Altofest_International Contemporary Live Arts_The Hovering City
Altofest is a human-specific experimental sociality project shaped as a Performing Art Festival. It was born in 2011 "to give rise to" a large, heterogeneous and international community based on the “poetic citizenship” principle. It calls to dialogue all the social components of the human-urban fabric in which it is grafted. It acts as a semantic interference in everyday life, allowing inhabitants to speak to each other in a neutral language and meet in a shared risk space, daring together.
Cross-border/international
Italy
Malta
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Its annual edition runs every year in Naples, Italy.
Its past special editions have been run in the following:
2018, Malta - Valletta 2018 European Capital of Culture, involving the following town of Malta: Rabat, Majjistral Park, Hamrun, Qormi, Santa Venera, Zejtun, Valletta, Bormla, Birgu, Sliema, Gzira.
2019, Italy - Matera 2019 European Capital of Culture, involving the following town of Basilicata Region: Venosa, Melfi, Moliterno, Sarconi, Montalbano Jonico, Tursi, Grassano, Tricarico, Montescaglioso, Miglionico, Matera.
2022, Malta - Valletta.
2026 Slovakia - It will be part of the Program of Trenčín 2026 European Capital of Culture.
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
2023-06-18
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Associazione Arte°Grado (aka Teatringestazione) Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Anna Last name of representative: Gesualdi Gender: Female Nationality: Italy Function: Director Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: via mezzocannone 19 Town: Naples Postal code: 80134 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 339 204 1718 E-mail:direzione@teatringestazione.com Website:http://altofest.net
URL:https://www.facebook.com/altofest.net Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): facebook page #peopleoaltofest #altofest #thehoveringcity #lacittasospesa
URL:https://vimeo.com/showcase/9594998 Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): vimeo #peopleoaltofest #altofest #thehoveringcity #lacittasospesa
URL:https://twitter.com/ingestazione Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): twitter #peopleoaltofest #altofest #thehoveringcity #lacittasospesa
ALTOFEST is a human-specific project that turns homes into performance spaces after a period of co-habitation between international artists and local residents in a unique political act to reimagine a city as a community, bonded through art, questioning the relationship between artistic practices and daily life.
Each edition lasts two weeks and includes artistic residencies and a festival program. Houses become spaces for artistic creation during the residency days and subsequently places for performance programs open to the public, hosting works that are contemporary expressions of live art and authors experimenting with hybrid practices. Altofest also includes public talks and moments of sharing about the aesthetic, poetic and political questions raised by the Altofest community experience: multiform spaces of thought, curated by Co.R, Research Community, intertwine through the course of the performances. It is not just about hosting a performance in one's own home, but the daily presence of an artist contaminates the vision of those who live or cross the domestic space.
Altofest was born in Naples in 2011. Citizens, international artists, scholars, and cultural experts, come together at every manifestation of the 'Hovering City" of Altofest. It is a space that emerges from the union of the intimate dimension of the homes and the families involved with the aesthetic and poetic work's dimension and the artistic processes that citizens welcome into their spaces. A permanent community has been growing by recognising themselves as "People of Altofest".
In 2018 Altofest left the borders of Naples and spread internationally, inaugurating a series of special editions commissioned by several European Capitals of Culture. From here, the community of Altofest expanded into new territories, involving new people who, overcoming geographical distances, developed a new sense of belonging based on the principle of "poetic citizenship".
citizenship
cocreation
arts
belonging
community
The ALTOFEST community is a global creator-audience, reaching all kinds of people, their friends and family and artists from all over the world, including.
Mexico, Japan, Italy, France, the USA and many others, where everyone has a role. In its different iterations, ALTOFEST celebrates diversity and experimentation with curation and care for the daily lives of space donors. Altofest is an independent community-based project. Altofest exists and resists thanks to the members of Teatringestazione, who donate their time, skills and money (to the extent of their possibilities). Thanks to the citizens, who give spaces and accommodation. Thanks to the artists, who share the time and space of their work; thanks to volunteers; thanks to the participation of some local ethical realities; thanks to researchers; professionals; cultural experts, national and international, who offer their skills and share their visions, intertwining them with those of Altofest.
