Center for Creative Residencies
The Fontecchio International Airport (center for creative residencies) is located in the medieval mountain village of Fontecchio (pop: 300), Abruzzo, in south-central Italy, two hours from Rome. The village has one bar, one restaurant, one butcher, one hairstylist, one small grocery market, one flower shop, one pharmacy, one post office, one church, and one funeral parlor… almost everything you need in life, except an ATM and a disco club!
Over recent years, Fontecchio has been home to an upswell of creative cultural life that is unusual for such a tiny village. The Airport has served as a central protagonist and catalyst in this process of revitalization. The project came about as a manner of exploring how the seeding of artistic communities might hold a unique capacity to assist in revitalizing and regenerating life in rural villages that struggle with declining populations (Italy is said to have 6,000+ villages that have been in population decline since the end of WWll).
Repopulation via Arts & Culture
I was first invited to the region for the purpose of this work by Raffaello Fico, head of the Special Office of Reconstruction of the Crater Region (Usrc). Following the 2009 earthquake that devastated the capital city of L’Aquila and many of its surrounding municipalities, Fico relocated to L'Aquila from Napoli to support reconstruction efforts. 10 years later, reconstruction was not even 50% complete, and it was at that time that I found myself in conversation with him, discussing projects that center on social and cultural revitalization. He described how, while the domain of his profession was that of physical reconstruction, he nevertheless felt profoundly concerned about a kind of post-earthquake depression (economic and psychic) that continued to pervade the region. He strongly wanted to identify possible ways of sparking a genuine resurgence of social and cultural life, even if just starting with one village that could serve as a potential model. Shortly thereafter, he introduced me to the very spirited and forward-thinking mayor of Fontecchio, Sabrina Ciancone, who right away invited me to come live and base my efforts in Fontecchio, the village of her birth.
In that first year, Fico invited me to propose a project that would have the chance of receiving government support. Additionally, both Fico and Fontecchio’s mayor asked if I thought I could create something similar to the Red Poppy Art House (an artistic center I founded in San Francisco in 2003: http://redpoppyarthouse.org/) for Fontecchio. I said, no way! (Mostly because I knew the insurmountable amount of work it would take and I didn’t think I had it in me to attempt such a project again). But I more or less went ahead and began crafting it anyways, as this, apparently, is a habit I do wherever I go. And so, I launched the project as the Fontecchio International Airport in 2020 (yes, in the middle of a global pandemic!).
Reabitare Con Arte and the Move to Larger Facilities
The first phase of “The Airport '' was based in a palazzo on the main square, different but near to the present location at Palazzo Galli. This coincided with an international residency project, Reabitare Con Arte, the one that I had been invited to propose to the Usrc and which facilitated a 1-month residency for 14 artists of different nationalities throughout 4 different municipalities in the region. In partnership with a Pescara-based organization, the project was awarded 60,000 euros in government support. I invited three colleagues to lead and implement the project while I continued to focus independent efforts on developing the Airport.
The intention in naming it an “international airport” was to generate both humor and awareness, knowing that an airport can be immediately understood as a space of intersection between an incredibly diverse array of people going in different directions. It is a place where journeys depart and return. So I chose to use this as an accessible metaphor to communicate to people that this was above all a space of encounter - a place not just for artists, but a space wherein people from all kinds of backgrounds could intersect.
By the end of the second year, through the artist residencies facilitated by the Fontecchio International Airport and and those of Reabitare Con Arte combined, we succeeded in attracting participation of a wide spectrum of artist and creative professionals hailing from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, France, Germany, Iran, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
In late 2021, however, after 18 months of project development and due to various considerations, the Airport had to temporarily close its doors. During this time I was provided with a temporary residence by the Benedetti family. One of their sons, Davide Benedetti, a local engineer, thereafter introduced me to Franco Molina, proposing that the Fontecchio International Airport would be an ideal project to base itself in Signor Molina’s newly renovated palazzo, site of his childhood home. The palazzo, known as Palazzo Galli, was built by the Galli Family between 1700 and 1720 and expanded circa 1820/1830. It’s uppermost level is owned by the local municipality while the lower two levels belong to Signor Molina. The expansive facilities of the new location would accommodate more artists and studio/event space. Renovations were in delay, but by the last quarter of 2022, the Fontecchio International Airport settled itself into its new home. Since that time, we have welcomed artists and creatives from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Ireland, Spain, the United States and Venezuela.
