A culture that does not exchange is a culture threatened with death, because cultures are like languages, alive or dead, and they are not alive if they are not practised, exposed to the happy fate of change. Marc Augé

Turin, the place where the rivers Stura di Lanzo and Dora Riparia flow into the Po, with the Alps on the horizon, is a monumental city, even if it shows itself with refined discretion. Its history is characterised as a frontier place, because Piemonte is defined by the fact that it lies at the foot of a great natural barrier. However, pointing out its limits serves to recognise its status as a crossroads, which has welcomed so many illustrious people in transit, allowing great creative currents to be born in its surroundings, from the geometric baroque of Guarino Guarini to the fantastic structures of Pier Luigi Nervi, from Olivetti computing to Arduino, from Arte Povera to Slow Food...

It is worth getting to know its legacy, but above all the model of city it proposes, to discover a privileged destination for contemporary art and a reality that can become a cultural reference as a way of projecting our environment.

The importance of a Strategic Plan

Its origins go back to Celtic and Ligura peoples known as the Taurini and to the Roman castrum, constituted in 58 B.C., which still today determines the extension of the urban form as a gridiron, for which the longest-lived monarchy in Europe, the Savoy, is responsible. In fact, Vittorio Amedeo II brought Filippo Juvarra to turn the city into a great European capital. It later became the first city in Italy in 1861, soon becoming an industrial city, especially for the automobile industry with the founding of FIAT in 1899, and was also notable for the innovation of companies such as Olivetti in the second half of the 20th century.

However, all this industrial splendour went into crisis in the late 1980s and 1990s, with the population falling from 1.168.000 in the early 1970s to just over 865.000 at the beginning of the 21st century. It is easy to imagine that the loss of a quarter of its population in little more than a decade was a huge crisis. Faced with this crisis, the City of Turin decided to change its discourse and establish a strategic plan for the promotion of the city, under the scientific direction of Arnaldo Bagnasco. The first plan was published in 2000 —initiated in 1998 with the involvement of more than a thousand people in its analysis and the shaping of a vision for the future— and the second in 2006.

Paola Zini —who worked on this plan and who has extensive experience as director of Torino 2008 World Design Capital and president of the Consorzio delle Residenze Reale Sabaudas tells us what it meant to create the first strategic plan in Italy: "It was not a regulatory plan (a document with legal value), but an instrument that came from business logics and was applied to a territory, to the Public Administration and its relations with all the actors", i.e., it is not only about intervening and guaranteeing the services required by the city, but changing the logic of its management to run it as if it were a company; however, its cultural orientation limited the negative parts that can be assumed from this pragmatic turn. In short, the aim was to maintain the capacity to produce wealth by diversifying the productive system and renewing the city's international image.

In order to carry out this plan, several examples were studied in Spain, England and France, opting to follow the models of Barcelona and Bilbao: "The first, which counted on the Olympics as the hinge of its change, and the other, based on culture, with the Guggenheim. In reality, behind each of these two icebergs was hidden a strategic plan, drawn up with all the actors in the territory, which was not imposed by the local or regional administration, but arose from teamwork". The city looked to these examples and "the strategic plan was the occasion to rediscover its many excellences".

Thanks to this, and without renouncing many of the references of its consolidated identity, it pointed to the future, turning its strategy towards its international projection, establishing 6 strategic lines, 20 objectives and 84 actions, to revolve, in the first place, around major events, the high point of which was the 2006 Winter Olympics. From then on, a second plan was activated, which aimed to boost its recognition as a city of culture through a "knowledge economy". City building was thus encouraged through a debate on research topics and cultural events, promoting the creation of new agencies that would encourage the emergence of new actors, topics and objectives.

Artissima and the Contemporary Art Week

As a result of this strategy to promote the city, Turin has received international recognition: the UNESCO World Book Capital of 2006-2007, Torino World Design Capital in 2008, UNESCO Creative City of Design in 2014 and European Capital of Sport in 2015, among other cultural and sporting events.

Moreover, there are numerous regular cultural events, from the Salone del Gusto to the Torino Film Festival, with the International Book Fair and the week of contemporary art fairs, with Artissima as the most prestigious fair, known especially for its focus on experimental practices and emerging artists.

The novelty of its 29th edition is the change in the direction of the fair. Its new face is Luigi Fassi, who has declared that he intends to "reinforce its double identity as a platform for the market and for cultural production", beginning with the theme chosen for the 2022 edition: Transformative Experience, inspired in the essay by L.A. Paul of Yale University. For the philosopher, a transformative experience can radically change the person who lives it, putting in crisis the expectations prefigured with rationality, to open perspectives towards the unknown: "A transformative experience is one that opens horizons to our senses, our thoughts and our emotions, until it can profoundly change us as people".

With this vocation an ambitious cultural programme is also presented throughout the city, in direct dialogue with Artissima and the Fondazione Torino Musei, to which the fair belongs. Highlights include three curated projects with works by galleries participating in Artissima 2022 in four museums (GAM, Palazzo Madama, MAO and the recently inaugurated Gallerie d'Italia), in addition to the historic Hotel Principi di Piemonte. The exhibitions are: So will your voice vibrate, at the first 3 museums, the video project Collective Individuals at the Gallerie d'Italia, which at that time will dedicate its main show to Gregory Crewdson, and Tempo rizomatico at the centrally located hotel in Turin.

