Autonomy, not independence: art outside the market

In 2017, a group of artists trained at the Accademia Albertina began working at the Bastione San Maurizio, within the Cavallerizza Reale in Turin. The historic complex had been occupied since 2014 by cultural workers, students, and citizens who opposed its sale and demanded a cultural and public use. The artists rehabilitated and activated an abandoned part: they produced work, organised exhibitions, hosted music, theatre, and performance, and built a common practice around the space.

The eviction process began on 19 November 2019. Without premises, the group went through a nomadic phase, incorporated as an association, and arrived in 2020 at Villa Rey, a 17th-century municipal villa located in the city's hills. It did not receive its own concession created for the collective. It later joined the Associazione Villa dell’Arte, the holder of a previous municipal concession and responsible for restoration work on the building. Bastione thus obtained a more stable, albeit temporary and limited, legal framework.

Matilde Ferrero reconstructs this trajectory in Artists beyond the market. The case of independent art spaces and their role in contemporary society, a doctoral thesis deposited on Zenodo in December 2025. The research combines documentary analysis, ten interviews, and six months of participant observation during 2024. It is a case study, not a peer-reviewed article or a representative sample of all artist-run spaces. The researcher's proximity to the collective provides access and detail; it also requires reading her conclusions as situated knowledge.

The central finding is not that art can be created without a market. It is more uncomfortable: departing from its rules does not eliminate dependency. It changes upon whom one depends, which work remains unpaid, and which requirements determine who can sustain themselves.

Independence describes a separation; autonomy, a capacity

In the thesis, the term 'independent' is called into question: an artist from Bastione considers it a label into which one attempts to fit too much, and Ferrero herself maintains that it does not capture the reality of their early careers well. The label often places the market at the centre even when it purports to deny it: it defines a practice by the distance it maintains from galleries, fairs, collectors, or institutions. Ferrero cites Vorobeva (2022) on this point: 'A definition that demands independence does not encourage people to create autonomy, which should be the desired outcome of artists working beyond the market'.

The thesis proposes shifting the question. A space does not need to lack economic or institutional relationships to act with autonomy. It may receive funding, use public property, collaborate with an academy, or participate in commercial circuits and maintain the capacity to decide its rhythms, its formats, and its alliances. Dependency becomes problematic when a source of resources determines what can be done or turns survival into obedience.

The difference avoids a frequent fiction. No cultural project is independent in a material sense. It requires space, time, labour, supplies, public, licences, networks, and money. Even the occupation of Cavallerizza depended on informal relationships with other groups, the shared use of resources, and an institutional tolerance that was always revocable. The lack of a contract was not pure freedom. It was a precarious infrastructure whose costs and risks were borne by those who inhabited it.

Villa Rey inverted part of that equation. The concession facilitated recognition, continuity, and a framework from which to organise activities. At the same time, it delimited spaces and uses, increased costs, introduced administrative obligations, and forced the collective to negotiate permits. The thesis records, for example, the desire to expand the project to the garden and convert it into an art park, within a division of responsibilities and maintenance that Bastione does not control.

Autonomy does not describe a clean exterior. It measures the capacity to decide within relationships that cannot be avoided.

The space is not a container

The trajectory of Bastione begins with a concrete lack. The Academy did not offer a sufficient place to continue working together, and access to galleries and professional networks was limited. The occupation did not arise as the application of a doctrine regarding the market. It responded to a need for space and relationship.

That materiality matters. In the Cavallerizza, there was transit, proximity to other projects, and an informal economy of shared resources. The deteriorated architecture could become a workshop, a stage, and material for intervention. The boundaries between producing, exhibiting, housing, and caring for the building were porous. The place participated in the work.

The eviction showed to what extent the group's identity depended on that relationship. During the period without premises, the people, not the building, sustained the continuity. Formalisation as an association allowed them to present themselves to institutions, sign agreements, and define responsibilities. It also forced them to translate a flexible practice into statutes, budgets, roles, and planning.

