FONDAZIONE MANIFESTO
The uncultivated garden of coexistence

Fondazione Manifesto is a project collaborating closely with Gibellinese community and other partners in order to reactivate the empty spaces in Gibellina Nuova using art and culture.

Manifesto Gibellina Nuova is the title of the exhibition that co-inhabit Gibellina as a laboratory for the challenges of our time, looking for traces of possible futures. In the context of globalisation, Manifesto Gibellina Nuova – Dream in Progress chooses to be radically local in engaging with the City of Tomorrow in all of its diverse components. 

Guided tours, the Dream in Progress Tours, are organised to bring visitors from Palermo to Gibellina Nuova with two stops. The first stop is at Ruderi di Poggioreale with a short walk through the remains of the former town destroyed completely by the Belìce earthquake 50 years ago.

The second stop allows visitors to wander through the Grande Cretto, one of the biggest Land art installations in the world, that covers the ruins of Gibellina Vecchia. The highlight of the tour is the visit to the open air exhibition Dream in Progress with its outstanding architecture and monuments. After lunch, prepared by a culinary team of residents, the tour meets the local art and garden community strolling through a landscape of incredible potential.

“Fondazione Manifesto purposely strives to keep its distance from what are often seen as the dominant centres of artistic production, instead seeking fresh and fertile terrain for the mapping of a new cultural topography. Each Fondazione Manifesto project aims to investigate and reflect on emerging developments in contemporary art and architecture, set within a European context. In doing so, we present local, national and international audiences with new aspects and forms of artistic expression.
In this way, Fondazione Manifesto aims to create a keen and workable interface between prevailing international artistic and intellectual debates, paying attention to the specific qualities and idiosyncrasies of a given location.
Inherent to Fondazione Manifesto´s character is the desire to explore the psychological and geographical territory of Europe, referring both to border-lines and concepts. This process aims to establish closer dialogue between particular cultural and artistic situations and the broader,  international fields of contemporary art, theory and politics in a changing society. 
Therefore Fondazione Manifesto looks forward to expanding its network and building creative partnerships with organisations, curators, art professionals and independent figureheads in Europe and beyond, drafting an interlocking map of contemporary art and architecture.”

More information in the COMMUNICATION page of the project.

MANIFESTO GIBELLINA NUOVA
DREAM IN PROGRESS

In the context of globalisation, Manifesto Gibellina Nuova – Dream in Progress chooses to be radically local in engaging with the City of Tomorrow in all of its diverse components. Manifesto Gibellina – Dream in Progress has three main sections, each touching on key topics of the curatorial concept:

The Concrete Utopia is focused on art and architecture in direct dialogue with the city of Gibellina its communities, traditions, and public spaces. This dialogue is embodied and multiplied in various projects which: reinforce community engagement and the beauty of reconstruction and development through collaborations and public interventions in the city’s centre and periphery.
The Concrete Utopia builds on existing opportunities in the centre and the outskirts of Gibellina Nuova to further develop the existing plans that are stuck somehow and have not been fully realised. Productive collaborations can act as a catalyst and possibly extend into future and long-term initiatives in Gibellina.

Archaeology of the Future - Collateral Damage investigates the incomplete and ruins in today’s regime of global flows.

Uncultivated Garden of Coexistence - The Third Landscape explores art, plant life and the culture of gardening in relation to the transnational commons in Gibellina Nuova’s Orto Botanico.

THE RUINS OF POGGIOREALE
& THE GRANDE CRETTO

Poggioreale is a small town not far from Gibellina Vecchia; these two villages ware destroyed by the Belice Valley earthquake in 1968, and eventually rebuilt in a safer place a few kilometres away. While Poggioreale still exists in ruins, Gibellina Vecchia was covered by an art intervention by Alberto Burri.