TUSCAN ART INDUSTRY
A project by Studio Corte 17 within the context of the International Conferences about Heritage organised by INCUNA
TAI- Tuscan Art Industry. Courtesy:the artists
TAI – TUSCAN ART INDUSTRY is a project by Studio Corte 17, a cultural association working on the research of new artistic and experimental practices and careful study of the industrial buildings of the town of Prato (Tuscany).
The decision to work with no more productive factories comes from the strong will to create a link between the contemporary art and the typical architecture of our territory.
The TAI project was born in 2015 as a workshop with artists, photographers, musicians and performers working together, at the same time, inside the places of industrial archaeology in Tuscany. This project is part of the big change that Prato is living in the last years and that is reflecting on the town in terms of urbanistic, architectonical and anthropological transformations. TAI works on different grounds taking care of the regeneration of abandoned factories, the training of young people interested in the reborn of empty and old spaces, the creation of a new tourism able to show the town peculiarities.
This project, thanks to the different skills of the people involved, creates a connection among private buildings, institutions, public administration, art venues and several country associations.
The TAI’s review works with visual contemporary arts and hosts, inside its selected areas, ideas, sensibility and hybrid works, very often with the help of historical archives that people can see again in a three-dimensional experience. TAI has designed a map of the town industrial landscape and its project involves both abandoned industrial factories as well as active or regenerated factories: buildings that have grown during the centuries with an architecture that is tied to the memory of time. This careful research has been possible thanks to an accurate knowledge of the town and with the reference to the catalogue “La città abbandonata” by Alberto Breschi published in 1980.
This project is part of the programme of the 19th Conference INCUNA 2017 CRISS-CROSSING/ HERITAGE, URBAN LANDSCAPES, INDUSTRIAL CREATION AND CONTEMPORArY CULTUREs, to be held between September 27th and 30th, 2017
