Perdaxius
Like most ‘peripheries’ of today, Perdaxius and the Sulcis region is torn between the preservation of its heritage and its ongoing incorporation into the global sphere. The risk, though, is that it may not be able to actively control this transition: its local history and cultural practices may turn into mere ‘anecdotes’ or curiosities for tourists, rather than being consciously integrated into the real existence of communities, so as to create new avenues for culture and life in common.
Thus, Cherimus proposes inputs and experiences coming from distant places to its community, through international community-based art projects. Nourishing their ecosystem and building relations among residents of the Sulcis region and artists coming from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Totus in Pari (in English “All Together”) has provided a field of experimentation of a new model of sociality for the community of Perdaxius, involving children and young adults, as well as parents, adults and senior citizens in collective creation processes and a popular school project. Most residents of Perdaxius expressed the need for an open and intergenerational learning space. Totus in pari offered a series of English, Visual Arts and Music classes, to create three new small and interconnected communities based on the principles of individual expression and collective work.
Totus in pari aimed above all else to grant each participant the space and time to deepen their capacity for self-expression and collaboration with others, and to imagine new solutions to improve the town’s quality of life. Thus all activities took place in previously unutilized public spaces of Perdaxius identified in collaboration with the municipality in order to explore and deepen its potential.
A series of residencies with artists from diverse cultural backgrounds have set the pace of the process, exploring through collective creative processes the situated meanings of conviviality in Perdaxius based on the intersection of the local and the international perspectives.