From 12.05.2018 to 17.06.2018

The ‘Taking the floor’ expresses the initial moment of that youth, student and workers’ movement that inflamed squares, universities, schools and factories since ’68: the moment of making one’s voice heard in order to become the protagonist of one’s own destiny, both individual and collective.

Words were followed by initiatives aimed at advancing demands for peace, freedom, equality, overcoming divisions and social injustice, and cultural renewal.

The exhibition

1968 is not just a series of events, it is a collection of people.

The exhibition ‘Prendiamo la parola – Esperienze dal “68 in Friuli Venezia Giulia” tells about these people and bears witness to some of the experiences they had as students at the University of Trieste or in schools in Friuli Venezia Giulia. These students, at a time when the world was undergoing a difficult transformation, faced their problems and those of the society in which they lived: the thousands of people who wanted to face them, set themselves goals and support them with concrete actions make up the Student Movement in our area.

The Quelli del ‘68 Association has collected materials, photos, documents, audio and video interventions, music and sounds to restore the climate and sense of that experience 50 years ago. A multimedia installation presents the debate of yesterday’s protagonists on the themes that are still at the centre of today’s reflections. A selection of precious Cuban posters from the Bardellotto collection and the French May presents the graphic trends of that era that revolutionised art and mass communication.

After the space that welcomes the viewer at the beginning of the exhibition with material relating to the national and world context (Vietnam, the occupations in the other universities in Italy, the French May), the second room displays documents relating to the regional experience and expands in the next room to the themes and developments of 1968: the condition of women, psychological discomfort, the liberation of customs.

The exhibition closes with a multimedia installation that re-enacts a kind of assembly that took place and was recorded in the same spaces before the exhibition opened. Ten protagonists of the era meet to discuss the past and the prospects of the present, reconnecting the threads of a memory that seems increasingly necessary. Ten monitors arranged in a circle repeat the conversation in the exhibition, inviting visitors to sit among them and interact with the themes and reflections on display. In the same room, delving into a theme dear to the exhibition, that of communication and graphic art, one can admire a series of absolutely rare posters of the period from the prestigious collection of the Centro Studi Cartel Cubano – Collezione Bardellotto in Venice.

There will be an opportunity to see the matrix of the famous poster depicting Che for the first time after his death and other historical posters in memory of Angela Davis, the black panthers and the anti-Nixon and pro-Vietnam protests.

During the month in which the exhibition is open, some evening encounters with artists who were protagonists of ‘68 in the region retrace some aspects of the customs and entertainment of the time: Italian music and vinyl covers, Dario Fo’s theatre and more.