Throughout 2026, the Cittadellarte Journal is hosting a series of interviews with the Foundation's collaborators, who have been asked to answer an identical set of questions. Cittadellarte in the Mirror – the name of this column – serves as an exercise in listening and self-reflection that spans different roles, practices, and sensibilities, providing a plural portrait of the Cittadellarte organism. The questions touch upon some of the most urgent issues of our time – from social transformation to responsibility, from education to indifference, from the risk of artistic action to the possibility of reactivating empathy – and function as a mirror: they do not seek definitive answers, but rather ask the respondents to take a stand, to put themselves forward, and to interrogate their own role in the present.

In this twelfth instalment, the mirror turns towards Armona Pistoletto, President of the Let Eat Bi association and Coordinator of Terme Culturali. An Architecture graduate, she has worked at Cittadellarte since 2001, initially as head of the Production Office, specifically overseeing projects related to art, design, craftsmanship, and production. She designed and established the Cittadellarte Store and the products for sale linked to the Foundation's projects. Driven by a personal interest in healthy, local food, she developed a project within Cittadellarte’s Nutrition Office: Let Eat Bi, the Third Paradise in the Biella area, subsequently becoming its president. She also coordinates the Terme Culturali project, which will be inaugurated on 15 May 2026 during Arte al Centro. Furthermore, Armona is a founding partner and a member of the Board of Directors of Cittadellarte.

In the following interview, she shares a reflection on the value of individual and collective responsibility as a driver of social transformation, highlighting how change can take root in daily choices and in the ability to question habits and beliefs, starting from our relationship with other living beings and the environment. Moreover, she weaves together the relationship between ethics and action, the complexity of indifference as a form of defence, and the need to develop a critical gaze in the era of the Anthropocene.

2025 ended as a year in which the word "transition" seems to have lost its force, replaced by a widespread sense of fatigue and a return to the logics of power, war, and closure. In this context, does it still make sense to speak of responsible social transformation, or is it necessary to change the lexicon and rethink our practices?
Speaking of responsible social transformation becomes more necessary every day, especially during these truly heartbreaking periods of global crisis. It means trying to steer change towards a fairer, more balanced life for everyone—for humans, animals, and the environment—by taking concrete responsibility through our daily actions and our work, where we spend most of our lives. Responsible social transformation is not just a theoretical issue but a daily practice of decisions about how to behave, how to eat, how to dress, and how to make choices, avoiding power games and abuses in every possible way. In this sense, I find the work we have been doing at Cittadellarte for many years very significant, because we bring art, ethics, and social transformation into dialogue through concrete projects of responsible change. I believe there is a real need today for this kind of approach, capable of uniting ethical thought and action.

This year, too, Cittadellarte has operated on both a local and global level: from China to the borders of Europe, from the Mediterranean to East Asia. Bringing a demopractic installation or work to places steeped in history, conflict, or symbolism exposes art to unpredictable interpretations. How important is it for the Foundation to accept this risk?
The risk is certainly present and is inevitable when intervening in such complex and meaningful contexts. However, every Demopractic Work is born from the local context, from the people who live there, and the organisations that move through it, responding to real and specific needs. It is not about bringing a rigid model or a predefined methodology, but rather a shared ethic -a collective responsibility that has a global dimension but is adapted differently every time. What I find important is precisely this capacity for adaptation: it is an approach that does not impose, but listens and transforms. The underlying idea, however, remains universal: the fact that every person should be able to live with dignity, without abuse and without injustice. It is a simple principle that finds a place anywhere in the world. From this perspective, accepting the risk is part of the process itself: it is like water infiltrating a context, trying to give life, voice, and possibility. And perhaps it is precisely this willingness to expose oneself, even to possible failure, that makes the change authentic, rather than just declared.

In 2025, what does it mean to educate for responsibility in a world where algorithms, artificial intelligence, and automation seem to subtract more and more space from conscious human action and, in this sense, from authorship?
I must say that I still feel quite confused about this topic: I don't know if artificial intelligence will, in the long run, be more of a risk or a great opportunity for humanity. Today we perceive it mainly as a convenience, a tool that simplifies our lives and, in some way, gives us the illusion of being faster, more competent, and better prepared. Educating for responsibility today perhaps means precisely not losing the ability to think independently, to develop a critical and personal perspective on things; if we delegate too much to algorithms, the risk is that we impoverish our capacity for thought, becoming less aware and much more passive. There is also an important social issue: it is likely that these technologies will take jobs away from many people, increasing inequality and creating new fragilities. For this reason, I believe that responsibility regarding the use of AI is not only individual but also collective. It is important to learn how to use these tools without being used by them, keeping our autonomy of thought and our ability to choose alive. Only in this way can we avoid becoming, paradoxically, automatons of what we have created. It will be even harder for young people not to use AI to create texts, projects, theses, and thoughts to use in their own lives, all of us becoming increasingly automatons rather than authors.

