dialogues at a distance (in collaboration with Flash Art); In the gallery. A digital showcase for galleries. Among the protagonists of PLAYLIST are Giacomo Abbruzzese, Stefano Arienti, Alessandro Bava, Stefano Boeri, Romeo Castellucci, Luca Cerizza, Emanuele Coccia, Eva Fabbris, Mitra Farahani, Beppe Finessi, Anna Franceschini, Ilaria Freccia, Luca Lo Pinto, Cecilia Matteucci, Angelo Milano, Tommaso Pessina, Elena Pasoli, Italo Rota, Luca Scarlini, Tiziano Scarpa, Paola Ugolini, Giulia and Camilla Venturini / Medea Sisters, Andrea Viliani.

“In the impossibility of holding Arte Fiera 2021 in attendance and aware of the importance of the event for the art world and for the many enthusiasts,” says Gianpiero Calzolari, President of BolognaFiere, “we thought it right to maintain, albeit in another form, the late January appointment with the event. What we propose with Arte Fiera PLAYLIST is not a digital fair but a cultural and inclusive project that expands, in another dimension, some experiences of Arte Fiera and proposes new ones. A project that involves the city, some of its main realities and the galleries that, for over 40 years, have decreed the success of the Fair. As of now, however, Arte Fiera makes an appointment for 2022, when we will be able to meet again in the pavilions of the Bologna Fair with an increased experience.”

“We wanted to emphasize the cultural offerings that even a commercial fair proposes at each edition,” adds Simone Menegoi, director of Arte Fiera: “and so here we have a series of debates, an exhibition, documentaries on art, and so on. That is not why we leave out the galleries, our main interlocutors. A section of PLAYLIST is dedicated to them, focusing on exhibitions physically set up in their exhibition spaces, whose accessibility has suffered greatly from last year’s restrictions. It is a way of emphasizing the importance of the work of the galleries, but also to reiterate that art, whenever possible, should be seen from the ground up.”

Bologna, this year Arte Fiera goes digital and becomes PLAYLIST

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