“The role of the artist is to make revolution irresistible”

We are workers within the fields of art and knowledge. On June 14, 2011, we occupied the Teatro Valle, the oldest theater in Rome, to save it from privatization and to denounce the state of emergency of Italian culture and politics.

During these past seven months of the occupation of the Valle, we have been experimenting, pushing the limits of legality, to create an environment of participation and cultural production, which goes beyond the administrative governance and the logic of profit. The 13th of January we entered a second delicate and passionate phase: the construction of a legal, artistic, and economic instrument based on  cooperation, on a participatory management and self governance, which would transform the struggle into a bottom-up and continuous act of creation. Through a widespread public shareholding campaign, we are collecting the necessary funds to realize a Foundation for the Valle Theater as a Common.

This is a unique experiment, the outcome of which is not obvious, and we will need everyone to get involved: from the artists and intellectual workers, to the individual citizens from the networks that in these recent months have supported the practices of the Commons.

The Teatro Valle is a theater with a long European historical significance and relevance: through the future Foundation we would like to preserve the theater’s international nature, which we want now to be informed by all the groups, bodies and experiences of dissent that pursue this fight at a European level.

If we win this battle, the Foundation Valle as a Common will be the first European institution to be operated on a principle of self governance. It could then serve as a model in different sectors, as a bold and risky experiment of creating a political laboratory for all.