In the time spent at Cittadellarte, what do you feel you have unlearned? Is there a conviction you would let go of today compared to the past?
I believe I have unlearned indifference above all. An indifference that I previously, almost unconsciously, considered normal -even towards injustices involving living beings different from ourselves, with other ways of communicating and expressing emotions. I remember once being almost proud of the fact that I would eat anything; I saw it as a sign of openness, without asking too many questions. Over time, however, by informing myself and starting to look deeper, something changed. I stopped "not seeing" and pretending nothing was happening: it is as if a new form of attention was activated- a "pre-occupation" in the most authentic sense of the term, meaning taking care. This led me to question certain habits and to shift my focus from my personal pleasure to a broader dimension that includes collective, environmental, and animal well-being.
If I had to name a conviction that I would let go of today, it is precisely the idea that what I do individually has no real impact. Instead, I have understood that even daily choices, however small, contribute to a larger system, and that taking responsibility for them is already a form of transformation.

Let’s try to consider Cittadellarte as a living organism. Which part do you feel is most fragile today? And which, instead, is more mature than you would have imagined?
If I think of Cittadellarte as a living organism, the part that seems most mature to me today is the "gut"-that intuitive and sensitive dimension from which many projects are born. We often act moved by a deep urgency, a feeling that makes us perceive certain actions as necessary, even when they are not supported by an immediate economic balance. We consider this ability to listen to intuition and to give shape to what we feel is urgent as a great strength, because it allows us to generate living processes. At the same time, however, if I had to identify a more fragile part, I would say the "intestine"-the ability to let go. We find it harder to close, interrupt, or transform certain projects because we tend to perceive everything as important, everything as deserving of being carried forward. This can create a sort of accumulation which, over time, risks weighing down the organism instead of nourishing it.
Perhaps the challenge is precisely to find a balance between these two dimensions: to continue generating with authenticity and courage, but also to learn how to select, to let go of what has already completed its cycle or perhaps should stop, to allow new energies and possibilities to emerge.

We live in a time where we are exposed daily to images of extreme pain, yet we often remain immobile. What kind of emotion is indifference? If the latter were a work of art, would you destroy it like a breaking of Pistoletto’s mirror?
I, too, find myself remaining immobile in the face of many images of pain, suffering, and destruction. It is a reaction that sometimes makes me feel uneasy because it looks like indifference, but in reality, I believe it is something more complex. For me, indifference in these cases is almost a form of defence: a way to protect my psycho-physical balance and not be completely overwhelmed. We live in a time where we are continuously exposed to everything, without filters, and this can generate a sort of emotional saturation. If there were no distance, I would risk being paralysed by anxiety and a sense of helplessness, without being able to transform anything into concrete action. In this sense, that detachment paradoxically becomes a condition that allows me to continue acting, even in my own small way, through the work I carry out at Cittadellarte, trying to contribute to responsible change.
Therefore, I do not think that indifference is always and only negative: it can also be a threshold, a fragile point of balance between feeling too much and not feeling at all. If it were a work of art, perhaps I wouldn't destroy it completely, as in breaking the mirror. Rather, I would try to crack it, to make it conscious, to transform it into something that does not block action but makes it possible. Because in the end, rather than eliminating indifference, I believe it is important to learn how to move through it and give it meaning.

In the dominant media narrative of conflicts, numbers often replace faces. What responsibility does art have in restoring humanity where political language erases it? Can art reactivate empathy without falling into the spectacularisation of pain? Let us also keep in mind that the word of the year for 2025, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is "Rage Bait", indicating content created to provoke anger and indignation, particularly on social media.
I believe that art can have a fundamental function because it manages to reopen a space for relationship and listening. It doesn't give immediate answers, but it forces us to stop, to really look, to feel. And this, for me, is already a way to reactivate empathy. Today, art has a very great responsibility: that of restoring humanity where the dominant language—especially political and media language—tends to simplify everything into numbers, statistics, and categories. Numbers are important, but they risk making us lose contact with real people, with stories, with emotions, and with the true responsible change that Cittadellarte has been implementing for 25 years through real, concrete, local, and global projects.
We live in a context where we are continuously exposed to content that seeks to provoke strong reactions; the risk is that even pain becomes something to be consumed quickly—almost a spectacle, a normality—and this is particularly dangerous for young people. For this reason, I think that art, in a context like Cittadellarte, must take a different step: not to amplify the noise, but to create awareness and responsibility. Art can reactivate empathy precisely when it manages to restore complexity and put relationships and true collaborations back at the centre.

When you turn off the lights in your office, what emotion remains lit?
When I turn off the lights in my office, a light at the end of the tunnel remains lit: a light that sometimes seems far away, almost unreachable, but which continues to shine. It is the light of hope, of perseverance, and of trust in the journey. I know that with constancy and serenity, step by step, it can be reached, even when the road seems difficult or uncertain. It is a glow that does not illuminate everything immediately, but which accompanies my every action, reminding me that every small step counts.