“The Table of Alliance” is an itinerant project, a long journey that will traverse nations and bring allied people together in order to weave new stories and visions.
The performance consists of a meal enjoyed by thirty-six guests seated around a 12-metre by two-metre
table. The table is covered by a tapestry bearing a map of the human genome.
In the long history of the path trod by humanity and in all traditions, to eat has always been a crucial human act. The act of eating is a revelatory moment of the truth of human beings as beings of communion.
The performance bears witness to this act, where those invited to participate in the banquet are men and women of different nationalities and social, cultural and scientific worlds.
The banquet lasts approximately two hours and each participant is requested to leave a sign of their witness, besides their convivial sharing, and to write a word which each consider irremissible. Each individual’s word will be embroidered and added to those of the others.
All will enjoy full freedom of action and word during the meal. Conviviality around the table is the extraordinary site of humanization, of reciprocal listening, of the exchange of words. Thus all discover the others and all know each other better. In all ages of history, to share the same food has the value – at times unconscious and unwitting – of “ally”, as well as “helper” in less favourable times.
The performance took its first step June 12, 2014 inside Rome’s city prison, Rebibbia. The participants included: the president of the Italian Senate, Pietro Grasso; the general secretary of the Presidency of the Republic, Donato Marra; the president of the Lincei Accademy, Lamberto Maffei; the president of the Swiss Cell Foundation, Gianni Soldati; the vice-‐president and Imam of the Yahya Italian Islamic Religious Community, Sergio Yahe Pallavicini; the writer Niccolò Ammaniti; the actors Paolo Briguglia and Lorenza Indovina; the director of the Rebibbia prison, Ida Del Grosso, as well as many others, including the women inmates who had contributed to realizing the tapestry.
It took its second step in November, in Rome’s historic Piazza del Campidoglio city square. Set in the star-shaped space designed by Michelangelo, it offered a nourishing spiritual banquet to all citizens and tourists in Rome, together with all those who crossed its path that day. The square was chosen for its standing as an urban space of excellence, pulsing with so many different energies, a symbolic and virtual space from which to broadcast its message of universal peace.
In a collective ritual, all were invited to leave behind one word as nourishment and as a sign of common belonging. The many words they left, collected in different languages, will be added to others already gathered, enriching the work as its grows.
The presentation in the Campidoglio square was a natural continuation of its first appearance in Rebibbia prison, with the same table and tapestry but different guests. Those who had taken part in the original banquet had each been asked to leave one word as a bequest to the community. The words they left that day were then inscribed on plates and laid symbolically on the table installed in the Campidoglio.
Press Release
With the support of the Italian President of the Republic
and
Medal of Representation
With the Patronage of:
Ministry of Justice
Roma Capitale - Department of Culture, Creativity and Artistic Promotion
Pontificium Consilium Pro Familia
“The Table of Alliance”
by Daniela Papadia
The Table of Alliance is a performance conceived by the Italian artist Daniela Papadia The project combines art, science, multiculturalism and spirituality.
The Table of Alliance will start with a performance in Italy of a banquet held around a table covered by a tablecloth embroidered with a map of the human genome. The map of the genome shows us the common elements that belong to all humankind. Every human being is unique and distinguished by his/her own DNA sequence, which is unrepeatable. The genome thus leads to a linguistic paradox: ‘Uniqueness and Community’.
During the performance, thirty-six guests from the international world of science and culture will be seated around the table engaged in dialogue at a banquet laid across the tapestry of the human genome. The tapestry was embroidered by six women of different nationalities, all of them inmates in Rome’s Rebibbia prison. Their work bears witness to the value of solidarity and the ancient art of embroidery, where threads and weaving have been seen as metaphors by peoples and cultures from around the world.
With the banquet the act of eating becomes a revealing moment of the truth of a human being as a being of communion. To banquet, to eat and drink, means to celebrate life. The map of the genome, with its complex processes, reveals the common elements that belong to all humanity. The genome differs between individuals only one per thousand. Combining the text of the genome with the symbolic plane of nourishment bears witness to the need to place art and science in a profound dialogue, seeking common ground between the two planes of ability which each possesses, and to poetically transfigure revelations that belong to all human history and to the act of shared living. The act of sharing and the uniqueness of each individual in the world are today important elements and represent an invisible presence that provides support to individuals as they make decision in everyday life.
The project will involve performances and museums exhibitions and will include a socially and artistically relevant documentary aspect with each step of the project being filmed for an eventual video of the complete work. Daniela Papadia, an artist who has now been active for many years, has always shown a particular sensibility to social issues. She seeks to spread the awareness of social issues through the excellence of contemporary art. The banquet will thus become a celebration of life, of dialogue and of peace. The guests will have full freedom of action and expression and each will be asked to identify a word that they consider representative and indispensable. Their words will then be added to the tapestry by the women inmates who first embroidered it.
The first performance of the project will be held June 12, 2014 in Rome, Italy (from 19.30 to 21.30) inside the Rebibbia prison. The banquet guests will include the inmates who contributed to creating the tapestry .
The banquet will be prepared by chef Cristina Bowerman from Rome’s Glass Hostaria restaurant. A Michelin star winner in 2010, she will co-ordinate preparation of the dishes with a group of inmates from the prison. Bowerman, a sensitive and unique personality in the panorama of Italian chefs, generously and enthusiastically agreed to collaborate in the project.
