Rewriting the history of art and activism in Milan. New forms of sociality and the radical imaginary

In 1976, a 12-meter-long air balloon was placed in front of an abandoned church in the heart of Brera District in Milan. This artwork, Riappropriazione Chiesa di San Carpoforo[Reappropriation of San Carpoforo Church] (1976) by Franco Mazzucchelli is well-known as a legendary shield against police harassment, through which artists and activist entered and squatted the space of former church San Carpoforo. Mazzuchelli himself and many other engaged artists renamed the space Fabbrica di Communicazione, a centre for arts and culture. In 2003 a couple hundred protestors gathered in Isola quarters’ former public park to celebrate the opening of new community art centre named Isola. The gathering helped foster self-organised initiative OUT - Office of Urban Transformation and turned Isola Art Center into a platform which politically and artistically intervened in the local fight against gentrification. In 2012, thousands of protestors squatted one of the city’s highest skyscrapers, just in front of the main railway station, Stazione Centrale. The space was renamed MACAO, a centre for the arts and culture. These three cases are the result of a social effort of large communities of artists and activist. Although they are part of a long-standing specific history of Italian social centres, these artists and activist offer a cultural and artistic politicised programming that turned these spaces into hubs for artistic and political experimentation, in which artists are citizens and their object of research is social change.