From 2017 to 2021, the editions of Altofest were partially supported by Funder35/Fondazione con il Sud; SIAE-Sillumina; Allianz Kulturstiftung; City of Naples and Campania region in the frame of (POC) 2014-2020.
The structure of the festival is horizontal and generative. Citizens and artists develop a feeling of belonging to the community that makes the festival possible. And this community promotes its development. The festival is a mechanism to open doors to different lives through art, and bringing international artists into the intimate fold of the community is a key aspect of this, as the blend of the familiar with the unfamiliar is what builds a stronger gift and a stronger connection. Since
2011, the artist and space donor family grew exponentially beyond the home city of Naples, with already several special editions across ECoCs planned
and implemented, and will continue to grow internationally as it expands across territories and media (social, web radio etc.).
The program of Altofest is composed exclusively of a selection of original works previously created for a formal space, already completed and performed in front of an audience. Performances belong to the field of live arts (theatre, dance, performances, and experimental and interdisciplinary formats). Artists have the task of questioning and rewriting their work by relying on the elements in the spaces that host them. The artist should not merely adapt their work to the space. But engage in the "translation" of the signs that compose the performance. Thus, during the period of residency, day by day, the artist shall engage space donors in analysing and rewriting the performance. The public opening usually lasts three or five days and takes up almost the whole day, offering his community an immersive experience. The Altofest program is primarily international. The artistic interventions alternate with in-depth meetings and public moments of debate: many hybrid activities, documentaries, and speculative. The structure of the Fest allows an exchange between artists, and the dialogue between the citizens involved, sharing an experience that links the local dimension with the national and international ones. The program of the "fest" includes the activities of the Research Community (Co.R) and the daily time of the Social Kitchen. Furthermore, a group of "space donors" had the opportunity to attend the Radio.
Community Workshop, curated by Teatringestazione, learning how to manage a web radio. Through different sessions, the group faced the technical aspects - from setting up to running a program; factors related to the content - from the planning to programming and broadcasting. The approach of thinking-doing and learning-acting offered the community the opportunity to practice the acquired knowledge. So People of Altofest run their radio program! Radio Leib became the sound dimension of Altofest, complementing the programming.
Accessibility is one of the important challenges for Altofest. For motor disabilities, we developed an experimental info-line for accessibility and distances based on the self-determination principle. Moreover, thanks to the collaboration with Counse Lis, School of Education in Italian Sign Language – some interventions will be accessible to the deaf community. Linguistic accessibility is also among the festival's aims; therefore, all the communication is bilingual (ITA-ENG), with several performances providing simultaneous interpretation and linguistic facilitation services. Altofest is a project of experimental sociality based on proximity, the gift, and mutual care. This gives birth to a direct relationship between artist and resident citizen, inaugurating a dialogue on the deep meaning of hospitality, giving rise to a process of human regeneration, blending the intimate and public dimensions. Moreover, it provides a heterogeneous dimension between artists and citizens which tends to transcend roles in favour of collective participation, an utter experience that generates "original relationships".
For the last five years, Altofest has been equipped with a digital radio to follow all the Altofest events running in residents' houses. So it also reaches those who can't attend the festival and the blind.
The process was perfectly integrated into the citizens' daily life and the usual dynamics of the areas involved, exercising a significant poetic influence on every citizen and community to which they belong. The project structure allowed the dialogue between the different communities involved, sharing an experience that puts the local dimension in relation to the national and international ones brought by the artists. Altofest is a project of experimental sociality based on proximity, the gift, and mutual care. This gives birth to a direct relationship between artist and resident citizen, inaugurating a dialogue on the deep meaning of hospitality, giving rise to a process of human regeneration, blending the intimate and public dimensions. Moreover, it provides a heterogeneous dimension between artists and citizens which tends to transcend roles in favour of collective participation, an utter experience that generates “original relationships”. We thought a lot about the concept of Co-creation. For us, creation starts from an act of subtraction, making space for co-workers. Quoting Simone Weil: "On God's part, creation is not an act of self-expansion but restraint and renunciation." We call citizens "Space Donors" because they let the artists inhabit their daily life, giving rise to a poetic meeting. This "living together" is the first step and is the central act needed to welcome something new to create a unique opportunity. Co-creation means sharing step by step the process, seeing how the artwork rises, taking care of its development, participating in all the stages of the creation, seeing the mechanism, and at the end, being the person that makes a gift of the art, sharing it with the communities. This co-creation process starts with sharing the space and time and not just sharing actions or doing his/her tasks. The health of future society also depends on fighting against the concept of "cultural consumption" in favour of "cultural participation".
