2016
TO GIVE RISE TO a Human / Urban requalication
Altofest is the space of the beginning, built by uncertain steps and persons waiting in front of the doors of the houses. Here, in Naples, where every moment is lived as the first time, the first sound, the first light. We care about falling in love. Here, where this is possible because nothing is as it seems, here, where no “seems” is known. Here you happen.
Walking around the streets, here it may happen to see women wearing nightgowns while standing outside their “basso” (typical Neapolitan ground level house). They dominate a tiny plot of public land, showing their identity, that waters down with the one of their neighbour. This space sets the two inhabitants in and out their houses, at the same time. Naples moves the border of what is private or public not in front or behind. The border means inhabiting. A not physical border, but the result of inhabiting.
What we do with Altofest is creating a space for promiscuity in which everybody takes the risk of his own exposition to the other. What is private is not yours anymore, it becomes shared intimacy. Expropriation and displacement are usually felt as traumatic. During Altofest these feelings are like a storm where strangers are blocked under the same roof or in the same hall offering shelter from the rain.
We love saying that the festival is a trap you chose to fall into. It is a trap for the artist, chosing to leave the formal space. It is a trap for the space donor letting an artistic work live in his own intimacy. It is a trap for the audience that will recognize the private space as something different, as a space where his sight will write and read something new.
The houses themselves become a white paper in the very moment the artists go beyond the doorstep. As inhabitants of the same place, both artists and citizens are totally and mutually exposed. No excuses for missing their encounter. Altofest activates generative “dispositifs” of relation, thinking and knowledge, mixing public and intimacy. It creates a space of promiscuity in which artists and audience can go beyond their roles, participating in a total experience that generates “original relationships”. Altofest emancipates itself from the function of mere “programming” and/or “production” of shows and artworks, as festivals are usually considered, to prefigure itself as a space for an experimental sociality. In this way the city becomes the home for innovative and shared art practices, for artists who are “full of life” and brave citizens.
foto Vicky Solli, disegni Ilaria Garzillo e i contributi dei nostri spettatori