From Wednesday 5 to Sunday 9 November, Il Festival della Peste returns, the annual event organised by Fondazione Il Lazzaretto, which for this eighth edition once again involves artists, experts, curators, researchers and the public in an original and dynamic format that is always open to change.
The Festival della Peste represents the public opening of Il Lazzaretto, presenting the synthesis of a year of participatory work through performances, exhibitions, conversations, workshops and psycho-physical practices, which spread from the Foundation’s headquarters throughout the neighbourhood with the aim of infecting the entire city of Milan.
The programme for this edition is the result of a participatory process led by the Lazzaretto’s creative team together with the people invited to participate in the Club dei Pestiferi: a space and, at the same time, a group of committed, dynamic and passionate people who, during a year of work, promote individual and collective growth through processes of participation and cross-fertilisation and actively participate in change.
At the heart of the festival are workshops, performances and installations, layering experiences and questions in the space with: Andrea Q, Camilla Barbarito, Alessia Bernardini / La Nut, Mario Blaconà, Nicoletta Cinotti, Circe, Gaia De Megni, Michelangelo Frammartino, Fritto Misto, Valentina Furian, Agnese Galiotto, Maura Gangitano | Tlon, Sara Leghissa, Rebecca Moccia, Abe Pazos Solatie, Francesca Proia, Francesca Rossi, Studio Fludd and ultimabaret | Titta C. Raccagni and Barbara Stimoli who will investigate the Power/Pleasure dichotomy through their practice.
After addressing themes such as Monstrous/Ordinary (2024), Reason/Emotion (2022/2023) and Order/Disorder (2021) in previous editions, this year’s theme is Power/Pleasure. The Festival’s goal has always been to walk the line, pushing boundaries with irony in an attempt to combine logic and imagination, commitment and leisure, scientific approach and creative courage, and to promote reflection on the processes of individual and collective transformation.
How is power expressed? And pleasure? When do these two forces become synergistic?
‘During this year of research,’ says Director Linda Ronzoni, “we investigated the concept of power as the ability to guide and transform behavioural, social, relational and emotional paradigms. Perhaps it is no coincidence that this year, the theme chosen for the 2025 Festival della Peste is the combination of Power/Pleasure. As a Foundation, we have chosen to share and distribute it by involving a group of people with multidisciplinary experiences, the Club dei Pestiferi Onorari, and choosing the theme of the year together. Pleasure thus becomes an invitation to multiply the processes of listening which, through the voice and a sensitive relationship with the body, opens up reflections on how we might resist and overturn more authoritarian and hierarchical power structures.
It is in this context that we find the mantras of Francesca Proia, the recitation of Gaia de Megni, the words of Maura Gancitano and the singing of Camilla Barbarito. Vibrations that become a healing act, an attempt to give pleasure the ability to arrange, to configure landscapes, to orient sensations and living together in another form: anarchic, broad, shared. Working on the voice means rethinking our body not as an object but as an instrument of pleasure. Breaking free from control and fragmentation, so dear to the devices of power, to reacquaint ourselves with feeling, with feeling connected, as in the installation by Abe Pazos Solatie, in which the audience can explore the expressive qualities of the human voice and its unique sound characteristics.
This has also led to work on the organic sensation of Studio Fludd, on the bodies of Andrea Q., on self-defence with Sara Leghissa, on being together with Fritto Misto and on mutual disposition with CIRCE. But this pleasure that acquires power also brings with it a dimension of separation, distinction and filtering. Hence the work on positioning and privileges by Rebecca Moccia; the gaze on animals with Valentina Furian, Michelangelo Frammartino, and Mario Blaconà; the relationship with the migratory flow of birds with Agnese Galiotto and Francesca Rossi; and the relationship with the inanimate, with rock, explored by ultimabaret, the artistic duo Titta C. Raccagni and Barbara Stimoli together with Alessia Bernardini | La Nut. Finally, we delve into our anxieties, our boundaries, and what we keep separate for fear of losing pleasure, with Nicoletta Cinotti.
Thus, between power and pleasure, between voices and bodies, between boundaries and vibrations, a landscape is drawn in which order is no longer imposition, but resonance. A place where strength becomes care, pleasure becomes a political gesture, and the encounter with the other opens up as an infinite possibility. Here, power ceases to dominate and allows itself to be traversed, pleasure becomes an instrument of collective transformation, and the body becomes a space of possibility.
(from the press release)
Festival della Peste, Potere/Piacere – Power /Pleasure
Fondazione Il Lazzaretto, Milan, 05 – 09.11.2025
Please visit here the webpage for an updated calendar of the events
The Fondazione Il Lazzaretto is a non-profit institution based in Milan. Since 2014, it has been involved in the creation of participatory cultural projects dedicated to experimentation in the visual arts, literature, performance arts, psycho-physical practices, photography, publishing and their respective cross-pollinations. Il Lazzaretto is a place where one can play with certainties and boundaries, practise doubt, provoke questions and possible meanings. Located in the heart of the Milanese neighbourhood of the same name, Lazzaretto is historically a place of contagion and isolation from society. Today, its mission is to overturn the vision of the past, triggering processes of collaboration through a method that the Foundation’s working group defines as “Generative Hybridisation”, encouraging encounters between people with different approaches, logic, skills and professionalism, in order to stimulate a process that can lead to the development of interdisciplinary projects. Among the main annual projects are the Festival della Peste, Virus and the Lydia Prize. It currently collaborates with the PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Milan for the Lydia Prize.
images: (cover 1) Ultimabaret, cross workshop, photo: Paolo Sacchi (2) Festival della Peste 2025 (3) Agnese Galiotto, “Migratori”, 2025, still from film (4) Gaia De Megni, “Sunday Best”, 2025 (5) Studio Fludd, “Skin Unknown”, 2025 (6) Camilla Barbarito Studio (macabre) for feathered woman, sinister sounds and some accomplices.
