CNR-IRPPS took part in the Gran Sasso Biennale, a project that, from 1 to 20 September, brought together contemporary art, performances, installations, music, talks and workshops across the villages and landscapes of the Gran Sasso area, as a means of strengthening the social capital of local communities.

CNR-IRPPS’s participation in the event marks the first outcome of the Artist in Residence programme that the Institute launched with artist Filippo Gregoretti. The collaboration will continue through December 2026 and aims to create a space for dialogue between art and the social sciences, exploring new ways of communicating research findings, as well as new perspectives on public engagement and the relationship between data and art.

CNR-IRPPS participated in the Biennale through two events that brought art, research and the local territory into dialogue.

The first took place through the artwork Aion | Chronos. Gregoretti traversed the area around Barisciano carrying audio recorders and physiological sensors, capturing the soundscape and data from his body in motion. The sounds of the landscape, the elevation data along the route, and the artist’s heartbeat are transformed in real time into music and soundscapes through algorithmic entities developed over more than twenty-five years of research.

These elements are interwoven with the voices of local communities, collected by anthropologist Azzurra Malgieri and sociologist Lucio Pisacane of CNR-IRPPS: memories, words and human presences that have accumulated in these places over the course of generations.

The project also leaves a lasting mark on the territory. Aion | Chronos will be preserved in the form of a Sadyah, which in the artist’s research represents the crystallisation of an unrepeatable moment of co-creation between the human and the artificial. It will be accompanied by a recording of the work, allowing the journey to continue resonating even after the Biennale comes to an end.

But beyond the artwork itself, what remains in a territory when a cultural project comes to an end?

This was the focus of the talk Beyond the Artwork, held on Sunday, 20 September, with the participation of Azzurra Malgieri.

The discussion highlighted the need to look beyond the most immediate figures—attendance, visitors, and economic impact—and to also consider the social, cultural and territorial effects of a project: the relationships that are built, the skills that remain, the sense of belonging, and communities’ ability to participate in and contribute to the transformation of their own territory.

It is precisely in this space that social and scientific research can make an important contribution: by observing these processes, shedding light on what changes—and what does not—and understanding over time what effects a cultural project can actually generate within communities and territories.

An approach that invites us to look at art and culture not simply as events or products, but as processes to be observed, understood and assessed over time.