ABSTRACT
When it comes to creative and popular resistance against austerity, in Italy often it expresses itself less in the form of explicit codes in popular culture and mainstream media, and more in the act of reclaiming the cultural commons by grassroots movements through ‘commoning.’ Advocates of direct democracy recognize that as a buffer against enclosure, the cultural commons is a battleground for the public good and is a right. The cultural commons encompasses those activities of cultural knowledge and practices that are uncommodied; examples include food recipes, folk arts, dance, theatre, street art, and political traditions (Bowers 2012). Defense of the cultural commons expresses itself in different ways, ranging from the slow food movement to occupations of culturally signicant institutions. In particular, the occupations of a traditional theater, Teatro Valle, in the center of Rome, and the abandoned historic movie theater, Cinema America, in the Roman neighborhood of Trastevere, offer examples of a dynamic defense of the cultural commons.
