A Daily Practice

Centrale Fies opens its most fragile part to the public by abandoning the powerful formula of the Drodesera festival, to devote its energy to a programme which was reshaped in terms of schedule and forms and to tell the world that art is not only accomplished when it is staged, but it is a long, delicate, daily and necessary process. The new openings will be marked by the presentation to the public of some results of the research and experimentation of the research centre for contemporary performance practices, as a way to constantly foster the dialogue between artists, researchers, curators, sociologists, philosophers with the local, national and international territory.

The core of the curatorship has also changed: alongside and intertwined with the daily work of Barbara Boninsegna, the historical artistic director of Centrale Fies, a curatorial board was conceived to better take care of every line of research on the performative: the visual arts borrowed from the performative and vice versa with Densi Isaiah; digital art with Claudia D’Alonzo; performance art and the Free School of Performance with Simone Frangi; Justin Randolph Thompson and Mackda Ghebremariam Tesfaù for a fellowship on decolonial affirmative action; Filippo Andreatta for the European Apap networks and theatrical programming. Everything happens in a continuous practice, of horizontal inspiration, to get into the specifics of the different and composite territories of performance. This transformation ideally converts the entire cultural enterprise of Centrale Fies, which is a fragment of a collective reflection that prompt us to the action and care of the workers and the artists who find here a home-refuge all year round, capable of finding and put in place resources, to avoid stopping the study and research on the performative. 

On the other hand, the strong holders of the research centre remain unchanged, such as Live Works, which intensifies its action by opening the theoretical part of the 9th edition of the Free School of Performance for free also to 10 students of the three-year, master’s and academies, who will be selected by the curatorial board through a motivational letter. The selected students will therefore be able to access the theoretical part of the Free School of Performance. 

The speakers of this 9th edition will be: Justin Randolph Thompson (artist and founder of BHMF, curator for Centrale Fies of the Agitu Ideo Gudeta fellowship), Onyeka Iwge (visual artist), Mackda Ghebremariam Tesfaù (researcher, sociologist, activist association Il Razzismo è una Brutta Storia, curator for Centrale Fies of the Agitu Ideo Gudeta fellowship), Vincenza Perilli (researcher, co-founder of InteRGRace_Interdisciplinary Group on Race and Racisms), Kathryn Weir (Director of the MADRE Museum in Naples), Krystel Khoury (playwright and Director of ISAC | Institut Supérieur des Arts et Chorégraphies. ArBA-EsA Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts). The conversations will take place alongside artists Sergi Casero Nieto, Gabriele Rendina Cattani, Selin Davasse, Joannie Baumgärtner, Ivan Cheng, Ada M. Patterson, Clementine Edwards, Silvia Rosi, Francis and Christian Offman, Thais Di Marco, Harilay Rabenjamina, Giulia Crispiani, Golrokh Nafisi, Olia Sosnovskaya, Göksu Kunak, Marnie Slater, Alberto García del Castillo, Noor Abuarafeh.