A lawyer and researcher, Giuseppe Micciarelli has been selected for the 2018 AFIELD Mentorship with his project Art Spaces as a Space for Politics.

Focusing on how some urban occupied spaces in Naples have come to serve as small laboratories for cultural activities and democracy, it will investigate the possible forms of collective governance of the commons. ¹

One of the main figures of the fight over the Asilo Filangieri, an ex-convent located in the historical centre of the city and occupied by a collective of cultural workers since March 2012, Giuseppe has contributed to building an unprecedented legal tool called ‘civic and urban use’. Establishing a new form of municipalism in the city of Naples, the latter de facto legalises urban occupations and develops a new democratic model based on an antagonistic collaboration between occupied centres and municipalities. ²

With the help of the AFIELD Mentorship, Giuseppe will develop an online Ebook sharing his experience of administrative and cultural conflicts involving activist networks, so that it can also be useful to similar national and European situations. He will also organise both a seminar in Naples and a week-long conference in London where his mentor and 2017 fellow Massimiliano Mollona teaches at Goldsmith University. The two of them will therefore collaborate to explore how these spaces occupied by artists, activists and researchers can constitute a new paradigm for political practice and urban regeneration.

For more information: unisa-it.academia.edu/giuseppemicciarelli