Art is not an innocent field.

Are you working at the moment? Are you fighting?
Do you manage to do both actions, or does one exclude the other?
What fascinates you? What gives you relief?
Do reasonable working relations exist inside the variegated world of cultural-theatrical production?
Do you feel that you are expected to be attractive, sociable, available, brilliant, obliging etc. if you want to get a job or to keep it?
Is it possible to say no? When have you said no?
Are you afraid of the consequences? How can you say a powerful, affirmative joyful no?
Who can claim to be free from bonds of power that condition the freedom of speaking in public?

No to educational projects based on humiliation and violence
No to visiblility as a reward
No to silence as a condition for working

Art is not an innocent field.

Have you ever been discriminated because of sexuality, orientation, identity, colour, health++, treatment relationships at work?
Is it clear when I’m being submitted to or dealing with violence?
Is it possible that I have to take on the education of those who discriminate against me?
During the pandemic we are not all exposed to or vulnerable in the same way, non-conformities and inequalities become more obvious: women, transgender people, not binary people, not white people, people from different races, people with disabilities, sick people, parents are not exposed in the same way as others.
I would like to say no if others have no choice. I would like to say no but I would prefer not to be alone.

My performance is a performance, my life is NOT
No to romanticising vulnerability for “authentic” artistic practices’sake
No to work environments that don’t take into consideration people’s physical and psychological well-being

Art is not an innocent field.

As theatres are being transformed, why don’t we use this opportunity to finally make them safe according to law and accessible to host all workers?
I would like to re-start remembering not just those with the most attractive bodies but also those who physically or in their heart need different rhythms and different means of protection.
I would like to consider not only physically fit people but also those who still today cannot leave home.
Who are we doing shows for?
How many non-white colleagues do you have?
How many non-white editors or directors do you know?
When you go on stage, how many and what kind of people is the audience made up of?

No to offering transgender people ONLY roles as transgender people
No to offering non-white performers ONLY roles as non-white characters
No to offering performers with disabilities ONLY roles as characters with disabilities
No to a majority of cisgender white healthy males in positions of institutional power/editorship/artistic direction

Art is not an innocent stage.

How familiar are the dynamics of self exploitation to you? Is it possible to report fantasy, desire, time for living, for relationships, for taking care?
I would like the money from workshops and productions, of government sponsored projects and of tours to be invested to allow us to do rewarded research and education, because we are unfamiliar with this time, and if we don’t get through it we will find ourselves more and more distant from the rest of the world.
The market should respect the time needed for artistic production, which may be long, and not impose its own.

No to doing things anyway
No to novelty
NO. We don’t need to re-open activities if the conditions for doing so don’t exist, so that everyone be safe.

And then … produce: still more?
What?
Why?
At what price?
Who can do it?
And above all: for who?

Art is not an innocent field.

The “world of art” is not a world apart, being “separate” we will not get anywhere.
What do you do for a living?
The economy of those who produce art is a composite economy
Instead of hiding it, it could be the beginning of the construction of alliances between ecosystems.
The pandemic let loose the most visible care crisis ever seen and – suddenly – all the jobs concerning production have become indispensable: those who take care of physical health, those who deliver food, those who teach in schools, those who look after children, writers, domestic workers, invisible work, social work, sexual work, relationship work.
It’s time for a transfeminist politcal ecology of art. It’s time to join the different struggles, come out of hiding, start speaking.

No to speaking of “work with Art” and not of work
NO. Non-materialistic work is not a privilege
NO. We are not all in the same situation.

Measures of income are needed, opening, reinforcing, shift and include everyone in a welfare system which is too narrow.
We require public art and culture. We require the right to an income and to universal and free public services for all the unpaid work we are doing and that we have always done: we are not in debt and we never have been.

Il Campo Innocente is a space of everchanging imagination which assembles a group of people – artists, researchers, live art workers – active in creating a dialogue focused on the following subjects: violence, disability discrimination, sexism, colonialism and insecure employment still present in the field of art. These are not inspirational themes, but an urgent need to deal with matters that in Italy up to this moment have been barely touched on, at times even excluded from the artistic and political debate. It takes care of our own physical, cultural, relational, emotional habitat. In April 2021 it created the network of workers in the field of Culture and Entertainment together with the Self-Organized groups Spettacolo Roma, C.l.a.p. Camere del lavoro autonomo e precario (independent and precarious work groups), Mujeres nel Teatro, Presidi Culturali Permanenti (Permanent Cultural Supervision), Entertainment and Cultural professionals, and Vito Scalisi President of Arci Roma, who occupied the Globe Theatre in Rome for five days, in order to affirm the need to reimagine a sector always in crisis, and claim major rights for all precarious workers.