Art4sea in Palermo for the first-year meeting

Art4sea in Palermo for the first-year meeting

On December 18^th and 19^th, art4sea partners gathered for the closing meeting of the project’s first year in the Sala del Consiglio of the Branciforte Palace in Palermo. 

Hosted by the Sebastiano Tusa Foundation in the Palace, which is one of the two seats of Fondazione Sicilia, the art4sea consortium drew up a very positive balance of the first months of work and kicked off the most lively and creative phase. In the second and third years, in fact, the two souls of the project, the artistic and the scientific, will merge to try and generate a new awareness of environmental issues related to the Mediterranean Sea.

The meeting was opened by marine biologists Joaquím Garrabou and Macarena Marambio from the Institut de Ciènces del Mar, who together with coordinator Fabio Bruno form 3D Research, and Vicky Drouga from Atlantis Consulting, defined the scientific, technological and sustainability training that the selected artists will be able to follow via DAN EU‘s E-Learning platform, before proceeding with the final design of their artworks.

The meeting was mainly dedicated to the selection of the 24 artists who will join the project from the beginning of next year. The task was not an easy one, given the astonishing response to the Call for Artists-in-Residence: 259 applications for the three art categories (Underwater, Physical and Digital Art) received from 35 different countries. Nevertheless, art4sea’s partners, fascinated and inspired by the beauty of Palazzo Branciforte’s rooms – such as the library restored by Gae Aulenti and the incredible labyrinth of wooden rooms of the old Monte di Santa Rosalia – took great care in evaluating the best applications for the project. 

Under the guidance of IWorld‘s Lucenzo Tambuzzo, the three groups of artists who will take part in the residency programme on the three small Mediterranean islands (Ustica in Italy, Alonissos in Greece and Gozo in Malta) were thus defined. They will produce the works that will be exposed on the islands and in virtual exhibitions at the Vision Multimedia Centre of the Municipality of Vlorë and on the web and Metaverse from summer 2025. The names of the selected artists will be announced at the end of January 2024.