20 April 2012 from 9 am to 4 pm
Rome, at the offices of MSD Italia

curated by Marcello Smarrelli

Alberto Tadiello is the protagonist of the third and last engagement of E-STRAORDINARIO x MSD Italia, the training program promoted by the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli that involves thirty employees of the company – Italian subsidiary of the pharmaceutical multinational Merck – in a series of workshops in which artists are placed at the centre of the training process.
The initiative, in line with the commitment of the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli to foster the dialogue between art and industry, is organized by Marcello Smarrelli, art director of the foundation, and carried out with the collaboration of Giovanni Boano, a specialist in managerial training and partner of the Hic et Nunc company, and enjoys the patronage of MiBAC, the Ministry for the Cultural Heritage and Activities.

E-STRAORDINARIO x MSD Italia was launched last January with the workshop conducted by Tomaso De Luca, Drawing after Architecture, and continued in March with Margherita Moscardini’s workshop Condominium (or The Merck Index).

Known for his installations and performances centring on the relationship between sound and vision, Alberto Tadiello takes an approach of an almost “scientific” character to his research, leading him to experiment with new relations between the various elements and constantly probe the limits and potentialities of the interactions between different forces.
“I think of the encounter with the employees of MSD Italia as a moment of sharing and mutual understanding”, explains the artist, “a participatory process, a gathering of ideas”. The title of the workshop, Things Go On with Mistakes, refers to a track on an album born out of a collaboration between an American and a Dutch band (In The Fishtank 11, The Black Heart Procession + Solbakken). For the occasion Tadiello is proposing a project that aims at the creation of sound elements as a basis and stimulus for cooperation between the participants.

Following the methodology of E-STRAORDINARIO, developed by the Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, after a first theoretical phase in which Marcello Smarrelli presents the artist and his poetics, the workshop will move on to practical activity. All those taking part will receive a variety of materials which they will have to use to invent instruments, exploiting very simple working mechanisms such as rotation and friction to generate sound or noise. Each participant will carry out his or her own research with the aim of constructing something, of creating a sound entity that can be used to give rise to a joint action, to an ensemble of elements that can be coordinated to work together, “like a small circus, an orchestra in miniature composed of all the pieces produced”.

At the end of the day, Giovanni Boano will guide the participants in interpreting what they have learned from their experience in practical terms of organization, translating the metaphors of contemporary art into modes of behaviour that can be applied in the business context.
As Giorgio Cavalleri, Sr. HRBP and Learning & Development Mgr. at MSD Italia and in charge of the project, puts it: “Training at MSD Italia is a process whose aim is to develop a competence, that is to act in more effective way to obtain a given result”.
Through enjoyment of an artistic experience, the participants in E-STRAORDINARIO x MSD Italia are stimulated to reflect on the utility of putting their own skills into practice in the operational phase. During the workshops with the artists important themes are tackled, which find concrete application in every area of work: from concepts of perseverance and tenacity in the face of difficulties and uncertainties, emphasized in Tomaso De Luca’s workshop, to the idea of standards to be referred to and used as a basis for creativity, at the centre of Margherita Moscardini’s project, and finally to the capacity for organization, the ability to carry out research before acting, to do your work one step at a time, making trials and allowing yourself to make mistakes, as in Alberto Tadiello’s workshop.