Earth Day is the largest environmental event on the planet, the only time when all the world’s citizens come together to celebrate the Earth and promote its preservation. Earth Day, a moment strongly desired by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson and promoted even earlier by President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, involves up to one billion people in as many as 192 countries around the world each year.

Main themes are the pollution of air, water, and soil, the destruction of ecosystems, the thousands of disappearing plants and animal species, and the depletion of nonrenewable resources. There is an insistence on solutions to eliminate the negative effects of human activities; these solutions include recycling materials, conserving natural resources such as oil and fossil gases, banning the use of harmful chemicals, stopping the destruction of key habitats such as wet forests, and protecting endangered species.

In Palermo, under the patronage of the Municipality and Earth Day Italia (the national supervisory and coordinating body for the various events in the country) the first edition of Earth Day Palermo festival was born in 2013 under the direction of Patrizia Pozzo (Fondazione Studio Rizoma) and Simona Gazziano (Fuori Orario Production) when especially in the south of Italy few people were talking about the Environment and certain themes were totally out of the Sicilian public debate. With a precise format, which has always alternated moments of debate and more serious discussion with playful moments and workshops, the festival has grown year by year in terms of topics addressed, international guests, number of participants and audience until it has become an expected event for the city of Palermo. Many collaborations , to name but a few: Regional Department of Health, Regional Department of Environment and Territory, Regional Department of Tourism, Ars, University of Palermo, Gesap, Amap, Rap, Banca Etica, Coop, Comieco, Greenpeace, LegAmbiente, Coop Sicilia, Stop Global Warming; Amnesty International; Green Italia; Green Renaissance; Green New Deal for Europe; National Geographic, Legambiente; Mare Vivo; Extintion Rebellion; Ecomuseo del Mare.

Wallofsounds is an international festival of contemporary music and arts conceived, organised and directed by Gaetano La Rosa with the intention of enhancing the city’s monumental heritage with music events, ranging from experimental to contemporary classical, from sound art to radical improvisation, inviting leading players from the international music scene. In the first edition, we presented, among other things, the world premiere of The Mayfield – from a project by and with Heiner Goebbels, as part of Transeuropa Festival/BAM – Biennale Arcipelago del Mediterraneo (BAM), one of the greatest artists, composers and directors of contemporary music theatre.

Mattia Capelletti is a doctoral student in Sciences of Culture at the University of Palermo, writer and independent curator based in Torino. Interested in sound and the human voice, he has investigated its aesthetics, politics and technologies across theory and different artistic disciplines. More recently his research has focused on the voice as a site of surveillance and the emerging artistic strategies of resistance, as part of his PhD and through a series of curatorial projects. With collaboration at the core of his practice, he is involved in projects such as: Idioletta (with artist Costanza Candeloro), a project aimed at fostering “borderline” literature and orality; Black Med, a platform for the traveling of sounds across Mediterannean borders initiated by Invernomuto, for which he acts as author and researcher; and Palm Wine, a website dedicated to post-global sound cultures he co-edits along with Simone Bertuzzi. His most recent writing has appeared in Flash Art, Il Tascabile, and Black Med, an anthology curated by Invernomuto and published by Humboldt in 2021.

Aterraterra Lab is the base of Aterraterra (Fabio Aranzulla and Luca Cinquemani), a project that intersects agriculture, art and activism. In their garden in Palermo, they harvest wild food plants, flowers, medicinal and aromatic herbs and ancient, rare vegetables. Their interspecies and intercultural dialogue, in which all parameters are continually reassessed and negotiated between all the involved, flows seamlessly into dismantling neo-coloniality, industrialisation and dominant discourses through the research of plant and culinary histories and collaborations that bring marginality to the centre. Examples of this are the collective’s research work around the Ethiopian red aubergine (Solanum aethiopicum) in Italy, known only as the red aubergine of Rotonda (often ignoring the reasons for its arrival in Italy, linked to colonialism); or on the ancient grains that are so much celebrated today and which are not so ancient but largely created during the fascist era. A network of artists, activists, agricultural cooperatives, agricultural labourers, cultural associations, cooks, researchers, scientists, etc., both Italian and international, has formed around Aterraterra and the Aterraterra Lab programme.

Irene Coppola was born in Palermo in 1991. An artist based in Palermo and Milan, she is part of the Room to Bloom platform. After completing her academic studies at NABA in Milan and the Willem De Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, she participated in national and international exhibitions and projects, including: AndAndAnd for Documenta13 in Kassel, the Do Disturb festival at the Palais De Tokyo in Paris, Dolomiti Contemporanee in Pieve di Cadore, Flight Sketches at the Cercle Cité in Luxembourg, Hanging Garden at the Office Project Room in Milan, Badly Buried at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Guarene, and La Natura e la Preda at PAV in Turin. In 2019 she won the sixth edition of the Italian Council for the artistic residency project La Wayaka Current Tropic 08°N based in the indigenous community of Guna Yala (Panama). In 2020, she is among the artists selected for Cantica21. Italian Contemporary Art Everywhere, a public commissioning project promoted by the General Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the General Directorate of Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture. The work produced was hosted at the Italian Institute of Culture in Dakar, where the artist realised a new residency project, part of the collateral events of the Dak’Art 2022 Biennial.