Occupazioni (Occupations) is a multidisciplinary artistic project and a collective working methoddeveloped by Grossi Maglionisince 2014. Stemming from an inquiry into the history ofoccupations and squats in Rome, the project unfolds through a site-specific workshops andinstallations, investigating the‘occupation’not only as a form of inhabiting, but as a means ofreclaimingand continually renegotiating a space in relation to context. Functioning as bothsculptural elements and dynamic environments, these evolving camp-like structures serve aslaboratories for dialogue, relation, and collective exploration.The core of theproject has since evolved into a narrative form, titledOccupazioni: The PerpetualDialogue, consisting of a twelve-chapter textile book, each chapter corresponding to a‘character-sheet’:large-scale fabric modules replicate the book’s pages. The book develops as a coming-of-age story, tracing the solitary child’s journey into adulthood through a series of character-sheets,such asThe Observing Child,Nativity,The Cave, andBeast Mother, that intertwine with GrossiMaglioni’sbroader deconstruction of archetypal and symbolic references, as well as ofconventional understandings of the human–environment relationship, care as love, labour andpower, other modes of communal living, among other things. The book thus serves both asatangible object and a conceptual framework. On one hand, it continues the artists’sustainedinterest in the book as a format; on the other, it reflects their commitment to storytelling andlanguage as a generative, organic methodology that begins eachtime with a word or idea andunfolds through collective reflection.In addition to the book andthefabric modules, key elements of the project include audiorecordings of the story in multiple languages, and puppets. Central to the project is also a twelve-petalled circular carpet designed to host assembly-workshops where participants can experiencehorizontality and the assembly as a form of perpetual dialogue, of situated, collective thinking,shared authority, and embodied social practice. The carpet also invites rest and alternative modesof participation, reception, and embodied creation.Through the ever-shifting arrangement of these modular elements, Grossi Maglioni continuouslyrenegotiate the project’s central themes, in collaboration with participants. With each iteration,the story is reshaped and co-authored anew, embedding lived experience directly into the project’sevolving methodology. This practice of communal storytelling becomes a way to examine howprocesses of displacement and resettlement shape not only physical environments but alsonarrative structures. Constructed from fabric and cushions, the tents evoke nomadic, mobile,temporary, and utopian structures, reimagining the communal beyond the paradigm of thebourgeois, heterosexual family home.
