We are founding Rizoma Cities to establish a permanent network of cities from across Europe and Africa which promotes a holistic and networked municipal approach to the movement of people and cultural diversity.

Crucially, this includes acknowledging and addressing the historical legacies of colonialism and the inequalities these legacies still produce. These legacies persist in too many public spaces, in museums, in administrative bodies, in educational practices, in practices of remembrance, and in unequal relations between people. In recent years, cultural, artistic and civil society actors have been crucial in highlighting these effects, calling for restitution and a reconsideration of the damaging effects of colonialism. We believe including these actors and spheres of society in addressing these issues is essential.

We are committed to empowering the various social agents and citizens in the field of intercultural competencies as a tool for the acceptance and valorisation of diversity, while empowering migrants to be key participatory actors in the co-design of all public policies.

Through the circulation of knowledge, cultures and experiences we believe that networked cities can promote better understanding of the past, share best practices for addressing contemporary injustices, and can facilitate the participation of our citizens to jointly create a more equal future across borders.

Rizoma Cities invites to join the network all cities in Europe and Africa which share our vision of cities taking a lead in creating an inclusive, creative and vibrant society in which difference, diversity and solidarity are the seeds for a better world.

Was it hope that accompanied Abou Bakar Sidibé on his journey since he left his hometown of Bamako ten years ago to seek his fortune in Europe? Probably more of a blind faith. But certainly a fierce determination to defy all kinds of obstacles, which he could never foresee, but that continually stood in his way in new shapes and forms. And then something completely unpredictable happened: on Mont Gurugu, an informal settlement on the border fence of Melilla, two European filmmakers gave him a camera with a few instructions. Because he did not follow the instructions but his own vision and intuition instead, Abou became a filmmaker and toured all over some of the most important film festivals. He has been documenting his life ever since. We wanted to invite him to the festival three years ago, but back then, he didn’t have a residence permit and wasn’t allowed to travel to Italy. Now, he will join the festival as a resident (in all legality) for three weeks.

There are many ways in which uncertainty can be confronted, lived with, lived despite and lived through. Working with many different collaborators and institutions, often when sitting down at the dinner table after a meeting or event, we realized that if there is one feature that innately connects our practices and methodologies, it is working alongside uncertainty in myriad different ways. While the world around us seems to get continuously less solid, the series of encounters under the title UNCERTAIN ENVIRONMENTS brings together artists, curators, activists and researchers in various points of the city for talks co-curated with our partners in Istanbul, Spain, Prizren, Brussels and Palermo that exchange the different methodologies and strategies people and organizations have developed. Often, this requires initial observation and a fragile balance between certainty and precariousness that depends on establishing one’s own rules and the flexibility of changing them constantly.

As philosopher Byung-Chul Han puts it, every solution creates another problem. Sometimes, when people are convinced of their abilities, they take the risk of venturing into radically unknown territory. But while they were big stars in their home town, celebrated musicians, dancers and football players, they must first prove themselves in a new context, feel like they are starting from scratch, try to understand the new rules, find new supporters and fans.

The play KONAMI – THE FOOTBALL DANCE tells of this often frustrating experience, the many other connections between football, dance and showbiz, and an incalculable milieu characterized by power, money and corruption. With this piece, the transnational ensemble La Fleur returns to Palermo after starting work on it last year with a workshop with a group of young local dancers.

The work by Genny Petrotta, which was initiated during last year’s edition with a video installation in Piana degli Albanesi, tells of a time in which major historical upheavals took place: Towards the end of the Second World War when Sicily had already been liberated but was still occupied by the Americans and many different players were competing for influence over the territory in a geostrategic game. In this context, when many people were starving and faced an uncertain future, a few young people, many of whom had just been discharged from military service, decided to declare an autonomous peasant republic in their home town. In a context of great uncertainty, a Utopia can take hold because “the oppressed become aware of their situation in a more radical way in times of war”, as the Brazilian activist Douglas Estevam from the Movimento Sem Terra comments on the historical episode. With her poetic re-enactment, video artist Genny Petrotta intends to preserve her home town’s political and cultural heritage to enable people to refer to it in times of crisis.

Simone Mannino and the Mediterranean Ensemble (founded three years ago during the Between Land and Sea Festival) are also pursuing a utopia – with actors from Palermo and Tunis building a bridge across the Mediterranean. In the new piece that premiered last year in Tunis and will be seen for the first time in Italy, they explore the idea of a multi-ethnic and multicultural
world without conflict, based on the historical figure of Heliogabalus. Born in an era similar to ours, characterized by transitions and decline, Heliogabalus represents a moment of possibility for significant transformation and new visions. They also relate a milieu in which influential people dispute their power on future developments, and everyone becomes corrupt sooner or later.

For the first time, the urban will have an architectural dimension during the festival through a collaboration with the team of :AFTER, the architectural festival, which was hosted in the form of a grand tour of the island in 2023, and architectural practice Michalski&Wagner. Its nomadic format will set camp in the industrial area of Ex-Chimica Arenella to host ARENA ARENELLA,
a full day of programming that invites the most innovative architectural practitioners internationally and other spatial agents to reflect together on what sustainable development and place-making means today and can bring for the future, taking as its point of departure the Reinventing Cities competition for which the Arenella site has been nominated by the city government. Arenella, like Between Land and Sea, is a vast site that can only be confronted by putting our best practices together and embarking on a journey to make the unknown real. Hopefully.

