ACTIVISM

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a need was defined within the Roman art scene to actively and programmatically influence existential, welfare and social issues, current affairs and culturological circumstances in Europe and the world. A postulate of activism became spiritual – philosophical, ironical – provocative reaction to everyday events. The need for a common credo to have a purpose in achieving the influence of art in all spheres of contemporary life meant that activism should be institutionalized.

In February 1973, the Bureau for Preventive Imagiation was set up in Rome. This institution soon evolved from an office to collect operative information important to create and implement actions, into an international culturological association with its affiliate offices in France (Nantes), USA (New York), and Brazil (Rio de Janeiro). Personal acquiantances and common art discourse contributed that Mira Brtka takes part into the activities of the Bureau of Preventive Imagination, which resulted in the opening of the Bureau for Balkanization of Arts in Stara Pazova, in Serbia, that engaged, in addition to Serbian artists, art critics such as Nato Frasca and Giuseppe Uncini from Italy.

The Bureau for Preventive Imagination, whose core comprises Carmelo Romeo, Luciano Trina, Marco V. Carelli, Maurizio Mazzucco, Tullio Catalano, Carlo Maurizio Benveduti, Franco Falasca, closely cooperates with leading figures of European and world art such as those from the Art Language Group, Joseph Beuys, Achille Bonito Oliva, Daniel Buren, Christy, Joseph Kosuth, Piero Manzoni, Mario Merz, Hans Richter, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and others.

As a public recognition of her several-decades-long activism, the Bureau for Preventive Imagination invited Mira Brtka to take part at the 53rd Biennale in Venice (2011) within an Extended Performance of the Spanish artist Dora García entitled The Inadequate (L’inadeguato, Lo inadecuado). On this occasion, Carmelo Romeo invited Mira Brtka to presente her Red Suitcase (1994), that is, its content of „deposited signs“ of activist energy in the Spanish Pavillion at the Giardini delle Biennale.

[Crveni kofer:

http://www.arteideologia.it/09-CRONACHE%201/Cronache_%2005_fornitura_Dora_Garcia_2011.html ]

The international character of the activites of the Bureau for Preventive Imagination could be viewed today through the work of the Museum for Preventive Imagination and Arteideologia website, which is a continuation of the 1978 art magazine Art.bur 174956.

[link to museum website; https://www.museomacro.it/?lang=eng
; link to Arteideologia
http://www.arteideologia.it/01-Editoriale/SITO_di_sperimentazione_e_linguaggio.html
]

During the 1970s, the Bureau for Preventive Imagination was truly the most important fact of Italian art.

Filibeto Menna