CONTATTI
History has gone mad, and the speed at which this madness travels is unpredictable. The cruelty of monarchs and tyrants, and their mental instability, is creating a veritable atlas of hatred.
The theatre, along with a few other survivors, has become the place where sources are gathered, where reality is laid bare – even though this should be the very place of its antithesis.
Before us lies a map of conflicts, social tensions and extreme emotions running through society. The performing arts explore the territories of contemporary hatred. Thus performances become tools of emotional cartography, showing where and how hatred manifests itself.
It is no longer just a matter of telling stories or prophesying, but of gathering evidence to preserve the memory.
It is all before our eyes, but the data is in the hands of the lords of algorithms, of Truth and Twitter, of AI and its luxury Riviera adverts that conceal the rubble.
It is not a matter of waiting for the storm; we are in the storm.
Our atlas therefore aims to be both physical and emotional geography, and the artists’ bodies, memory, truth, data on the current geography of hatred. Anatomy of hostility.
Geography of anger. Topography of conflict. Language breaks down and the body takes over. Narrative is not enough; we need to use a different grammar.
This atlas is not neutral. It does not claim objectivity. It is a situated, partial, embodied collection.
The spectator is no longer merely a spectator, but a witness.
In the atlas of hatred, walls are being erected; through these practices, we seek to make them visible, to map their surfaces. Not to tear them down with a rhetorical gesture, but to understand how they are constructed, what fuels them, and what part of us sustains them.
Paola Tripoli
FIT Festival Artistic Director
Every cultural institution is called upon to reflect on its own time. But there are moments when this task becomes even more urgent: when history accelerates, when reality seems to fade away before it can be understood, when the present risks leaving no trace other than that produced by the platforms that govern it.
This is also why the collaboration between the LAC and the FIT Festival has taken on a deeper meaning over the years. It is not merely a matter of sharing artists, projects or spaces, but of building together a space for critical observation, where the performing arts can continue to generate knowledge, memory and imagination.
I am particularly interested in the journey unfolding in this edition of the FIT because it does not treat the archive as a retrospective gesture, but as a tool for interpreting the present. For us, the archive is not a repository of what has been, but a living space, capable of connecting past and present, legacy and transformation. It is a practice of responsibility towards what we choose to preserve and, at the same time, towards what we decide to question.
This edition builds a body of testimonies that examine conflict, violence, resistance and care not merely as narrative but as an artistic act that leaves a trace, a document. For preserving memory does not mean shielding it from the passage of time but making it accessible to the future.
Carmelo Rifici
LAC Artistic Director for Performing Arts
