Arte, Legno e Memoria
La nuova edizione di Peripheral Memories
Once again this year, the Peripheral Memories project continues to forge deep ties between international artists and local companies, bringing contemporary art into contact with businesses in the industrial sectors that characterise the region.
Funded by the FVG Region, since 2019 Peripheral Memories has produced a corpus of over twenty contemporary artworks – including mixed-media installations, digital art and land art – reinterpreting industrial materials and stories in a creative and multicultural way through artist residencies, an activity that becomes a means of care and contact between the population, businesses, museums and local archives.
During the artist residencies, authors immerse themselves in the daily life of factories: they interview workers, explore industrial archaeology sites and conduct collaborative activities and creative workshops.
The result is embodied in the creation of site-specific works of art that restore identity to the territory, promoting innovation and sustainability – with a growing focus on waste materials and circular economies.
The new edition of the project is entitled ‘An empty factory at lunchtime’ and aims to generate new perspectives on the theme of human labour in the 2020s, a moment of historical transition between the persistence of traditional production models, such as the Fordist assembly line, and the advent of technologies based on artificial intelligence. The assembly line, emblem of an industrial era based on efficiency, standardisation and repetitive work, is still a reality in many companies. On the other hand, artificial intelligence introduces a new paradigm, in which machines can make decisions based on large volumes of data, replacing humans. In such a contradictory historical period, how do people’s feelings interact with work and with the products that this climate generates? How can art meet the challenge of balancing technological efficiency with the enhancement of human skills, such as critical thinking, empathy and innovation, making companies not only places of production but also of expression of human potential?
Wood, a material that symbolises sustainability and connection with nature, has always been a resource for the region and now becomes a playground: the artistic experiences of the new edition promise to intertwine wood with stories of resilience, eternity and contradiction, generating works that will further enhance the heritage.
Artists in residences
Marta Azparren
Marta Azparren is a Spanish visual artist who works in experimental cinema, performing arts and drawing. With a degree in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid and a master’s degree in Film Studies from Pompeu Fabra University, her work explores meta-reflections on art, focusing on absences, margins and dynamics between creator, viewer and work.
She will arrive in residence in February 2026, collaborating with the Manzano-based company Newlife Contract and the Cluster Legno Arredo to explore new creative horizons and new woodworking techniques.
With her project, entitled “Diario di fabrica” (Factory Diary), she aims to record the repetitive gestures that take place on the assembly line and give them new performative expression on a wooden surface: the wood, scratched and engraved, will bear traces of the repetitive gestures of the workers, which would otherwise be invisible.
martaazparren.es
Guido Mitidieri
Guido Mitidieri, Italian architect, conceptual artist and thanatologist. Born in Florence in 1990, he studied architecture at the University of Florence, followed a master’s degree in wood architecture in Finland and obtained a degree in thanatology at the University of Padua. His poetics are nourished by community participation and walking in the woods as a means of observation and creativity. His works reflect on the profound meaning of human faith in transforming reality. This summer, he will begin his residency in the Sagrado area, where he will create a work of land art that will interact with the local landscape and the karst companies of the Cluster Legno Servizi. Her project, entitled “Cose di Casa”, will lead to the participatory creation of a large-diameter work of land art, created using forest waste.
guidomitidieri.com
In Friuli Venezia Giulia, where wood has always been able to resist and renew itself, two international artists are already weaving new stories. Keep following us, don’t miss the next stages: workshops, inaugurations and surprises.
