MILANO CITTA’ MONDO
Milano Città Mondo is a project of the Municipality of Milan, Mudec and Ufficio Progetti Interculturali, Reti e Cooperazione, born in 2015.
It represents a window into the city’s cultural complexity, thanks to an incessant focus on suburban contexts, hybridisations of codes and aesthetic canons, youth creativity and international and diasporic identities. Its context weaves a strong relationship between public art, intercultural projects and museum heritage in a contemporary dimension.
Milano Città Mondo promotes intercultural activities, exhibitions, lectures, laboratories and courses in the Space of Cultures “Khaled al-Asaad”.
It deals with reflections and experiences that narrate identity, history, current events and processes of transcultural representation taking place in a Milano that more and more proposes itself as a cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic metropolis.
From 2023 onwards, its programming intends to ideally reconnect the threads with the museum’s original mission. The museum is where the presence of ethnographic collections works as a flywheel to open the debate to contemporary cultural issues in an interdisciplinary sense, invading the city in a physical and relational sense.
Milano Città Mondo, through the city network of associations, institutions, activists and academics grown over the years, currently promotes participatory activities. This way, the ongoing museum’s exhibition projects become, to all intents and purposes, its public program.
MCM 2023 #Rainbow
As part of Mudec’ s renewed vision, in which the synergy between the museum’s various souls is increasingly strong, MCM programme becomes the palimpsest of the temporary exhibition ‘Rainbow. Colours and wonders among myths, arts and science’.
MCM#Rainbow focuses its attention on the theme of the Rainbow as an element symbolising cultural, spiritual and political values, and its programme is enriched with the special edition of the Black Arts Movement School Modality Milano session on the Rainbow, borrowed from the American context and conceived specifically for the Italian situation.
MCM#Rainbow schedule includes meetings, readings, screenings, presentations on the theme of the rainbow and a podcast: “The wonder of colour” conceived by sinologist Sergio Basso.
Black Arts Movement School Modality Milano Session on the Rainbow(BAMSM)
Milano Città Mondo promotes the public program of “Rainbow. Colors and wonders between myths, arts, and science”. The focus of the programme is Black Arts Movement School Modality Milan Session on the Rainbow: a week, from 22nd - 26th May, aimed at students, artists, researchers, activists with a migratory background, and all those interested in exploring the relationship between art, expression, and resistance (art, music, poetry, narrative, theatre...) in both the Italian and American contexts. In addition to the creator of the American school, Romi Crawford, the Mudec edition will have a co-curator, Mackda Ghebremariam Tesfau’, an expert on the Italian and European context and will feature contributions from artists and educators.
What role do museums and schools play in the context of cultural leveling? Can institutions recognize their own colonial legacy and make structural changes? Artistic institutions better tools to recognize and valorize cultural, artistic, and theoretical contributions, as well as pedagogical and learning practices that emerge from other cultural domains. The school, with its intercontinental and intergenerational dialogue, offers itself as a space in which to activate conversations and in-depth discussions on these issues.
Romi Crawford's presence in Milan favours the comparison and analysis of the characteristics, styles and central themes of the American and Italian contexts, as well as the highlighting of the historical bearing and topicality of the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Lessons and meetings filmed as part of the 'Tik Tok Mundi' project by the Università Statale di Milano, Polo di Mediazione Interculturale e Comunicazione, and the material collected in a digital publication in this web-site: https://milanomundi.wordpress.com/
Thanks to the collaboration with ANISA Sezione di Milano, a qualified training institution for teachers under MIUR Directive 170/2016, teachers will receive a certificate for their training hours.
Milano Città Mondo PODCAST
The Milano Città Mondo podcasts come to life from the annual thematic address and ongoing museum’s exhibition projects and become to all intents and purposes an integral part of its public programme.
LISTEN ON:
In the series “Lo Stupore del Colore” (i.e. The Astonishment of Colour), the sinologist Sergio Basso makes us discover stories, myths and legends from five objects in the Mudec collections in connection with the themes of the “Rainbow” exhibition.
Recording and post production by Andrea Franco Cosenza and Chiara Nicolazzo
Sound recording and sound design by Giovanni Mandia.
“Generazioni Liminali” (i.e. Liminal Generations) is a podcast about how we experience urban, community, cultural and political space. Through the comparison between racialised people belonging to different generations, this podcast aims to investigate how the concepts of integration, assimilation, multiculturalism, segregation, and self-exclusion have influenced and transformed the way we inhabit social space.
“Generazioni Liminali” is conceived and written by Nadeesha Uyangoda, as part of Milano Città Mondo #Identità Globali palimpsest and by the Department of Communication and Performing Arts of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, within the project Migrations I Mediations.
It is produced by Undermedia.
"La Cura delle Parole" (i.e. Care of Words) deals with terms that we use every day and whose historical and symbolic significance we often ignore: they can hurt someone, refer to painful events, reinforce stereotypes, build walls. "La Cura delle Parole" is the podcast that takes care of the way we speak, as part of Milano Città Mondo #Remix palimpsest, in collaboration with Confucio Institute. "La Cura delle Parole" is produced by Undermedia and supported by Fondazione Cariplo.
Shortcodes Ultimate
MCM#01 – Eritrea/Etiopia
The first stage of the project, dedicated to the Eritrean and Ethiopian community in Milano, socially and culturally integrated into the city fabric for about half a century.