"Square foot for square foot, no venue in San Francisco has made a bigger impact over the past 15 years than the Red Poppy Art House. A storefront Mission District performance space and studio run on a shoestring budget, the venue has nurtured a fascinating array of hybrid artists"
- Andrew Gilbert - The California Report / KQED
What was to become the Red Poppy Art House was founded by Brown in 2003, originally under the name 'Porfilio Is', to serve as an intercultural and multidisciplinary “space of encounter,” a hub where multiple social-cultural groups could interconnect to experience one another and therefore potentiate one another’s endeavors while weaving a stronger social fabric of the arts into the local community. It began as a working artist studio that offered classes in painting and Argentine tango, a weekly jazz night, and curated exhibitions. Towards the end of that first year, the Poppy initiated the Mission Arts & Performance Project (MAPP), as a community-wide initiative with shared values. Since that time, the Poppy’s organization has been gradually evolving through the years in order to respond to the needs and opportunities presented by its surrounding community and the arts ecology at large. Central among them is how such a tiny space can continue to exist within a market-driven economy without having to “grow” or perish. Can one be small, meaningful, and effective, and still flourish?
From the Red Poppy Art House home page. . .
QUALITY OF LIVING & BEING
The Red Poppy Art House is a room on a corner in the Mission District of San Francisco, nestled between a myriad of communities. It is a place for slowness and the nuanced intermingling of ideas and activities generally termed “art.” In this little room, we present a vigorous performance program spanning multiple disciplines and embracing both traditional and contemporary forms. We also host artist residencies, a socially-engaged professional development track, and assist in curating space for the neighborhood-wide bimonthly MAPP happening (Mission Arts & Performance Project). Behind the scenes, we relish in the role of matchmaker, seeding new relationships wherever we can, among friends and strangers, artists, community members, people without communities, people from near and far, just about anyone that comes through the door. Our desire is to serve as a space of multiplicity, not defined by a singular culture or aesthetic, but as a well-spring of socially-engaged art and discourse that invites growth and transformation. If we had to name our dominant aesthetic, we would call it… “slow.”
In October of 2003, I proposed an idea to a handful of artist friends to initiate a monthly non-permitted festival/happening among our artistic peers, using mostly residential spaces where we could present work without the constraints often required for formal presentation. The desire was to dream up a kind of organic “place making” cultural experience within our own neighborhood where art and performance would not be framed in any way by the market economy. At the time I also began to realize the power of small - thinking/working within contexts that felt more intimate to people. Among the group was friend and artist Adrian Arias who proposed thinking within the metaphor of an emotional map of the neighborhood, and within two months we launched the first Mission Arts Party (MAP) - connecting small space together.
That first experiment of the MAP involved just a few of us; my friend, neighbor, and fellow artist, Luis Vasquez Gomez, who curated his garage, while myself, assisted by artists Veronica Blanco and Martin Arslanian, curated the Red Poppy Art House and the basement of a local cafe, along with a garage by the owner. With just these four spaces, we found a beautiful success. I learned that diligence pays, and by 2005 our small group had grown into a loose collective of 18 artist/street-level curators that would meet weekly to plot out the next happening. For us, the MAP was not an event, but a community. We soon renamed the project the Mission Arts & Performance Project, and it has continued to grow and change ever since, serving as an incubator and launchpad for innumerable artists, projects, and relationships.
CONNECTION-RELATIONSHIP-TRANSFORMATION
At the heart of the MAPP was a simple and honest desire for connection. Art can be a catalyst for transformation among individuals and communities, and a feeling of connection is a basic condition for such transformation. The MAPP became a place to go to feel and be connected; artist-to-artist, artist to community members, and community members to one another. My observation is that art is powerful, but the power of relationships goes far beyond and is capable of engendering ever more creative action. This mushroom effect of creativity and relationship stands in contrast to much of our contemporary contexts for experiencing art, where viewers and audiences are often alienated or othered from the art itself - i.e. there is art, and there is you, and there is between lies a gulf of separation. In this regard, it could be said that the MAPP was intended to play a far more archetypal role, more akin to the way the way that communities have gathered together (most often in a circle) across time immemorial, to experience something of the sublime both within and without and beyond the ordinary quotidian routines and struggles.
