URBANSCAPES #1 - Movement for the Emancipation of Poetry

March 18, 2022

The first episode was held on Friday, March 18 and featured MEP, the Movement for the Emancipation of Poetry.
Intervening on the walls and street furniture of the city, MEP proposes an alternative to the traditional system of publication and enjoyment of artistic content, contributing to the construction of a territorial identity and a common belonging to their living space.
Street Levels Gallery investigated the legitimacy of the modality that MEP suggests in reappropriating the city’s public spaces. Guests shared with the audience the reading of a collection of emails received as feedback from citizens and the viewing of a series of photographs documenting passersby’s interaction with poems encountered on the street.

There is a progressive process of erosion of the potential for socialization of public places: the only possible experience of coexistence is the passive enjoyment of the urban ecosystem, the only expression of citizenship accepted is the indivisible binomial citizen-consumer.

URBANSCAPES is the new divulgative format that Street Levels Gallery and the association A Testa Alta dedicate to the story of the Florentine cultural ecosystem. A window that opens on all the local organizations – collectives, movements, associations, artists – that, in recent years, have been involved in the reappropriation, redefinition and regeneration of public space, using the medium of urban art and its various declinations, promoting alternative practices of intervention, contributing to the construction of a collective identity.
The city as a common good is the premise that unites the guests presented during the various talks, the point from which to explore the changes that affect the present and the future of our cities.

The Movement for the Emancipation of Poetry

The Movement for the Emancipation of Poetry “was born from the contradictions found in today’s consumerist and inattentive society, and with different practices it strives to resolve them”. Intervening on the walls and street furniture of the city, the MEP proposes an alternative to the traditional system of publication and fruition of artistic content, carving out “a space of encounter and dialogue with poetry.”

EXHIBITION’S GALLERY