editorial presentationHill of DesiresPractices of Rural Imagination

A meeting to explore the unconventional geographies of contemporary art, living spaces for experimentation where art is a tool for producing knowledge, activating communities and imagining the future.

Hill of Desires, edited by Matteo Binci, Pietro Consolandi, Giacomo Pigliapoco and Bianca Schröder, is a shared editorial project that approaches contemporary art as a practice situated in marginal territories and inland areas of Europe. It is an exercise in radical imagination that recognises rurality as a space for counter-narratives, capable of generating political ecologies, affective devices and non-institutional forms of knowledge.

The editorial project is divided into five sections: a visual atlas with reference works created in Italy from 1960 to the present day, three specially designed artist’s dust jackets, nine unpublished texts, a collective bibliography and photographic documentation of the multi-year Traffic Festival project.

introduction
Fanny Borel MAXXI L’Aquila curator

intervengono
Marco Brandizzi Accademia di Belle Arti dell’Aquila director
Silvia Di Gregorio ARCA (Arte Rigenerazioni Comunità Abitare) artistic director
Marcelo Expósito artist
Mario Pieroni and Dora Stiefelmeier No Man’s Land Foundation founders

moderator
Matteo Binci curator of the volume

The volume Hill of Desires, published by Viaindustriae, was produced with the support of the Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea del Ministero della Cultura as part of the Italian Council programme (13th edition, 2024), aimed at promoting Italian contemporary art internationally.