TEXT FROM THE RED POPPY WEBSITE:
Launched in 2003, the Mission Arts & Performance Project (MAPP) is a homegrown bi-monthly, multidisciplinary, intercultural happening that takes place in the Mission District of San Francisco. On the first Saturday of every even month of the year, the MAPP transforms ordinary spaces, such as private garages, gardens, living rooms, studios, street corners, and small businesses into pop-up performance and exhibition sites for a day/night of intimate-scale artistic and cultural exchange among a kaleidoscope of individuals and communities.
While the MAPP was originally conceived, and incubated, at the Red Poppy Art House (then known as Porfilio Is) and included collaborating partners from the beginning, it grew to become its own autonomous festival/happening. Today, the MAPP is organized among homes in the Mission, not coordinated nor supervised by any formal organization. This was the intention from the outset, to see the MAPP take root within our local neighborhood and be adopted by its community of artists and residents. From our tiny performance space we once wondered, how might this intimate kind of cultural experience be expanded to something larger without losing its intimacy? The answer is found in the MAPP. Attend one of the happenings, and you’ll discover that while there are hundreds of people in attendance, the feeling of intimacy is everywhere. The MAPP takes the impersonal nature of urban living and transforms and humanizes it onto a space of relationships and friendly exchange.
It’s important to understand the original impulse out of which the MAPP grew from a group of artists, which was that we wanted to create an event for each other – to share and enjoy each other’s work in an informal and organic manner. But then, also, we wanted to open the door to the public to come and be a part of it – to invite friends and grow a community. And this is the difference – to not present a performance as ‘entertainment’ for the public. Rather, to craft a context and experience of sharing, where the line between ‘artist’ and ‘public’ blurs. This is why, as artists, we did it for no pay (something we’re normally not fond of), because we did it for each other – to create the kind of world in which we wanted to live, if only for one night every two months.
As the MAPP grew in participation, from artists of different aesthetics, different communities, and more locations, the spaces took on distinct characteristics, evolving the MAPP into a rich intersection of aesthetics and communities. From this intersectionality, we discovered that new relationships never ceased to emerge.
Organizationally, across the years, the MAPP decisively resisted formalization, choosing to remain as a volunteer-run, non-hierarchical experiment of community-engaged art happenings. Today, the MAPP has produced over 75 neighborhood-level arts festivals, involving many hundreds of artists and many thousands of attendees. It poignantly demonstrates how an array of individuals, from different cultural communities and artistic disciplines, can catalyze a multi-dimensional arts festival that does not rely on formal institutions, funding support, or commercial marketing. Most significantly, what makes it different from the art walks that are now so popular across the nation, is its activation of the private home (living rooms, garages, yards, studios) within a residential community, such that transform the private sphere into a networked quasi-public cultural commons for creative expression and discourse. It is our way of redeeming ourselves from the over-privatization and commodification of our lives and communities that so often leaves many of us feeling isolated or disconnected and returning a felt sense of community and collective sharing to the neighborhood and city of which we are a part.
2013 - 2017
Mission Stoop Fest was conceived as another residential-based neighborhood arts experiment, similar to MAPP, but with an intention to bring greater focus to where and how artists and local community members lives can intersect within Mission District community of San Francisco. The 'where' became the stoop of local homes, and the 'how' was centered around bringing residents and artists together on a shared stoop to interweave stories and artistic performances.
Within urban communities, the front stoop represents a literal threshold between the public and private spheres and is a historic site of spontaneous community interaction and exchange. Before arriving to urban centers, it was often the porches of homes in smaller communities where neighbor interaction took place. Moving from the rural to the urban, the porch was transformed into the stoop. This unique public-private space has become increasingly significant and symbolic in our neighborhoods that are undergoing the rapid processes of gentrification, such that results in a breakdown of social fabric and the loss of communal/neighborhood memory. STOOP represents a heart-set invitation into a space of encounter – where past meets present, where the public meets the private, and where different communities intersect to discover the threads that link us together.
Mission Stoop Fest was produced with various iterations and locations over a period of three years. The success of STOOP was based largely on the quality of Stoop curators/organizers that accepted the invitation to participate. These were artists, organizers, culture workers, and local residents that had an understanding of the neighborhood history of the Mission District and the various struggles that have face its community. The were often individuals with strong networks of fellow artists whose participation they could call upon. You can check the Stoop Fest 2016 video credits for a list of stoop curators/organizers and participating artists.