In this journey to the center of humankind, the artist Papadia, has drawn on the scientific contribution of Dr. Gianni Soldati, the head of research at the Stem Cell Foundation in Switzerland and founder of the Lugano Laboratory of Molecular Diagnostics, Switzerland.
First presentation:
June 12, 2014 at 19.30 pm
Rebibbia Prison (Women’s Division) Via Bartolo Longo, 92, Rome, Italy
Courtesy Private Collection
Table of Alliance
by Daniela Papadia
Sunday, November 9 th, 2014
P.zza del Campidoglio, Roma
For one day this November Rome’s Capitol Hill square, the Piazza del Campidoglio, will host a unique open-air banquet, the “Table of Alliance”, a performance installation created by Palermo-born Sicilian artist Daniela Papadia.
Her centerpiece hand-embroidered tapestry depicting the human genome will be spread on a twelve-meter dining table in the Michelangelo-designed square, offering Romans, tourists and simple passers-by a chance to nourish their hearts and souls on its rich fare of art and ideas.
The work’s core theme is to open a dialogue between art, science, multi-cultural identity and spirituality through a visual transcription of the sequence of the human genome in an artistic map faithful to its scientific content.
It will be the first open air exhibition of the work, installed in a Roman square chosen by the artist as a prime example of an urban center, pulsing with different energies, an ideal symbolic and virtual space from which to broadcast its message of peace to the world.
The performance will consist of a twelve-meter table set up as if for a real banquet and covered with a twelve-meter tapestry on which the hieroglyphs that tell the story of our DNA have been transcribed in embroidered thread, in much the same way that the Emperor Trajan told his story in bas-relief on the nearby Trajan’s Column, or a music score that unfolds before our eyes. The result is a contemporary tapestry containing the most important code every deciphered.
Its story is the genetic patrimony of all humanity, summarized on a simple cloth that will be exposed in an open space as a propitiatory tapestry in a contemporary Ara Pacis peace altar, offering a collective ritual to which all are welcome, and where every participant will be invited to contribute their own nourishment by leaving behind a simple word as a mark of shared belonging. Each word will be added to its predecessors in an ongoing enriching of the performance.
The performance was first staged last June inside Rome’s Rebbibia prison, when it was the setting for a symbolic and actual banquet where guests included the women inmates who embroidered the tapestry itself, as well as VIP representatives from the worlds of culture, science and politics.
The Campidoglio event will be a continuation of the Rebbiba performance, featuring the same tapestry tablecloth but without the diners. Instead, the words that guests who took part in the Rebbibia banquet left behind as their mark and bequest to the community will be symbolically served on plates spread along the table and successive words will be added as the performance progresses.
The Campidoglio performance of the “Table of Alliance” will be curated by Mirta d’Argenzio and produced by Sveva Manfredi Zavaglia, with support from the Galleria Anna Marra Contemporanea. Further performances are envisaged in equally symbolic locations, where the hoped for aim will be to reach places where, for whatever reason, dialogue between people has been interrupted. It will thus become an itinerant project, traveling across countries to help people meet, forge alliances and weave new stories and visions.
The Table of Alliance
Documentary by
Daniela Papadia and Francesco Miccichè
Friday, June the 5th, 2015,
Deauville Hotel, 6701 Collins AV, Miami Beach- FL.
11.30am presentation of the Video Documentary Table of Alliance produced by Micci Movies: https://vimeo.com/117536510
1:00pm Performance of Daniela Papadia Table Alliance: the visual translation of the sequence of the human genome, mapping art true to its scientific content at: Deauville Hotel, 6701 Collins AV, Miami Beach- FL. Poolside. Organisation: WIFF Women’s International Film Festival & Arts
Miami is a multicultural place where symbolic space from which to spread to the world its universal message of peace, which will explore the magnificence of the work of the board of the Alliance. The project between art, science and spirituality, which present first in Rome's Piazza del Campidoglio, received Medal of Representation of the President of the Italian Republic.
The artist has been present for several years in the international art world with paintings, performance, video permanently in public and private collections in various continents. Has had several awards: Fulbright Fellowship - American Academy in Rome; Fundus, Bateaubleu, Kassel Documenta; Magmart International Video Art Festival, Museum of Naples and PAN CAM Casoria.
During the day at Deauville Hotel:
-You can watch the docu-film made in Women's Rebibbia prison in Rome by director and producer Francesco Miccichè. The artist's work with six women from different countries (Bolivia, Romania,Cape Verde island..etc....) held in the prison of Rebibbia, reflecting a participation in the work, the value highly symbolic and social. Embroidery is an ancient art, the metaphor of the threads and weaving was used in all the traditions of the various peoples of the earth. The thread is the image of life itself and the destiny to which we are all invisibly linked.
-The performance of the board of the Alliance: is a table set up like a really dinner covered with a tapestry (12 meters for two). The Opera is an elaboration of the 23 chromosomes in the human genome map. The genome reminds as that we are all part of a unique human project. We are unique in exactly the same way that all others are unique, and respect for all other human beginings is the foundation of the dignity of the human community. This is principal of equality, fraternity among all peoples, in respective of their race, nation, sex, origine, culture or class. You can consult on-site also publications that accompanied the artistic activity of the artist, with texts by important critics: S.Barzel, A.Tourain, S. Klocker, G. Perretta, ... and many more.
For Info: Friday, June 5, 2015 11:30 am Table of the Alliance of Daniela Papadia at Deauville Hotel - Organisation:
WIFF Women’s International Film Festival & Arts