Altofest was born in Naples in 2011, conceived and curated by TeatrInGestAzione, directed by Gesualdi | Trono, in dialogue with Loretta Mesiti as dramaturg.
It was awarded by the EFA (European Festival Association) with the EFFE AWARD 2017-18 (Europe for Festivals Festivals for Europe), resulting in the six best European festivals among more than 715 candidates. In 2018 it was included as a best practice in the annual report “Io Sono Cultura 2018” (t/n, I am culture), edited by Symbola Foundation. Also, in 2018, the Italian Ministry of Culture awarded it with the “European Year of Heritage” label. Winner of the calls: Funder35 (2016); SIAE-Sillumina (2017); Allianz Kulturstiftung (2019). In 2018 Altofest left the borders of Naples for the first time, inaugurating a series of special editions commissioned by different European Capitals of Culture and international Institutions: Altofest Malta 2018 for Valletta 2018 ECoC; Altofest Matera-Basilicata 2019 for Matera 2019 ECoC; and on 2022 a re-edition for Valletta, commissioned by the Valletta Cultural Agency. It is also included in the Kaunas 2022 nomination dossier and Trenčín 2026’s bid book as Every Part Counts’ key project, acting as a de facto connector of a “spontaneous” network among the cities sharing this title. Furthermore, Altofest is an indicator of the cultural interest in the town of Naples in the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor tool of the European Commission.
Altofest moves away from the function of mere “production” or “programming” of performances and artistic works, usually attributed to festivals, to become a space for experimental sociality. Citizens welcome international artists and authors from different disciplines, invited to question their completed works, in a public and collective way, through a translation process for the domestic space.
Altofest is a device conceived as a collective performance in the shape of a festival. Thus, the Altofest dramaturgy corresponds to the plot of itineraries and routes that guide the inhabitant of the Fest in an orchestrated sequence of urban landscapes and domestic intimacy that is crossed by performing artworks and talks.
Everyday life is permeated by the foreign vision carried by international artists and languages of the live arts hosted in the program.
The citizen who hosts the foreign artist in his home for two weeks – which in turn becomes a public space by opening up to the observers – finds themself living in alien space, albeit with familiar forms, where the borders of public and private spaces are blurred. The inhabitant who donates his home and time takes a proactive position. An unusual movement of people then moves the city. From one place to another on the map of events, spontaneous groups of visitors organise themselves into exceptional itineraries, separating and reuniting at every corner to share the Altofest experience. The voices multiply on the streets, bringing images, narrations, and opinions. Thus, an interstitial emotional map of urban space emerges, poetically inhabited. Through Altofest, we want to radically question ourselves on the need to generate new values constantly, to redesign the relationship with places, to subvert the use of spaces and the established attribution of roles, to dare to cross borders (of gender, discipline, of competence, of action) that have never been attempted before.
We can sum up the impact with three elements: altofest inaugurates a new social space; it promotes a strong interaction; it germinates the sense of belonging to a shared experience. Altofest changes the sight of daily life; it offers a different perspective on the future; it grows the sense of belonging to a broad and poetic community beyond the borders of the place where people physically live. It means don't feel alone, enlarge the concept of family, foster a new sense of hospitality, and put poetry and imagination at the centre of daily life. We all together demonstrated that sometimes the "impossible" needs only a strong faith to become "possible". It was important because we also showed that contemporary art language could be "understood" by anyone; what needs to be changed is the way we talk about that language and the place where we speak it. We brought several artists from different countries with strong contemporary artistic backgrounds. The citizens we involved had never been before the chance to see the performing arts, but the mutual care between artists and citizens at the project's base convinced them to welcome the artists. People are ready for the art. They don't need to be prepared, but are we, as cultural experts, ready to bring not conventional art to them? People are ready for a revolution, but are we ready too? From the beginning, we have aimed to leave a legacy of the memory of an experience and of new behaviour towards contemporary art. Citizens are no longer considered only as consumers of cultural products but as promoters in their communities of a poetic approach to everyday life, ready to welcome new and future artistic challenges.
