At sunset, Casa Falk in the Piscità district will be courteously open to the public by its owner Martin Hatebur. There, while Alex Cecchetti will quench guests with sensual poetry along with amorous and erotic cocktails from his Love Bar, Osman Yousefzada will present a Total Anastrophes—based capsule collection and performance, for which he will create a limited number of garments inspired by plate tectonics theory, matryoshka dolls and the island itself. Instead of a catwalk, the garments will be organically introduced through the designer’s new format of a performative house party, and will be worn by locally cast models. Co-presented by the Trust with The Store X Vinyl Factory, Cecilia Bengolea will perform a new choreography, evoking the primordial symbol of the serpent with its mutating qualities.

On the occasion of its 8th edition, the Volcano Extravaganza — the annual festival of contemporary arts conceived and produced by London-based non-profit institution, the Fiorucci Art Trust — erupted away from its volcanic centre in Stromboli, and reimagined the 8th edition of the annual Volcano Extravaganza in Dhaka. Instead of engaging with Stromboli’s landscape and the talisman of its active volcano, the programme transformed the inside of the Shilpakala Academy’s Auditorium into the inner echo chamber of an active volcano. Performative interventions evoked themes of isolation and distance; memory and mysticism; cosmic energy and the violence of nature; improvisation and theatre.

Taking the empirical and ephemeral experiences collected on the island, the Fiorucci Art Trust migrated the knowledge, the collaborations, the artists, the talks, the volcanic activities: the mind as a volcano and the emotional body with Total Anastrophes. The auditorium was turned into a theatre inside of a volcano, into an echo-chamber pervaded by sounds and moans, magmatic hertz, vibrations: frequencies of a harmonious language inside a unique cradle for performances, where voices were born from inscrutable sources and latent memories evoked. Visitors were greeted by slowed movements, reverberations and distorted sounds.

The Artistic Leader was Bangladeshi-born, London-based artist Runa Islam, while the festival was curated, as per tradition, by Milovan Farronato. The participants included Cecilia Bengolea, Alex Cecchetti, Patrizio Di Massimo, Haroon Mirza, Tobias Putrih, and Osman Yousefzada - all figures belonging to the astral orbit of the Trust.

A Poem & A Performance

Bring the dark dust
from my feet

I’m coming

Our footprints that
intermingled in the past

I’m coming

To protrude forward
To create our new cosmos
To heal, to muster up
Our amulets and potions

I’m coming

To flower and let them feed off me

I’m coming

To germinate and activate
My metabolism
To rise each morning
when the sun breaks it’s dawn
and each future is new

I’m coming

And when I’m gone
The animals trample over me
The roots of the plants entangle
And sustain off me

I’m coming

When I turn back to see its cycles
Its haste
Its speed
Its consumption
Its harm
Its humanity

I’m coming...

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