Several special projects are also planned at the city's main foundations, such as A Sud, which was born out of the desire to appreciate the activities developed by southern and island institutions; the Merz@ZACentrale, Oelle and Paul Thorel foundations are participating in this exhibition. Another project, sponsored by the Compagnia di San Paolo, is Artissima digital, through artissima.art and Artissima Voice Over. And the CRT Foundation, a regular buyer for the collections of the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna and the Castello di Rivoli, is launching, with Artissima, the second Beyond Production, which it began with Surfing NFT, to enter the Metaverse. This project is developed as a complement to the OGR Award Disegni, dedicated to drawing on paper, a section present at the fair together with the traditional Present Future and Back to the Future. Finally, it should be pointed out that this year the Torino Social Impact Art Award has awarded the prize to Federico Pozuelo from Madrid, together with the Slovakian Natália Trejbalová.

All these events coincide with various activities, such as the famous Luci d'artista, the extraordinary opening of museums and galleries, as well as the celebration of other contemporary art fairs: Paratissima, The Others, DAMA and Flashback, and the tenth edition of Apart, an antique fair that this year pays special attention to the Icelandic art scene. In addition, there are several events on these days, such as the electronic music festival Club to Club or even the famous Alba fair, which expand an already rich cultural offer when there are no events.

Cultural Fabric

In addition to the strategic plan and the major annual events, there are other realities: the presence of several national museums as the first capital of Italy, the numerous local foundations and even the province's leading role in movements of great importance today, such as Slow Food, make Turin an attractive destination for cultural tourism.

In this respect, there are several sectors that could be highlighted, but we will focus on those closest to the contemporary art spectator. One of these is architecture, which is home to several works by geniuses of the discipline, such as Juvarra, Guarini or Nervi, who have left monumental hunting palaces, such as the Reggia di Venaria Reale or Stupinigi, Baroque landmarks, such as the Chapel of the Holy Shroud, or contemporary architecture, not forgetting the Lingotto, the mythical FIAT assembly plant closed in 1994 and now remodelled by Renzo Piano, which Gropius included in his compilation of the best architecture at the end of the 1920s.

As for museums, another that has made the city a reference in its field is the enormous Mole Antonelliana, which houses the National Cinema Museum, the main one in Europe and a real dream for any visitor. In fact, naming it is relevant because it is a key element in understanding the loyalty of the Turinese to the cinemas and, above all, for the activation of policies of tax benefits for the shooting of films and series; another element of the strategic plan for the international promotion of the city's image. This has led to the arrival of major productions, such as Fast & Furious last June, explaining why in September there were six film shoots in the city at the same time.

And if we are talking about great museums, we cannot omit the Egyptian Museum, recently restored and considered the second most important in the world after the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, with really exciting rooms, thanks to a careful historiographic and scenographic work, which make it a must-see that will not disappoint.

These museums are well accompanied in the heart of the city centre by other monumental palaces such as the Carignano, home to the Museum of Italian Unity (Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento) and the first Italian Parliament, opposite the National Library, as well as other striking destinations for the contemporary art lover, such as the Castello di Rivoli, the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, the Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, the Sandretto Rebaudengo Foundation, the Merz Foundation, the Ettore Fico Foundation, the Parco d'Arte Vivo, the Cantieri OGR and recently the MAO in its temporary part, as well as the special attention to photography in two of the latest museums inaugurated in the city: Gallerie d'Italia and Camera, the latter very close to two of the streets where several galleries are concentrated, via della Rocca and via Mazzini, not forgetting the best known, Giorgio Persano, which has recently moved to the Quadrilatero to one of the oldest palaces in the city.

The full list would be enormous, from the undoubtedly curious museums such as the Cesare Lombroso Museum of Criminal Anthropology, which shares its headquarters with the Fruit Museum, or the National Mountain Museum, as well as other national museums: the Automobile Museum and the Resistance Museum. 

All this is complemented by the activities and atmosphere provided by a university city with almost 100,000 students, with scientific specialities such as the presence of the European Space Agency or the first Italian fablab, the Toolbox, close to an epicentre of innovation such as Olivetti, where Massimo Banzi, the main creator of Arduino, received his scholarship.

No wonder, then, that Turin is dotted with buildings that recall epochal events, such as Italia 61, whose buildings now house UNESCO's southern European campus, or international trends, such as Slow Food, created by Piedmont's Carlo Petrini in one of Italy's two regions with the most small farms and designations of origin. In fact, the area of Cuneo is the one that has specialised in these products, being common in its field of influence to hear concepts such as "slow food" or "zero kilometre" since the end of the 20th century, having international reference and meeting places such as the University of Gastronomic Sciences Studies, better known as the University of Taste, and worldwide attractions such as the International Fair of the white truffle of Alba, without forgetting the many high quality enogastronomic routes that the area has to offer.

This would be reason enough for a long visit to the capital of Piedmont and to vindicate its relevance as a crossroads, as it is a privileged setting for experiencing one of the metaphors par excellence for understanding the contemporary: that of the journey. To understand it in this way means to assume the transit and its unpredictability, the dispersion of stops and the multiplication of horizons, knowing that there is no single meaning and that there are many possible drifts. So let us take our steps to discover Turin, and what better way than during the week in which contemporary art is the protagonist.

PEDRO MEDINA is a professor, editor, critic and curator based in Turin, Italy.

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