The exhibition displayed both objects, documents and testimonies from the collections of the Municipality of Milano relating to Italian colonialism in the Horn of Africa, and some photographs taken in the early 1980s by Vito Scifo and Lalla Golderer, later collected in the publication “Stranieri a Milano” – now retained in the archive of Ethnography and Social History of Regione Lombardia.
Star of the exhibition was also ‘Asmarina’, the research and documentation made by the filmmakers Alan Maglio and Medhin Paolos about the present-day Habesha community in Milano.
A choral narration pointing out a post-colonial heritage not very well explored until now.
MCM#02 – Cina
Topic of investigation is the Chinese community in Milano, the first in order of time due to the antiquity of its settlement.
To this end, a wide programme of activities, conferences and presentations was developed in collaboration with Istituto Confucio of the University of Milan and with the support of associations representing the Chinese community.
The concluding exhibition ‘Chinamen’ invited visitors to discover through images, objects and direct testimonies, an unreleased path of stories: the birth of the ‘Sino-Milanese’ identity and the transformation of Chinatown district: Canonica, Sarpi and Porta Volta.
The exhibition was a mix of research coordinated by the sinologist Daniele Brigadoi Cologna and of artistic production of Matteo Demonte and Ciaj Rocchi, authors of ‘Chinamen’ – animated documentary co-produced by Mudec – and the namesake graphic novel – the exhibition catalogue (www.chinamen.it)
Chinamen booktrailer di Ciaj Rocchi e Matteo Demonte
Download the program
MCM#03 – Egitto
With 40,000 members in Milano, Egyptians represent the largest arab community in the city context. Talking about Egypt in Milan, means focusing on how arab culture is ‘experienced’.
It means to illustrate – through meetings, debates, performances, movies and workshops – contemporary Egyptian culture and its relations with Italy and with the protagonists of valuable cultural contaminations.
The program – coordinated by a scientific committee – was opened by Prospekt Photographers’ digital-video installation called ‘Egypt Room’ (13/09/2017 – 07/01/2018): interviews, photographs, short-movies and sounds telling relations between Milano and Egypt.
More than 20 events including meetings, readings, concerts, performances, movies and workshops focused on contemporary Egyptian culture, its protagonists and historical relations with Italy.
MCM#04 – Perù
Peru and Peruvians in Milan, the fourth largest community of migrants and first from the American continent. The contemporaneity of Peru and Peruvians in Milano so called “milanesi” through cinema, literature, poetry, women’s rights, music, cooking and their excellence of care, dance, and youth culture: citizens offering new views of the city.
This fourth edition of Milano Città Mondo was supported by field research culminated in the exhibition ‘Storie in Movimento’, with the aim of reconstructings some social and economic dynamics.
People’s voices, their personal or imposed motivations, their aspirations and dreams became the stories of all those who departed or welcomed.
Through documents, photographs, artworks, images, objects and direct testimonies, the exhibition invited us to discover the close ties that have always characterised Peruvian culture, strongly connected to pre-Hispanic history and culture.
Ethnographic interviews:
MCM#05 – La città delle donne
“The City of Women” was an intercultural and intergenerational program that wanted to highlight a reality that already exists but not visible: thousands of women from other countries but born or emigrated in Milano; women that here live, work and fall in love.
These daily actions are program topics: ‘being born, meeting, emigrating, telling, working, falling in love… in Milan’.
The protagonists brought their experiences and lived as women born elsewhere and arrived in Milan more or less recently, or belonging to the so-called ‘second generations’, here born and raised.
Target of this program was not only show an existing reality, but also create a shared narration as womens citizens of Milano bearers of beauty, skills, experiences and new glances.
La città delle donne: la cabina di regia
La città delle donne #1: il palinsesto
La città delle donne: KIBRA SEBHAT – Ho scelto Milano
La città delle donne: NADEESHA UYANGODA – Innamorarsi a Milano
MCM#06 – Remix
The sixth edition ‘Remix’ was a rethinking path and a new glance at intercultural practices and approaches, as well as a reflection on the social impact in terms of active protagonism, visibility and a sense of belonging to the city. A new perspective for future years.
The central theme was the observation of the structural obstacles in access to the cultural production and its fruition by people with non-European backgrounds.
The program was the result of a process of participatory planning in dialogue with voices, personalities and realities featured in previous editions.
A real breaking of marginal and alternatives voices into the field of official culture: an active speaking out for the creation of a real dialogue space, so not just a concession.
MCM#06 REMIX inauguration with Adrian Paci
MCM #07 – Identità Globali. Nuovi archetipi di cittadinanza
This edition reflected on the young generations’ experiences: citizenship rights, self-representation and fluid identities, discovering new cultural expressions, with a view to active participation inside and outside the museum.
MCM #07 represents a vision on cultural complexity of Milano, paying attention to suburban contexts, hybridisations of codes and aesthetic canons, youth creativity and international and diasporic identities: a contemporary dimension that creates a strong relationship between public art, intercultural projects and museum heritage.
Focus on new citizens’ generation collected the critical and generative contribution of young people of Milano, as ‘bridging figures’, capable of reinterpreting the experiences of previous generations, connecting them with a global dimension and the great contemporary challenges (in and out of the museum).
CONTACTS
Area Museo delle Culture, Progetti Interculturali e Arte nello Spazio Pubblico
Direzione Cultura – Comune di Milano
Via Tortona 56, Milano
e-mail: c.reticoopculturale@comune.milano.it