Throughout 2026, the Journal of Cittadellarte hosts a series of interviews with collaborators of the Foundation, all invited to respond to the same set of questions. Cittadellarte in the Mirror - the title of the column - presents itself as an exercise in listening and self-reflection that crosses roles, practices and sensibilities, offering a plural portrait of the organism that is Cittadellarte. The questions touch on some of the most urgent issues of our time—from social transformation to responsibility, from education to indifference, from the risks of artistic action to the possibility of reactivating empathy ,and function as a mirror: they do not seek definitive answers, but rather ask those responding to take a position, to expose themselves, and to question their role in the present.

In this tenth installment, the mirror turns to Ruggero Poi, author and archaeologist. At Cittadellarte he directs the Learning Environments and Education Office and teaches at the Open School of the Third Paradise, the complementary school dedicated to children between the ages of 6 and 11. His work focuses on the encounter between art, education and community, developing practices that use artistic processes as tools for knowledge and social transformation. He has edited several books by Michelangelo Pistoletto and co-authored with him the volume Dio X Caso: un affaccio sull’ignoto. In the dialogue that follows, several key images emerge: contemporary society compared to adolescence, the need to build practices capable of making change inhabitable, and the role of art as a space of fertile friction, where encountering what does not confirm our beliefs can generate new thinking. Between education, technology and responsibility, his reflections invite us to recognize the artistic dimension within everyday experiences and to consider Cittadellarte as an organism in transformation.

The year 2025 ends with the word “transition” seeming to have lost its strength, replaced by a widespread sense of fatigue and a return to logics of power, war and closure. In this context, does it still make sense to speak of responsible social transformation, or should we change our vocabulary and rethink our practices?
We are living through a situation similar to adolescence: when changes happen too quickly to be understood, the first reaction is not maturity but the search for stability. Just as young people oscillate between withdrawal and rigidity to defend themselves from uncertainty, societies seek clear boundaries and strong forms of belonging. The solution is not to find stronger words, but to build practices that make the change we imagine inhabitable. A mature society does not eliminate conflicts, it learns how to sustain them.

This year as well, Cittadellarte has worked both locally and globally: from China to Europe’s borderlands, from the Mediterranean to East Asia. Bringing an installation or a demopractic work into places charged with history, conflict or symbolism exposes art to unpredictable interpretations. How important is it for the Foundation to accept this risk?
But art is born precisely where meaning is not already established. If it seeks only protected contexts it becomes decoration; if it enters exposed territories it becomes experience. As I said, we are living in an adolescent time, and therefore we must take the position of adolescence, the one that crosses thresholds instead of remaining within reassuring habits. From childhood to maturity the world changes, and this is possible only by crossing the undefined threshold of adolescence.

In 2025, what does it mean to educate for responsibility in a world where algorithms, artificial intelligence and automation seem to take away more and more space from conscious human action and, in this sense, from authorship?
Algorithms fascinate us because they reduce friction and effort by suggesting answers. They offer an immediate lightness, similar to the escape we feel in dance or in a song. That is why they attract us.
But do we want to understand the value that this lightness can have for reality? The ambition of athletes, scientists or artists pushes them beyond the everyday obstacle; this tension to escape beyond the present allows them to sustain effort and surpass themselves. Human beings, like any animal, come into the world already carrying the weight of gravity. We spend our lives struggling with it: on land, at sea, in the sky and beyond the atmosphere. Not recognizing the lightness of technology is a mistake, just as it is a mistake to abstract it from the problems of our time.

During your time at Cittadellarte, what do you feel you have unlearned? Is there a belief you would let go of today compared to the past?
I think I have understood that art cannot be an activity external to life; it is essentially a way of living. Art, or poetry, can therefore reside in the architect and the engineer who create shelters by opposing the force of gravity; it can reside in the doctor or the nurses in an emergency room who practice care and confront suffering and the limits of life. Art and poetry are ways of living. To answer your question: I have unlearned literary styles and genres, and I have learned to recognize the artistic possibility within the experience of each of us.

Let us try to consider Cittadellarte as a living organism. Which part do you feel is most fragile today? And which one is more mature than you might have imagined?
If I think of Cittadellarte as a living organism, I would say that today it is changing its voice. And that is a delicate phase. Whenever a voice changes, a conflict appears: whether to remain in childhood, with a spontaneous and still undefined freedom, or to assume a recognizable and responsible identity. An organism must live through concrete situations, even conflicting ones, that force it to clarify what it wants to say and how to say it. A voice becomes confident when it is tested and holds up in its encounter with reality. In this phase, Cittadellarte is certainly a very interesting experimental construction site. If it continues to clarify its voice, making it recognizable and credible, it may carry it very far.

We live in a time in which we are exposed every day to images of extreme suffering, yet we often remain motionless. What kind of emotion is indifference? If indifference were an artwork, would you destroy it like Pistoletto’s broken mirror?
Pain belongs to life and, since the beginning, the decisive question has not been how to eliminate it but what meaning it may have. Human beings continue to search for meaning not in order to justify suffering, but so as not to be entirely dominated by it. Much of human suffering, in fact, does not come from nature but from relationships: misunderstandings, conflicts, reciprocal violence. The search for meaning does not eliminate these realities, but it introduces a responsibility: to recognize the other not only as a limit or a threat. Without this step, pain generates more pain. And so, even in a thousand fragments - like a broken mirror - we too can give meaning to our being human. Our shared condition is the fragility of life; perhaps within it we can find a human value not yet fully expressed.

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 turning pain into spectacle? We should also consider that the Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year 2025 is “Rage Bait,” referring to content designed to provoke anger and outrage, particularly on social media.
The algorithm is not only technological, it has always existed as a human tendency toward confirmation: we look for what reinforces our beliefs and reject what challenges them. Platforms simply make this process faster and more continuous. For this reason, responsibility is not only technical but also about recognizing the “algorithm we are.”
Here art performs a different function from information. The “teeth” of our perception, accustomed to confirmation, can enter into friction with virtuality only when they encounter something that does not immediately coincide with what we already think. In the warmth of that friction, a new thought can emerge, one that did not exist before. Art is warmth; warmth is energy and life.

When you switch off the lights in your office, which emotion remains on?
I have never thought of the office as a physical place, but as a commitment. For me, to “officiate” is much more connected to doing than to being somewhere. I cannot give you a precise emotion: it is a form of attention that continues outside as well, as if work did not end with the closing of the door but became part of the way one looks at reality.