All these and many more relevant projects, ideas, questions and works will be explored and discussed in the current edition of the Between Land and Sea Festival.In doing so, we hope to find a little peace and confidence in a time that sometimes doesn’t leave much to be hoped for. We thank all the artists, professionals and partners for sharing their expertise, trust and time. Your contributions have been instrumental in the progress of this edition. We invite everybody else to join us to think and celebrate together, and we look forward to the potential contributions you can bring to the table.

Expanding on the experience of :AFTER. After History, Afterlife – Festival diffuso di architettura in Sicilia, Continente Sicilia 1922- 2022 collects six interviews with some of the most important Sicilian architects of the last decades of the 20th century. What gather them, in addition to having contributed substantially to recent architectural and urban events on the island, is the fact that they are the custodians of a historical memory that has been largely preserved thanks to the numerous documents, graphics, models and photographs patiently collected over the years. Through autobiographical accounts and amateur shots taken during interviews with these archives-non-archives, without any claim to exhaustiveness, Continente Sicilia 1922 – 2022 aims to provide a historiographical-personal cross-section of contemporary Sicily. Using the words of Franco Cassano, the publication tells of a South that can become « an autonomous subject, a protagonist » capable of taking « the road of modernity in an absolutely original way ».

“Three years ago, with Artsformation, we embarked on an exploration to discern the intricate relationship between the arts and our  unfolding digital society. Our mission was not just to observe, but to  actively engage in understanding how the arts are intertwined with  digital transformation. We believed that the arts could serve as a significant bridge, fostering a more inclusive and sustainable digital era.

Our approach was multifaceted. We were not only focused on  theoretical perspectives. Instead, we aimed to bring the arts to the  forefront as an instrumental player in the digital shift, weaving to gether insights from the artistic, technological, entrepreneurial, and  societal spheres.

Assembled from diverse backgrounds, our team was com prised of academics, artists, and societal stakeholders. This colla borative spirit allowed us to employ a blend of research methods,  some traditional and others innovative, like those rooted in artistic  practices. This holistic approach aimed not just to advance acade mic understanding but also to translate these insights into actio nable strategies.

Central to our research was the artist’s viewpoint. We ende avored to comprehend how artists perceive and navigate the digi tal transformation, and how their practices are influenced and can  influence in return. Likewise, the project explored the role of the arts in enterprise and their interaction and influences on business  methods and organisations. Artsformation also paid attention to the  engagement of the arts with societal issues, with special interest  in those artistic practices that tackle challenges deriving from the  digital transformation in European society.

Community engagement was another pivotal component. Recognizing the arts’ potential to address societal challenges,  especially those emerging from digital transformation in Europe, we  actively facilitated artist residencies. We also curated diverse exhibitions in various European locales, fostering dialogues between  artists and the communities they resonate with.

Our findings, summarized on the following pages, were illuminating. A significant number of artists are channeling their creativity  to contribute to a more democratic, inclusive, and sustainable digi tal transformation in Europe. Their stories, challenges, and triumphs  are documented in our detailed project reports. As a culmination of  our efforts, we’ve also developed participatory arts-based practices  and tools, which we hope will serve as valuable resources for those  interested in the confluence of arts and the digital realm.”

From ” “Introduction: Exploring the Intersection Between Arts, Society and Technology”, Christian Fieseler, Artsformation Journal, 2023.

This online room explores and presents in the form of a digital catalogue some of the seeds that Room to Bloom has generated and created within the network, but also outside of it, with references of inspiration and guidance for us. This catalogue does not pretend to be exhaustive but proposes a digital walk and exploration through the experiences we’ve lived together. We invite you to explore the magic of this network through the mycelial interactive elements of this site.

We want to thank all the artists that are and have been part of this journey, the board members, mentors, curators, organisers and hosts we’ve met throughout the adventure of Room to Bloom.

DOWNLOAD THE CATALOGUE HERE

Guided by Édouard Glissant’s idea of archipelagic thinking, we bring together artists, researchers, and activists to examine how local realities intersect with global dynamics. From documenting the lives of fishermen across continents to reimagining coastal spaces and celebrating diverse cultural practices, our work seeks to honor complex heritages while inspiring new forms of solidarity. Join us as we think globally, act locally, and shape shared futures. To learn more about the projects and participants, we invite you to download the full catalogue available on our website.

The Sea has been the great connector of lands, with their peoples and their histories. No place such as Sicily – with its Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Arab, Normand and Spanish dominations – better enshrines this. But the sea is equally the great divider. Separating wealth from poverty, inclusion from exclusion. It is a sea that many try to cross only to find invisible walls, rejection, and in some cases death. Nowhere is this more evident than in the stark separation of the Mediterranean’s Northern and Southern shores. Port cities embody contradictions.