In Villa Rey, the collective converted that transition into a method. The first stage included a forced residency during the pandemic and culminated in Se non tocchi, non cade, a project in which members could intervene in or destroy the works of others, and the public participated in the destruction of piñata-sculptures. Later came exhibitions, stage collaborations, sound research, and micro-festivals. In Microonde, invited collectives lived and produced in the villa before sharing the result with the public. Ferrero describes this work as specific to a place and a community: creation does not end until the relationships between hosts, guests, and visitors are activated.

Caring for the building and the garden is part of that practice. It does not constitute a separate service that must be rendered invisible so that the result appears to be art. Maintaining a space, cooking, receiving, processing permits, or producing an event are conditions of the collective work. The problem appears when that expansion of artistic labour serves to naturalise the fact that no one pays for it.

The research also shows internal tensions. Horizontality does not automatically distribute available time, strain, or professional opportunities. Over the years, the members finished their studies and took on other jobs. The common dedication ceased to be a full-time activity for everyone. Some trajectories moved closer to galleries, while others avoided commercialisation. Collective autonomy must coexist with personal projects that no longer advance at the same pace.

Formalisation opens doors and presents the bill

At Cavallerizza, precarity allowed for cost-sharing and attracted passing footfall. The threat of eviction precluded planning. At Villa Rey, the title of use provided legal stability, yet the peripheral location reduced spontaneous transit. The collective pays for the portion of the concession it occupies and assumes the costs of its projects. The self-financing that functioned in an informal environment ceased to suffice when obligations and the ambition of the programme increased.

The thesis quotes a member of the collective in these words: 'Financially it has become impossible to sustain the events. We are expanding, but our income remains the same. And we can no longer give out of pocket'. The declaration does not demonstrate insolvency, nor does it allow a budget to be reconstructed. It does, however, identify the limit of a model that makes programming depend on personal contributions and voluntary labour.

Invited artists sometimes receive production and travel support, but no fees. Hospitality distributes scarce resources, yet it does not eliminate the labour involved. When an institution or a collective offers visibility, space, or community in lieu of remuneration, it must explain what it can pay and what it is requesting. Alternative rhetoric does not make the rent less material nor the practice of those participating less professional.

Formalisation introduces an additional paradox. To apply for grants, one requires legal personality, governing bodies, accounts, experience, and administrative capacity. Creating such a structure costs time and money precisely when funding does not yet exist. The project must demonstrate stability before obtaining the resources that would enable it to be built.

In Spain, two recent private calls for applications show similar filters, although they pursue different ends. The guidelines for the 2026 Andalusia Social Projects of the "la Caixa" Foundation admit non-profit entities and certain social economy entities; they require registration, a registered office in Andalusia, their own tax identification number, and at least one year of activity. Collectives without legal personality are excluded. The grant may reach 50,000 euros and, as a general rule, cover up to 75% of the cost. This is not a general artistic call: cultural projects must act as a tool for social transformation in vulnerable contexts.

The General Call of the Unicaja Foundation requires the entity to be legally constituted and domiciled in Spain, with a tax identification card, statutes, and an administrative body. The conditions consulted do not set a minimum length of operation or a general amount. Nor do they admit an informal group as an applicant in its own right.

The comparison does not prove that Italy and Spain have equivalent systems. It shows a common operation: funding does not evaluate only the quality of the proposal. It evaluates an organisation's capacity to present, execute, justify, and respond. Such prudence protects private or public resources; it also shifts the advantage towards entities that already possess a structure.

The legal requirement may improve accountability and transparency. The problem begins when administrative capacity is confused with cultural value. A collective may produce valuable relationships and not know how to manage a grant. A professionalised entity may justify every euro without producing anything that goes beyond the paperwork.

Who pays for autonomy

'Art as an asset' analyses how the financial market captures object, signature, provenance, and the expectation of revaluation. 'The non-marketable remainder' examines that which cannot be converted into an asset without losing the relationship that made it significant. Bastione allows one to observe this remainder in material conditions: care for the space, hospitality, community, shared learning, and experimentation that does not need to culminate in a commodity.

That these relationships have no market price does not mean they lack cost. The market may not pay for them and subsequently benefit from the trajectories, contacts, or reputations they helped to form. The administration may celebrate their urban impact without assuming the infrastructure. Foundations may demand organisational maturity without funding the period in which it is built. The public may enjoy activities sustained by personal contributions.

