When our current way of life is shaped by profitability, constant activity, speeding, and acceleration, we tend to forget to observe the environment surrounding us, and how to do it. This phenomenon of “acceleration” that the philosopher Hartmut Rosa uses to describe the alienation of humanity in the modern society (Hartmut Rosa, Beschleunigung. Die Veränderung des Zeitstrukturen in der Moderne (Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity), Suhrkamp Verlag, 2005) led us to what Baptiste Morizot calls a “sensibility crisis” (Baptiste Morizot, Manières d’être vivant. Enquêtes sur la vie à travers nous (Ways of being alive) Actes Sud, 2020). By this sensibility crisis, Morizot points out the sensitive break up of the relationship between humans and their environment. In other words, it is about this exhaustion of what we can perceive and feel toward the environment and its non-human inhabitants, which seems to be one of the reasons why we are going through a critical stage of the current environmental crisis. Therefore, it is becoming urgent to take the time to learn again how to observe our environment, to discover and rediscover it. This is an opportunity offered to you in Genova through the Festival in una notte d’estate and Electropark. Both festivals propose a new perspective of discovering landscapes and places through an artistic and cultural filter.

IN UNA NOTTE D’ESTATE WITH EARTH AND SHAKESPEARE

If you wander in the little streets of Genova, maybe you can come across the main outdoor stage of the Lunaria Teatro, at the end of an alley. In summertime, it is indeed in the Piazza San Matteo that they host their festival for some summer nights, from July the 10th to September the 28th. For its 27th edition, the Lunaria Teatro makes us travel and discover new lands not so far away. Actually, as it is said in the festival’s subtitle, “Percorsi. L’architettura della parola tra città e terre” (“Routes. Word’s architecture between city and earth”), we are dragged along Genova to explore it over an artistic itinerary.

To start the festival, Daniela Ardini chose Shakespeare to make up with the earth through the in situ play Terre Shakespeariane, and open the audience’s eyes to its surroundings, in the Institute of Agriculture Marsano di Sant’Ilario. There, on the heights of Nervi, I discovered Shakespeare under a new light, not the usual spotlight of the theater, but the light of the setting sun as the play went on, in a breathtaking natural scenery. No need to use spotlights, sound desk, a human-made set or anything else we usually employ in black boxes: Mother Earth takes care of everything, and everything makes sense with so little accessorize. Here it is not the setting that opens our eyes on the play, but the play that opens them on the environment surrounding us. From the first scene to the last one, we evolve in an alive setting that opens up along the play. While we begin in a garden putting us in mind of an ancient Greek amphitheatre facing the sea, under the eye of Dionysus above us through the vine covering a wooden pergola, we end in a vast green field back to the sea and in front of a great wall covered by ivy. Along the show, earth evolves from a simple setting, human property and subject of desire (as in King Lear) to a powerful and self-sufficient entity who can invest and influence human stories.

On Piazza San Matteo, the audience faces the Parrocchia San Matteo and can assist that way to a double show: the facade of the striped parish’s view and the artistic performance whose spotlights floodlights also the parish that stands in all its magnificence behind. Also, Mind the gap during the so-called dance performance of the Mechanical Monkeys company, that took the space of this improvised stage inside the city to take us on a journey in the countryside, fleeing the subway, symbol of the accelerating and dizzying life that characterized the city life. No, actually the countryside was brought to us by the talented dancers, literally dancing with the earth in front of our eyes and the San Matteo parish, in the middle of the paved city of Genova. A great way to bring back together city and earth, which have become two opposite faces of the same coin.

RESONATE WITH PEOPLE, NATURE AND MUSIC

The core objective here is to recreate that relationship we lost with something now perceived vile and trivial, dirty and inert: earth. Artists work to give it a new value through art and poetry, to regenerate areas forgotten or ignored by human kind by making it shine bright with cultural activities. It is with this objective in mind, but also with the desire to make it easier to find places for music in Liguria that the Electropark festival was created. This year, for its 13th edition, Electropark besieged the Galata Museo del Mare of Genova, the Mercato dei Pescatori in the port, but also the Virgo Club for the afterparty. Most of all, if you were lucky enough to find yourself a boat (a guide was available on the festival’s website) on July the 14th, you could have experiment a unique way of partying and discovering music: off the cost of Rapallo, for a show called for this special day Groove Island.

But discovering music while looking at the sight of Genova and its hills from the rooftop of the Galata Museo is already a unique experience. If you get dizzy from this beautiful sight, you can go back down to a distinct outdoor area of the museum invaded by the music to take a drink in washable glasses and eat a snack before sorting your waste in the dedicated bins, all of this while enjoying another artist on another stage. More than just regenerating human relationships with its environment, Electropark defines itself by being a meeting place, a safe place where everyone, no matter their gender or origins can feel represented. It is a great deal to the festival’s staff to send a message of inclusion to the audience, as to respect gender balance and give visibility to minorities (70% of the staff and artists is composed of women and lgbtqi+ people). Here it is about creating a place for music, but also for environmental and social diversity, to link these three notions and make them resonate with each other, in the same way the multidisciplinary aspect of the programme makes arts resonate with each other (combining dance and drama to music).

In Genova this summer, time has come to stop and take a look around you, to take the time to enjoy not only your urban landscapes but also the natural ones. It is a great opportunity to do it along cultural activities and in the end resonate with both of them in a moment out of time – at least out of the fast pace that is imposed in our daily routine.

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Tag: Electropark (2), LunariaTeatro (2)