viadellafucina16 is an international artist-in-residency programme launched by Kaninchen-Haus in 2017, with the aim of giving life to the world’s first experiment of a Condominium-Museum. The residency occurs within a 19th-century building, that we find today in a complete state of abandon and decline. More than two hundreds people of different nationalities inhabit this apartment complex located in the heart of the Turin’s district Porta Palazzo, where the biggest open market in Europe rises.
Through an international open call, whose 1st edition received 442 candidacies, artists have been invited to realize their artwork in the common areas of the building, with the purpose of promoting its regeneration and activating a dialogue among the different communities of tenants.
The winning projects have been selected by the inhabitants themselves (about 200 of various nationalities, living in 53 apartments) together with a committee of curators and insiders, on the basis of the artists’ ability to engage the community in the design and production of the artworks, to interpret the community’s desires and to activate new forms of sociality through a process of co-creation and collective care. The apartment complex – a place where we experience the first form of democracy, and intersection point between the public and the private domain – opens itself to the artistic practice as an activator of aesthetic and social regeneration. It becomes thus a symbolic space where a community can represent itself, in the same way as, in the past, artwork inside palaces used to represent the prestige of noble families.

The work done in a bit more than an year made the complex a multifunctional hub for artistic and cultural production and a unique workshop for social innovation. The artists are hosted inside the Condominium-Museum, within an apartment managed by Kaninchen-Haus. They have access to the office, the meeting room, the bookshop – cafeteria ( former doorman’s quarters) and a collective studio facing the shared garden (300 sqm). Moreover, artists can exhibit and set up their projects and artworks both in the common areas or in the exhibition spaces managed by Kaninchen-Haus, inside the building. In order to make the project replicable. the entire process is constantly documented and monitored by a young team of sociologist from the University of Turin . viadellafucina16 constructs itself as an innovative juncture between the artistic practice and the living fabric of a defined community that, by experimenting within a small context, aspires to prove how art and culture can become effective tools to solve conflicts and lead to a collective transformation.

The 2nd edition of VIADELLAFUCINA16 residency programme is addressed to artists and curators, regardless of age, gender or nationality. The organizers are particularly interested in emerging or professional artists and curators, whose researches demonstrate a coherence with the concept of Condominium-Museum and its guidelines, or more in general, with the thematic that Kaninchen-Haus has examined over the course of its history.
Actions and artworks to be realized in the common spaces of the Condominium-Museum (hall, garden, terrace, five floors, stairs) as well as cultural activities able to engage with the community of the Condominium and/or the neighborhood, enabling new relations and dialogues. By way of example, they could be:

• paintings, graphics, light or interactive installations, audiovisuals experiments or films, performances, action in the garden, and in general, participatory and relational activities, able to forecast since the beginning, the possibility of being modified, developed by the live interactions and exchanges with the communities;
• projects addressed to the local community, the neighborhood, the district of Porta Palazzo, or a specific target located in the city of Turin;
• workshop or seminar proposals;
• projects development about the relation between art and new technologies.