MACRO, in collaboration with Terraforma, presents Il Pianeta come Festival XL, a 24-hour event that takes its cue from the analysis carried out by Ettore Sottsass in the visionary and iconic project Il Pianeta come Festival published in 1972 on Casabella, to be developed according to the research fields that have always distinguished Terraforma: the language sound, architecture and environmental sustainability, which in this case temporarily expand within the experimental platform of the Museum for Preventive Imagination. The program develops by tracing a path through the physical architecture of the museum and the sound and visual ones activated by a series of performances, talks, workshops and video installations. The observer-listener is invited to actively participate in a reflection that touches the link between ecology, politics and artistic expression, through Jenna Sutela’s work on interspecies communications, the socio-political research of Terre Thaemlitz and Jeremy Deller, a program of free workshop activities open to the public by VIPRA, an extended sound performance by Paquita Gordon and the piano marathon of the Vexations by Erik Satie curated by Ricciarda Belgiojoso.

 

The Vol. 1 of the festival took place in October 2020 with the lecture Lockdown is Reopening, Reopening is Lockdown by Timothy Morton.

 

 

 

OPENING
JENNA SUTELA nimiia contact
Visual and sound installation
Terrace, 6 pm

 

Jenna Sutela presents the visual-sound installation nimiia contact. The Finnish artist works with words, sounds and “living media” like the Bacillus subtilis (nattō) bacteria and the Physarum polycefalum slime mould. Jenna Sutela has been invited to create a work for the terrace of MACRO, taking inspiration from Il Pianeta come Festival by Ettore Sottsass. The artist will also present a sound installation, with a visual prolongment of the album released on PAN nimiia vibié, focusing on machine learning and interspecies communication.

 

 

TERRAFORMA JOURNAL
Talk with Fabio Sargentini, Ruggero Pietromarchi, Luca Lo Pinto
Auditorium roof, 7 pm

 

During the opening Ruggero Pietromarchi, creative director of Terraforma, will introduce with Luca Lo Pinto, artistic director of MACRO, the first issue of Terraforma Journal, an editorial space generating new opportunities for the community, for research and visionary practices of artists. Fabio Sargentini, who co-founded with his father Bruno the Roman gallery L’Attico, will also be present: Sargentini is the protagonist of an interview published in this issue of the magazine that focuses on the avant-garde of the sixties and seventies, their protagonists and their radical ideas.

 

 

FLORA YIN – WONG Marinococcus
Live soundscape
Terrace, 7.45 pm

 

Marinococcus by writer and experimental sound artist Flora Yin Wong is a soundscape inspired by Jenna Sutela’s installation. Her work incorporates location-based field recordings and traditional early instruments such as singing bowls, yangqin and kemence, with electronic processing and software, as well as text-based storytelling and abstraction.

 

 

VEXATIONS by Erik Satie curated by Ricciarda Belgiojoso
with the interpretation of Silvia Belfiore, Ricciarda Belgiojoso, Erik Bertsch, Alessandra Celletti, Ciro Longobardi, Hans Lüdemann, Irene Ninno, Fabrizio Romano, Ursula Salmista, Marco Silvi, Arturo Stàlteri, Giulia Tagliavia
SOLO / MULTI, from 9 am on 23 October at 3.00 pm (approx.) on 24 October

 

Vexations by Erik Satie is one of the most enigmatic compositions in the history of music. Composed at the end of the 1800s, it was discovered only later, also thanks to the particular interest of John Cage, who organized its first public performances. The musician Ricciarda Belgiojoso curates a special performance of the piece by twelve pianists with two pianos.
The performance will be introduced by John Cage’s 4’33” and punctuated with Jonathan Monk’s My Mother Cleaning My Father’s Piano.

