Cittadellarte has been operating for thirty years as a bridge between sectors of society, opening spaces, pathways, projects, and actions that develop the freedom and responsibility to create what did not exist in our communities.

Art is at the root of that force that unfolds fields of possibilities where generation, transformation, and regenerationtake place.

This force channels itself into all possible contexts where humans operate because it belongs to human nature. We are, by nature, the least suited to the terrestrial environment, yet we have learned to live everywhere. This is because our evolution is not guided solely by nature but also by culture. We have flanked the natural planet with the artificial world. We have clothed our bodies in a second skin, built structures to live in, and learned to care for, protect, cultivate, and guide nature.

This epic constitutes the human endeavor, expressed in myriads of forms depending on the times, places, and the material, environmental, and cultural conditions in which it has unfolded. In giving shape and forms to this creative force, humans have always united in groups, whose size does not exceed a numerical threshold that paleontologists and archaeologists tell us is around 150 individuals, but which in most cases remains in the few dozens; from clans of hunter-gatherers, sedentary or nomadic, to the first settlements, to neighborhood clusters, to family units, up to the most varied work activities, from agriculture to the production of cult objects, masks, clothing, and tools of all kinds. This epic of human ingenuity, at the root of which is art, driven by the necessity of survival in a body that is not sufficiently adapted, gives life and form to what has always engaged and engages us: work (lavoro). This constitutes an integral part of our identity, both when it occurs in modes of production that realize our humanity and when it is instead a source of alienation and slavery, which are far from absent in our history. Work produces things. But the Latin etymology (portare innanzi, to bring forth, to place in front) is not as eloquent as that of work as labour, travail (birthing), meaning to give birth. Work generates. Humans generate not only biologically, nor only instinctively, but also artificially. It is now well demonstrated that some other animals do this too. But humans have developed this capacity beyond all other measure. This generative activity, work, as mentioned, organizes itself, or rather: it organizes us, in small groups, sometimes down to the minimal dimension of the couple, even when it is then undertaken by structures composed of thousands of people. I recall a conversation with the director of human resources at Siemens, which then had over 170,000 employees worldwide: well, she told me that work is always conducted in groups that rarely exceed 30 units, which can then be aggregated under an umbrella into offices, departments, buildings, divisions, until encompassing the totality of members. These groups and sub-groups, which I have called communities of practice, are thus mainly composed of businesses (imprese), organizations oriented towards production and exchange. Although a far from irrelevant part consists of private vocational and public institutional organizations, and finally, recreational and cultural ones. Businesses, therefore, constitute the backbone of societies. We are convinced that it is time to re-establish the relationship between business and society on a foundation that goes beyond the historical dialectic inherited from a past outdated by the profound changes brought about by technology, financialization, globalization, and more generally by the failure of the model of irresponsible growththat many have chosen to follow or in which we have found ourselves trapped. At the same time, we must recognize and value the fact that this history has informed the civil, legal, and economic progress of countries that have generated wealth and advanced the rights and living conditions of the greater part of the population, even if too often accompanied by plunder and extermination. It is urgent to recognize that today is the time to initiate alliances in the face of survival challenges and threats to the very architecture of civilization that we have cultivated for generations, based on natural human rights, the liberal dimension of private initiative, and the primacy of legality. It is necessary not only to acknowledge that culture and social values are incorporated into production and economic supply chains, bringing value to businesses and territories, but today we must assign to businesses, as organizations that group humans, as communities of practice oriented towards value production, the fundamental role—that is, of foundations—they play in the constitution and maintenance of a collective life where the private and the public meet in infinite reconfigurations towards the common good.

This awareness is the necessary prerequisite for facing contemporary challenges, which stem precisely from the imperfection of the economic, political, and social development model we have pursued over these centuries, with balance and with the maximum potential for innovation (creation, transformation, regeneration). The unsustainability, inequity, and unscrupulousness that have accompanied our civic and economic progress can only be addressed with a radical regeneration of our cultural vision. And this is the responsibility that each person assumes with respect to the great collective work that is society.

Cittadellarte has launched a program to establish and accompany this epochal turning point and to lead it together with pioneering businesses, capable of combining a vocation rooted in a past rich in generative values with a present undergoing profound mutation. A vision is being forged here that can indicate a path of development for the business itself, for its nature as a community of humans founded on practice, and for the role that the business de facto assumes as the governing body of this community. In this framework of vision and project, the business is an agent of public policy: as such, it defines policies and actions that directly influence the ways of living and coexisting established in our societies. Societies that are increasingly interconnected and complex and that today, let's say it clearly, are calling with a silent cry of anguish for the need to give form and substance to a new way of organizing ourselves: the time has come for a Statodellarte (State of Art/State of the Art)—that is, an examination of what we have achieved, but also of a State as an inter-organizational structure that unites the different businesses and communities of practice with one another not only on the basis of exchanges and supplies of products and services but on the basis of a common role to play in the epochal challenge of the planet. This Statodellarte arises from Cittadellarte, founded by a non-profit organization established in the 1990s from the history of one of the greatest contemporary artists. An organization that has managed to divide and multiply by uniting into networks of hundreds of other organizations and tens of thousands of people, each with its own communities of belonging. Over 300 Ambassadors accompany us on a path that is not afraid to declare its true goal: to fulfill the promise of a government of the people, of a dêmos that genuinely takes upon itself the responsibility and freedom to determine itself and its relationship with the planet. It is the transition from democracy to demopraxy (demopraxia), where praxis calls into play and recruits the practices diffused in every sector and context. The communities of practice, and among them the businesses, are the governments, where one parliaments, makes decisions, formulates laws, and executes established plans. The union of businesses in this perspective and framework, founded on the creative and transformative force that comes from art to every field of application, gives life to, generates, and gives birth to the Great Undertaking of the Demopractic Statodellarte, to which we call upon all who wish to participate as protagonists, as authors, to design and lead this turning point.

Paolo Naldini