The artist as mediator: the artistic residency

interchange", which should be the optimal realization of the exhibition space as a place where the possibility of discussion becomes immediate, as the viewer moves, perceives and comments in the same space (Bourriaud 2006).

At the end of all the reflections that arose during the workshop, it was preferred to define mediation not as a role or a profession in the traditional sense of the term, but as an implicit attitude in every action of the mediator, to the extent that he can synthesize the vision of the curator and the artist with his cultural background, with the links that bind him to the work, and share this synthesis with the viewer.

Mediation in this sense can establish that dialogue, of which Daniel Buren spoke, between the art asphyxiated in the museum and the comparison with the real, "which preserves the possibility of creating what the museum alone would not be able" (Buren 2002).

Relational art, as defined by Bourriaud, is an art whose theoretical horizon is the sphere of human interaction and its social context, rather than the definition of an autonomous and private symbolic space. The practice of the artist’s residence forces the artist to leave this private space, to establish a dialogue with the context that surrounds him, to know him, to understand where to draw inspi-ration from. By definition, the activity in residence cannot be an isolated practice, as the artist is projected into a foreign environment with which he has no ties and this condition forces him to seek new ones. During a residency the material or conceptual realization of a work resides in the exchange of explicit or implicit information be-tween the artist and the community that hosts it, as well as the success of the residence depends on the extent to which the artist gives more importance to the relational and participatory context, rather than the production of a work that is most often postponed to a later time.

In the field of globalized communication, the homologation of every type of interpersonal relationship, the artist takes charge of the task of creating alternative spaces of relationship, in response to the dis-ruption of moments of sociality. In fact, despite the conformation, even urban, of our society forces us to a perennial state of proximity with others; there is a substantial absence of encounter, a situation that anthropologist Marc Augé defined under the notion of "non-place"

(Augé 1992). Museums and art centers cannot constitute themselves as further places of that spectacular representation. The fundamental postulate of most art today is the sphere of human relations, the social and political context as the place of the work, regardless of the level of direct participation required to spectators. The work in this perspective is the consequence of contact with the world, it is the

"relationship of the world concretized through an object" (Bourriaud 2006) as indeed the whole history of art is the history of the pro-duction of relations with the world mediated by objects.

An artist’s travelling activity is certainly not a new practice in the history of art. In a broad sense, it can be said that both physically and metaphorically the journey has always been an intrinsic com-ponent of artistic activity. The contacts and mobility of artists and their works have always been a constant thread in the development of the various stylistic and cultural influences. The urgency of con-solidating an already existing model derives from the desire to make the movement of artists more accessible and fluid and to further enhance the possibilities of intercultural connection that can trigger

projection of the activity of the artist in residence is undoubtedly also favoured by artistic expressions. Despite the will to regulate and structure the format of the residence, the concept remains always very open and the modes of development always very variable. Inter-nationally, the artistic residency is defined as a temporary residency – normally varies from two months to a year – during which it is offered to artists and other professionals in the creative sector – for some years the residencies for curators have spread – the space and time and resources to work, individually or collectively, on those areas of their artistic practice that deserve more study (Policy Hand-book on Artists' Residencies, December 2014). It is also established as a place of dissemination of contemporary art and culture in close connection with the community of reference and its cultural heritage.

The communities in which the artist finds himself working allows him to build his practice really like a "social interstice", which can have long-term benefits in the context in which he acts. For the artist, working in a residence means, first of all, to learn how to com-municate, to connect with the public, and to communicate his art with the context in a more visceral way. A residence as a mode of workforces the artist to find himself necessarily having to combine his artistic poetics with the culture, needs, and needs of the territory, which in turn conditions thought and artistic creation.

In the case of a work exhibited at the museum, we saw with the project Hipervincle that it is possible to evoke the creative process and stratified formations through a different dialogue between visitor and mediator. The artist’s residence instead is rooted in the support and centrality of the creative process for the study, research, and production of the works includes the training of artists and the public as an open process and permanent (Biondi, Donatini, 2015), and images between the two subjects a new relationship of mutual understanding. The residence, in its primary nature of the encounter between someone who comes from outside and someone who comes from within, would, therefore, constitute the most complete form of creation, exhibition, and production of contemporary art.

The project The Spur of the Contemporary Art Center of Girona Bolit has taken into account all these aspects, developing into five fundamental actions: Exploration, Innovation, Knowledge, Com-munication, and Organization. The goals of the project were there-fore in line with the recognition of the artist’s work as a tool for the social and cultural research and growth of a community. The purpose of making the residence the main initiative around which the other actions would expand was based on the idea that the

cultural cohesion of a community could really take place through the concrete intervention of the artist, in so far as it is capable of establishing relations between its work and its context. The creation of a network of links with the surrounding area that houses the residence must, therefore, be the primary reason both for the host institution and for the artist in residence, whose activity must have a strong component of social interrelation. The real protagonists of the residency program are therefore always the relationships that are created through the sharing and inclusion of more actors in the creative process.

The findings of an artistic residency program are extremely variable.

They can be tangible in terms of economic feedback or urban regeneration, or intangible nature such as the human, social and cultural growth of a community. The outcome of the residency depends on the extent to which it can establish relationships between the different stakeholders, to maintain and strengthen them. In any case, one of the great merits of these programs is to help reduce the distance between the expressions of contemporary art and the public, through activities of confrontation with artists that facilitate the understanding and help to reveal the fact that art, despite the difficulty of coding the forms in which it presents itself, is not alien to real life.

The crossing of the boundaries between art and life is a crucial point for the formative experience conducted during the period of resi-dence. Beyond all possible models, the main objective of each residence must always be the growth of the artist (Giardino 2012), giving as implicit that if the artist evolves, even the context that houses it will do the same.

The outcome of a residence, therefore, depends on the extent to which the context it hosts opens up to the artist’s perspective, and on how much the artist can bring a change, an alternative or a renewal to the system of beliefs of that community. The time-cons-trained to the temporary and the distance from the usual context offer a perspective from which you can see something different in the host context. In turn, the evolution of the context takes place only if a strong connection is established with it if you allow your community to enter the development phase of a work, which as we have seen is the most significant part of the work in the contem-porary paradigm.