Milan: A building is not enough!

Hundreds of people are blocking a street in Milano protesting for the eviction of a skyscraper of 32 floors they were occupying. Torre Galfa, near Stazione Centrale, has been taken the 5 of May by Macao, a group of artists, video makers, journalists, immaterial workers to make a new arts center, to strengthen relationships between art and society and protest against abandoned buildings.

The tower, quite new, was abandoned since 1996 in a town were many new skyscrapers are built for the Expo 2015 and nobody knows if they will ever be used. For 8 days, thousands of people came in Torre Galfa, a huge space freed for performances, lectures, workshops, ideas, and also where everybody restlessly worked to make the place safe and warm. Also academies, universities and intellectuals wanted to get a chance to help the creation of Macao. Macao was experimenting a participative process (and is still doing that in the street) that was changing the concept of art and culture, fighting precarious work and uncertainty, protesting for neglected buildings wich are maintained only for finance and capital logics, while people who want to share, create, research, do actions, be critical against the solutions offered to solve the economical crisis, which are far away from the needs of people, are excluded from institutional places.

Source: Indymedia, May 19th 2012.