Autonomy thus ends up being financed by the income, free time, and risk tolerance of those who make up the collective. This solution socially selects who can participate. Those who need regular income have less margin to sustain unpaid meetings, maintenance, production, and bureaucracy. A horizontal structure may reproduce inequalities it never decided to create.

The problem is not corrected by paying for any activity simply because it declares itself autonomous. Funding requires criteria, limits, and accountability. It can, however, recognise costs that usually disappear: maintenance, coordination, care, accessibility, administration, fees, and research time. It can also provide for initial support for non-constituted groups through accompanying entities, micro-grants, or incubation phases, rather than demanding the organisation of a consolidated entity from the very first day.

The transfer of spaces poses another negotiation. A public building cannot be handed over simply because a collective has activated it; there are rules on heritage, competitive tendering, security, and liability. The guide 'How a public space is assigned to an artistic collective' distinguishes between authorisation, concession, and the transfer of heritage assets. Legal continuity offers the capacity to plan, but it incorporates inspection, maintenance, authorised uses, and grounds for termination.

The contrast with La Casa Invisible is instructive. In Málaga, the project maintained cultural activity for nineteen years without securing a stable title to the municipal property. Bastione transitioned from occupation to a formal relationship through Villa dell’Arte. Neither case demonstrates that legalisation resolves sustainability. They do, however, illustrate the difference between negotiating from a temporary title and remaining in a state of provisionality that consumes the entire discourse.

Cultural policy for explicit dependencies

Ferrero proposes that we stop treating these spaces as anomalies. They operate between the market, the administration, and civil society; they produce values that each of these spheres only partially recognises. Their difficulty does not stem from failing to fit anywhere, but from the fact that each system attempts to translate them into its own unit: sales, impact, visitors, case files, or urban regeneration.

A cultural policy that seeks to foster autonomy should begin by making dependencies explicit. Which space is granted, for how long, and with what limitations. Which activity is funded and which costs remain uncovered. Which indicators will be required. How much voluntary labour the project presupposes. Who retains the improvements made to the property. What happens when funding ends or the team changes.

It should also distinguish between support for production and support for infrastructure. Funding an exhibition without paying for coordination, rent, insurance, or maintenance favours the visible result while leaving the system that makes it possible without support. Demanding a novelty every year forces continuity to be converted into a succession of artificially new projects.

Funding bodies could publish criteria capable of recognising collective forms of authorship, open processes, and non-object-based results. The spaces, for their part, should make their budgets, internal rules, participant selection, and distribution of labour visible. Autonomy is not proven by proclaiming it. It is practised through decisions that can be examined.

In Art as Structural Surplus, I propose calling a structural surplus a difference that persistently and non-trivially reorganises a field of possibilities without being absorbed by its primary instrumental function. The practice of Bastione can be read from this perspective, although Ferrero’s thesis employs a different framework. Caring for a building, gathering disciplines, and creating a community do not constitute a surplus in themselves. What is relevant is whether these relationships open up ways of producing, receiving, and organising art that remain available afterwards.

The market is not the only system capable of absorbing them. A grant can reduce them to indicators; an administration, to heritage regeneration; a university, to a case study; the collective itself, to an identity that must be repeated to remain recognisable. Autonomy requires resisting these captures as well.

The label 'independent' allows one to imagine an outside. Bastione documents a less heroic and more fertile situation: partial relationships, temporary titles, insufficient funding, parallel jobs, and a practice that attempts to preserve decision-making capacity within all of that.

Autonomy does not consist of not depending. It consists of knowing which dependencies are accepted, what they demand in return, and which ones make it impossible to decide.

On the open conversation

This text distinguishes between facts documented by the thesis, call requirements, and my own interpretation. If you manage an autonomous cultural space, research these practices, or can provide public documentation on funding and space-transfer models, you may write to me.

The author’s relationship to the cases

I chair Kripties Fundación, a non-profit entity dedicated to social inclusion through art, and I write in a personal capacity. The Foundation may find itself in the position of the applicant entities described and meets requirements of legal personality and track record that an informal collective does not have. There is no economic or professional relationship with Associazione Bastione, Matilde Ferrero, Fundación «la Caixa», or Fundación Unicaja.

Autonomy, not independence: a Turin collective and art outside the market