 

 

TERRE THAEMLITZ* Soulnessless: Cantos I-IV
Video installation + talk with Valerio Mannucci
Auditorium, from 10 pm, video in loop all night

 

Terre Thaemlitz is an American musician and activist who has lived for a number of years in Japan. Founder of the Comatonse Recordings label, he is known for a combination of critical analysis of identity politics and the socio-economic aspect of commercial media production. The artist presents the video– installation Soulnessless: Cantos I-IV, a series of four works that reflect on terms like “soul”, “spirituality” and “religion” as fundamental forms of mediation between the consumer and the music market.

 

 

PAQUITA GORDON Extraordinary Science
Extended sound performance
Terrace bar, 10 am – 3 pm

 

Paquita Gordon is a DJ based in Milan, and a resident performer since the first edition of the Terraforma festival. She is known for her ability to engage the audience through her musical selections that appeal to the ears of multiple generations of listeners. Paquita Gordon presents Extraordinary Science, an extended 5-hour sound performance created for Il Pianeta come Festival XL, as an exploration of spaces in which science and sound take on the power to transform. 

 

 

VIPRA Avoid Gurus Follow Plants
Workshop
Auditorium roof, 3 pm – 5 pm

 

Federico Proietti is a theorist of the “Presenturo” (mental state that subvertes the concept of linear time), a conceptual illusionist, music producer, performer and designer based in Rome. The artist, who took part in Museum for Preventive Imagination – EDITORIAL, delves into his vision of the work Avoid Gurus Follow Plants through a workshop created for Il Pianeta come Festival XL, to focus on the world of cannabis and its relationship with art, mysticism and ecology. 

 

 

JEREMY DELLER* Wir haben die Schnauze Voll & Everybody in the Place
Video screening + talk with Ilaria Gianni
Auditorium, 5 pm – 7 pm

 

Jeremy Deller is an English visual artist whose works stem from historical events or archives, shifting into profound political reflections. His pieces are often the result of collaborations, with the aim of diminishing the artistic ego through the involvement of other figures during the course of the creative process. Deller presents two works: Wir haben die Schnauze Voll, a reflection on some of the fundamental themes addressed by Beethoven, including the relationship with “nature, humanity, freedom and democracy”, while the iconic Everybody in the Place concentrates on the socio-political aspects and contemporary legacy of the “Second Summer of Love” in the Eighties. The screenings will be accompanied by a conversation between the artist and Ilaria Gianni.

Ilaria Gianni is an independent curator and art writer. She is co-founder of the Magic Lantern Film Festival and curated several exhibitions and independent research based projects in museums, institutions, project spaces and galleries. She teaches in Rome at John Cabot University, Master of Art of Luiss and IED. She has contributed with texts to numerous art catalogues and magazines.

 

 

 

Terraforma is an international music festival dedicated to artistic experimentation and sustainability. The three days event takes place since 2014 in the garden of Villa Arconati, near Milan. The artists range from early innovators and genre precursors to young and promising talents of the experimental music scene, defined for an ever evolving approach to active and creative research. Choosing sustainability as the festival’s modus operandi, through the maintenance of Villa Arconati’s park, the aim is to discover new sustainable resources and to reduce the environmental impact. 

 

“With my projects I imagined that something has been changed in the moral of the man “worker-producer” and that it is thought that men can live (if they want to) for the sake of living and can work (if perchance they want to) to come to know, by means of their bodies, their psyche and their sex, that they are living.

I know that some may want this and may even pretend it for themselves, intensely, passionately, with a great need and a great religion. They may pretend it instead of ping-pong and the television-set, or even the motor-ways which at the moment only serve to take us to the carpark smelling of petrol at the sea-side, or some such equivalent place.

I know all this very well – not because I have invented it myself, but because I have heard it all over the place, from young people, from poets, from many people who really work, from the oppressed, the alienated, the tired, Indian chiefs, Gurus children prisoners. And then I know it from Nanda, when she came to understand with compassion that freedom can only come from the possible knowledge that each of us is living and that very slowly each of us is dying, too.” (Ettore Sottsass)

 

 

* in livestream

 

 

 

Marinococcus by Flora Yin-Wong is supported by Marsèll.
The technical partner of Il Pianeta come Festival XL is Alfonsi Pianoforti.

 

Free admission.