This text was conceived as a contribution and first published in Italian in Condivisioni. Didattiche e pratiche dell’arte nei processi formativi, edited by Antonella Marino and Maria Vinella, Bari, Quorum Edizioni, 2025.

Introduction
In 2015, the collective Ultra-red contributed to the then-emerging artistic-pedagogical process of Free Home University through a sound inquiry conducted together with a group of local and international artists and a group of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees who had recently arrived in our territory. The experiment aimed to intertwine collaborative practices of artistic research, radical pedagogy, and work within (and alongside) communities of practice and struggle.

We also intended to step outside the exhausting and problematic mechanisms of the art system, aware of our privilege and of the risk of remaining enclosed in yet another bubble, as well as of the dangers of so-called social practices, which are often extractive or tokenistic toward those vulnerable subjectivities that end up being used by the art world, including the part of it concerned with socially engaged practices.

We needed a method that would allow us to enter into a situated, respectful, and egalitarian relationship of “listening” with people and situations that involve fundamental differences in access and an inevitable asymmetry at the outset, despite being driven by strong goodwill, critical awareness, and noble aspirations in our attempt to create inclusive and horizontal spaces.

Find full text in Italian in PDF here: