Il progetto ‘Cooking in Maxim Security’: fare ricerca in carcere attraverso un laboratorio di arte visiva

Abstract

This photo-essay presents the weaves of a research method applied to total institutions where ethnographic investigations have very difficult access. In the frame of visual art workshops there has been an activation of production processes and collection of field data, these reflect in an active involvement of the participants – some of which have become and taken the role of improvise ethnographers – and in an interaction of the public, who becomes also the beneficiary of the final pieces. Total
institutions are constantly transforming the subjects by objectivising them; the processes put in place by the artist and by the participants to the workshop bring out a reconquering of subjectivity through an acknowledgment of the material culture of the place and specifically through gastronomy. This photo-essay presents the weaves of a research
method applied to total institutions where ethnographic investigations have very difficult access. In the frame of visual art workshops there
has been an activation of production processes and collection of field data, these reflect in an active involvement of the participants – some of which have become and taken the role of improvise ethnographers
– and in an interaction of the public, who becomes also the beneficiary of the final pieces. Total institutions are constantly transforming the subjects by objectivising them; the processes put in place by the artist and by the participants to the workshop bring out a reconquering of subjectivity through an acknowledgment of the material culture of the place and specifically through gastronomy.