PLAYING WITH PAMUK (PWP) - 2011
Intercultural practice workshop

Playing with Pamuk (2011/12) is a contemporary art project by Gennaro Castellano & Reporting System with the aim to understand how society answers one of the most urgent challenges that our civilization faces: building a more mature and conscious intercultural society. Playing with Pamuk was born from the view of the trends of contemporary society, such as meeting and challenging between cultures and the difficulties of people to relate themselves beyond the categories of race, religion and social class. It has been thought as a creative way to test how people perceive himself and the others, if and how they can live together peacefully. Thought up within the 9th district of Milan, a microcosm of different cultures, the project suggests new visions and methods towards important issues of nowadays, utilizing the intercultural practice as an opportunity to reassess the role of art and artists in social discourse. In a participative process the community of the area has been involved in a workshop that was thought up as a game in which the level of mixophobia (the fear of losing their culture and traditions due to contact with outsiders) and mixophilia (the desire to lose them in order to acquire a new state of being) of each participant was measured. Inspired from “Other Colors” an essay by Orhan Pamuk, an author who reflected many issues, including differences between East and West, with the whole attention to freedom of thought and expression, rights of minority groups, the role of women in society and invites to reflect about a real chance of a clash of civilizations. The game he imagined revolves around a scale of values, from one to ten, which measures the possible levels of integration. Playing with Pamuk is an uncommon moment of public debate about migration and integration processes which has offered the opportunity for a range of voices, that generally does not participate in public debate, to express their point of view.