Chapter 5: A Fleeting Utopia: Artistic Imagination and the Ephemerality of the Commons in Turin¹

This chapter examines the case of Cavallerizza Reale in Turin, an extensive historical building complex that has been occupied and transformed into a site of artistic production and commoning experimentation. Drawing on long-term fieldwork, the authors’ contribution focuses on this ephemeral but very revealing experience, which encapsulates many of the risks that commonly afflict commons. By outlining the tensions between two factions within this large community, the so-called politicians and the artists, and their divergent political visions of self-government, the authors expose two different conceptions of commoning. On the one side, the authors explore the community’s relationship with local institutions, particularly the attempts to establish a commons-public partnership, and how a legalistic conception of the commons affects the role of rules in the everyday life of this community. At the same time, the authors will look closely at commoning practices among the ‘artists’, using the critical tools from the anthropology of art to highlight both their potential and their limits. In both cases, the authors emphasise the friction between the aim of carrying out processes of commoning within the community and the necessity of dealing with external urban actors, such as the municipality, the mainstream art world and other economic actors. Acknowledging that many members of the community perceived this experience as fleeting and fragile, the authors propose a perspective that overcomes the conventional success/failure dichotomy.