Valerio Rocco Orlando’s scientific contributions

Valerio Rocco Orlando and Raffaella Frascarelli’s ongoing research South of Imagination recognizes in the cultural horizon of the Global South the social resource required to establish an unconventional educational experience at Matera in a state-owned building granted to the artist for the next thirty years. The Epistemologies of the South by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and the Southern Question by Antonio Gramsci foster this process. A series of workshops involving independent and multidisciplinary communities of artists Adrian Paci in Shkodër (Art House), Wael Shawky in Alexandria (MASS), Yto Barrada in Tangier (Cinémathèque de Tanger) represent the educational action able to draw on the unconventional knowledge of the southern demo–diversities. The paper investigates the sociocultural and economic perspectives of the Global South new art markets, their effects on the interaction between aesthetics and economy, and their influence on the development of independent cultural processes. The endeavors of these new art markets to create and redistribute aesthetic, sociocultural, and economic values in Southern Europe, Middle Eastern countries and Africa are assessed along with the glocal dimension and the molecular collaboration of artists collectives who, while disentangling and deconstructing the myth of individual creativity, are transforming the art market as well.