The Art Monastery Project is transforming an old Italian monastery into an international arts production house.
It is a radical contemporary experiment in social sculpture inspired by tradition: to apply the disciplined, contemplative, and sustainable monastic way of living to the creative process.
Email us at info@artmonastery.org for more information or to get involved.
The Art Monastery’s pilot site is in the cherished former Ursuline monastery in Calvi dell’Umbria, a charming Umbrian town only 45 minutes Northeast of Rome. Until the renovations on the top floor are finished, the Art Monastery Project’s office, Guesthouse, and “casa dell’associazione” is the nearby bed-n-breakfast, the Casale S. Brigida. Known for its 16th-C nativity scene and accompanying Christmas exhibitions as well as the ancient and colorful week long festival of San Pancrazio, Calvi attracts visitors year-round both from Italy and abroad.
As a member of the Collaborators Circle of Gli Amici dell’Art Monastery, you will connect with and support a group of international artists, musicians, performers and visionaries. By joining the circle, you will receive a number of artistically inspired benefits. To learn more, click here.
Actively demonstrate your leadership in supporting the arts by joining the Donors Circle of Gli Amici dell’Art Monastery. As a founding member, you will stand out as a major sponsor of the project, its programming, and its greater vision. To learn more, contact donations@artmonastery.org.
Provide a donation to the Art Monastery in the form of a financial contribution or material (office equipment, furniture, art, etc.). This is a powerful way to turn the dream into reality. Donations can be made through Paypal (to donations@artmonastery.org or click the button below). For tax-deductible donations, please donate through our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas.
If you have materials you would like to donate, please look at our Wish List and send us an email.
There are three types of performance projects the Art Monastery is producing:
1. Major theatre, music, and/or dance spectacles for international touring. Your site could be the place where it is developed and debuted or a site for a second performance.
2. Site-specific performances developed specifically for your site and interacting with local artists and community members.
3. Smaller concerts or performances of one-five Art Monastery artists when they are available. [See bio list for artists.]
Finally, it is also possible to host “The Art Monastery” for a period of time (from two weeks to a season), In this case, the Art Monastery artists and staff would live in your community and develop one or more of these projects, creating a festival of works in your site(s). Booking: julia@artmonastery.org.
La Clausura Sconfinata interweaves baroque music, Gregorian chant and modern dance in an innovative yet classic new show exploring the interplay between freedom and enclosure. The music and choreography of this interdisciplinary work explore the paradoxical inner richness of life within the cloister. Throughout the hour-long piece, the all-female cast of twelve musicians and dancers work together with one artistic voice to express the isolation, pain, joy, community, and discipline of the extraordinary women who live within the cloister. La Clausura premiered as the main event of Narni’s Corsa all’Anello Festival on April 25th, 2009. The sold-out show was greeted with a standing ovation. According to York University professor and expert on renaissance convent life Helen Hunt, the performance “continues to resonate.”
Personale: Julia Pond, Lori Belilove, Candace Smith, Beth Disharoon
Canticum Canticorum musically presents The Song of Songs as set by Early Baroque composers, and incorporates Middle Eastern instruments and dance. We have chosen the most expressive and passionate works from the period, 1583 to 1635, including the music of Palestrina, Monteverdi, Grandi and Schütz. Careful arrangement of the vocals move the narrative and character development forward. Our staging of the Song begins outside the palace walls when a beautiful young Woman rushes to bid her Lover farewell before joining King Solomon’s legendary harem that very morning. Once inside, she shares her dreams and fears for her love affair, arranges secret trysts, and recounts harrowing night visits searching the city for her love. The costumes and choreography—drawing on belly dance and Baroque gesture—combine to bring to life the overwhelming sensuality of an ancient Middle Eastern harem.
A new multidisciplinary piece that brings Dante Alighieri’s inner self and personal struggles to life through a combination of electronic and live music, theater, and dance. Artists like American poet Ezra Pound, and Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges, who were both deeply influenced by Dante, and the contemporary experience of the performers themselves also shape the piece. The score, composed by Phoebe Jevtovic and Nathan Rosquist, references the medieval music of Dante’s time while using a modern structure and contemporary technology. Creator, theater director and actor Germano Rubbi contributes his interpretation of the three artists Dante, Pound and Borges, while choreographer and dancer Julia Pond embodies the concepts he struggled with and loved.
Inspired by Bocaccio’s famous scenario, this multimedia installation is constructed to fit each space where it is presented.
When swine flu spread inexorably through the population leaving death in its wake, ten artists flee the chaotic streets of the city, locking themselves away in the country in a space which they call the Oekolos. Every night, they entertain each other with ten short performances telling stories of love, success and the evils of the age. But one thing is never mentioned: the intense outside reality of riots, starvation, disease and war that will probably kill them all. They don’t strive for a manifesto or a political message. They speak plainly of their world… one that may be gone forever.
Decamerone presents ten short performances each day featuring music, dance, poetry, theater and installation art, all presented within a contemporary catastrophe scenario: the crash of the capital markets. As they enter the space, audiences are welcomed by the artists into an alternate reality. With art installations forming its functional interior and transforming the space into an integrated decor, the Oekolos actively relates the space, the performers and the audience to each other. The audience witnesses the performances from within this alternate reality.
Whereas the Oekolos represents a shelter from disaster that is greater than most individuals can fathom, it is also a meeting place for people from different walks of life and culture. Boccaccio’s original Decamarone (1351), a framestory about the plague in medieval Florence, heralded a new era in Western Europe through its collection of critical and satirical stories told to us by ten young people who painted a lively picture of their world. This festival version of the Decamarone gives a powerful context for a diverse collection of short performances and sets up a stage for contemporary voices to speak.
Personale: Marije Nie, Regia. Rita Marcotulli, Direttore Musicale
An evening of itinerant site specific performance that animates each corner of a town with music, dance, and visual art. Different themes can be chosen based on the time of year or space where the Labirinto is presented. In Calvi for the summer of 2009, the theme “Tentazioni d’Estate is interpreted in various ways, which come together in an exciting combination of dream, comedy and pure music. Every scene is designed to be short but captivating, providing a pure experience at each moment, and calling the audience to find, as in a real Labyrinth, the right path.
Personale: Germano Rubbi (Regia) Christopher Fulling (Direttore Musicale)
Posted by admin on 16 January 2010.
The Art Monastery Project is proud to announce a network for Artmonks, Artmystics, and other Contemplative Creatives worldwide: the International Otherhood of Artmonks.
For now, you can join us on Facebook and Twitter; stay tuned for the launch of artmonks.net!
What does an Otherhood of Artmonks do? Among other things, it will:
To kick it off, we recently held the very first Artmonk Retreat in Joshua Tree, CA. For 8 days, contemplative teachers Dr. Joel and Michelle Levey led a group of 15 artmonks through monastic practices of concentration meditation, reflective meditation, and mindfulness meditation.
Here are some pictures of our first artmonk retreat:
Posted by admin on 1 January 2010.
Presidentessa Betsy McCall and the dome of the Integratron.
