Terrapolis – Transversal Ecologies Festival

Terrapolis – Transversal Ecologies Festival invites you to accompany the transition towards the end of summer and spend time together in the wonderful landscape of the Bolognese Apennines, in Castiglione dei Pepoli, from 4 to 6 September. Now in its sixth edition, the festival dedicates three days to performative, sonic and collaborative practices connected to ecological thinking.

The figure that inspires this edition of Terrapolis is that of the swarm as a relational mode of existence: an emergent, networked and non-hierarchical dynamic in which each element contributes to the movement of the whole, without the need for a centre or a predetermined direction. In biology, computer science, the social sciences and robotics, the concept of the swarm describes intelligent and adaptive collective behaviours. Within Terrapolis, it becomes a world-image through which to think about the coexistence of forms of life, technologies, materials and practices that transform and influence one another according to a multiple, situated and interdependent logic.

This principle is also reflected in the festival’s curatorial approach and structure, which takes shape as an ecosystem composed of heterogeneous materials, forms of writing, and interweavings between languages and perspectives. The project values the relationship between individual and collective research, between DIWO (do it with others) formats and academic approaches, and between emerging artists and figures active on the international scene, placing practices of exchange, learning by doing, and the shared construction of knowledge at its core.

The artistic practices involved — from the use of solar energy to fermentation as a vital process, from speculative design to ecosystem regeneration, from material intelligence to cultural memory, and from reflections on the relationship between body, care and technology — unfold through hybrid processes, speculative approaches and transdisciplinary pathways. In dialogue with theoretical references from new materialism and concepts such as intra-action and non-human agency, the programme brings together walks, workshops, communal meals, performances, live acts and DJ sets, talks, and the outcomes of the residencies developed within the Creative Landscapes European project by Opus 58 and Giulia Vigna. The festival also serves as the concluding moment of the project, supported by the European Union and carried out in collaboration with the Lithuanian association Miško uostas.

Edition after edition, Terrapolis seeks to suggest different ways of imagining a future beyond ecological collapse and beyond capital. It does so collectively: the collective dimension is not merely a theme, but a structural practice, a relational device that runs throughout the entire project and shapes its methodology.

The festival is co-financed by the European Union.