Altofest is conceived as a systemic live performance shaped like a festival, engrafted into the socio-urban fabric in which it happens. It is built with the participation of residents, who host national and international artists in their homes for two weeks.
The houses become spaces for artistic creation during the residency days and subsequently places for programming open to the public, hosting works that are contemporary expressions of live art and authors experimenting with hybrid practices. As a result, the artwork breaks into everyday life, allowing the poetic side of existence to emerge.
Altofest is a project of experimental sociality based on proximity, the gift, and mutual care. This gives birth to a direct relationship between artist and resident citizen, inaugurating a dialogue on the deep meaning of hospitality, giving rise to a process of human regeneration, blending the intimate and public dimensions. Moreover, it provides a heterogeneous dimension between artists and citizens which tends to transcend roles in favour of collective participation, an utter experience that generates “original relationships”.
It is not just about hosting a performance in one’s own home, but the daily presence of an artist contaminates the vision of those who live or cross the domestic space. The artist’s creative urgency merges with the habits of home in a constant dialogue that redefines the work, the signs that compose it, the inhabited space and the objects that define it as “familiar”.
The citizen involved in the project is not a user or recipient but a structural and founding part and an active agent of the process. The hosting citizens take care of the artistic process, while the artists care for the hosts and their community.
Curatorial approach
The curatorial approach that outlines the “fest” originates from meticulous attention to the one-to-one relationship between artist and donor, letting the generative potential of this encounter spread out to the system of relationships within which everyone moves, infiltrating through the different layers of living.
The Artistic Direction designates the space to the artist, ensuring to match each artist’s work accurately with the hosting citizen and space. But, of course, the match between the artist and the citizen is unique, so Altofest follows a specific dramaturgy that turns it into a collective live performance.
To offer a further exchange of perspectives, the artistic directors and the dramaturg of Altofest plan a meeting with each artist to analyse the process during the residency.
The performances are selected through an international open call that is spread worldwide.
Each edition’s dramaturgy is composed through an emersion process, a synthesis of the gaze applied to the numerous proposals received. All the Altofest experience is documented by videos, podcasts, photos, social and media storytelling. The narration is connected with the one ongoing since Altofest was born, extended to the permanent cross-border community, including all the People of Altofest. This unique narrative movement fosters a sense of belonging to a broader community, keeping alive the experience and the legacy.
In 2018 Altofest left the borders of Naples for the first time, inaugurating a series of special editions commissioned by different European Capitals of Culture and international Institutions: Altofest Malta 2018 for Valletta 2018 ECoC; Altofest Matera-Basilicata 2019 for Matera 2019 ECoC; and on 2022 a re-edition for Valletta, commissioned by the Valletta Cultural Agency. It is also included in the Kaunas 2022 nomination dossier and Trenčín 2026’s bid book as Every Part Counts’ key project, acting as a de facto connector of a “spontaneous” network among the cities sharing this title. Furthermore, Altofest is an indicator of the cultural interest in the town of Naples in the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor tool of the European Commission.
A permanent community has been growing by recognising themselves as “People of Altofest”.
In 2018 Altofest left the borders of Naples and spread internationally, inaugurating a series of special editions commissioned by several European CapFrom the very beginning, we have aimed to leave a legacy not only of the memory of an experience but of new behaviour towards contemporary art. Citizens are no longer considered consumers of cultural products but promoters in their communities of a poetic approach to everyday life, ready to welcome new and future artistic challenges.
Altofest changes the sight of daily life; it offers a different perspective on the future; it grows the sense of belonging to a broad and poetic community beyond the borders of the place where people physically live. It means don't feel alone, enlarge the concept of family, foster a new sense of hospitality, and put poetry and imagination at the centre of daily life.
We can sum up the impact with three elements: altofest inaugurates a new social space, promotes a strong interaction; it germinates the sense of belonging to a shared experience.
The project structure allowed the dialogue between the different communities involved, sharing an experience that puts the local dimension in relation to the national and international ones brought by the artists.
The process was perfectly integrated into the daily life of the citizens (whom we call space donors) and in the usual dynamics of the areas involved, exercising a significant poetic influence on every citizen involved and the respective communities they belong to.
