A project by Valerio Rocco Orlando with Contemporary Locus and Associazione Osmosis ETS/Scuola dei Sassi.
On the occasion of the 21st edition of the Giornata del Contemporaneo promoted by AMACI, Contemporary Locus (Bergamo) and Associazione Osmosis ETS/Scuola dei Sassi (Matera) present “The city holds your gaze”, a project conceived together with artist and researcher Valerio Rocco Orlando.
The theme chosen by AMACI for 2025 is education, understood as a broad and plural process that encompasses learning, research, the exchange of experiences, and shared knowledge. Our proposal responds to this call by embracing education as an exercise in mutual understanding, capable of activating imagination and social responsibility towards the territories in which we live.
“The City holds your gaze” arises as the first episode of a collective action that brings into dialogue two cultural entities rooted in different contexts — Scuola dei Sassi in Matera and Contemporary Locus in Bergamo — with the aim of experimenting with new forms of collaboration and the idea of a diffused school. The intent is not to “represent” but to create a real occasion for exchange among people, experiences, territories, and communities.
The project stems from the research of Valerio Rocco Orlando, who explores the possibilities of art as a pedagogical practice and as an opportunity for encounter. The very title, “The City holds your gaze”, becomes an invitation to inhabit another’s gaze, to take on diverse perspectives, and to assume an active responsibility in shaping the urban and social imaginary.
The project involves individuals belonging to both communities of practice, who bring experiences and knowledge useful for generating a meaningful exchange between the contexts and their cities. Its operative methods include the activation of a shared online co-writing platform nourished by participants’ contributions, and an online meeting representing the heart of the project. Memories, micro-stories, images, and personal reflections will be gathered in a choral exercise interweaving languages and points of view. From this encounter will begin a writing process that will flow into a document disseminated through a joint newsletter, published on October 4, 2025, on the occasion of the Giornata del Contemporaneo.
“The City holds your gaze” is an exercise in territorial imagination, a multi-voiced laboratory that places at its center the potential of art as a tool for relation, inquiry, and transformation. It is both a personal and collective journey that recognizes the value of encounter and plurality, in order to imagine new forms of community and new opportunities for contemporary education — a public restitution of a diffused and trans-local pedagogical experience.