Free Admission!

Talk and aperitif starting at 7:00 PM

To mark the debut of the event Le ultime fabbriche rimaste in lontananza intonano gospel ripetitivi... (camera ardente per Internet) [The last remaining factories in the distance sing repetitive gospel songs... (lying-in-state for the Internet)] by Riccardo Benassi—premiering on Friday, September 18 at Fondazione Merz as a prototype for the FESTA project curated by Xing in collaboration with GAM Torino—
Xing and Combo Torino invite you on Wednesday, September 16 at 7:00 PM at Combo Torino (Corso Regina Margherita 128) to a conversation featuring Riccardo Benassi (artist and theorist of the European media scene), Vincenzo Estremo (media and moving-image theorist), Chiara Bertola (Director of GAM – Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Turin), Giulia Turconi (curator at Fondazione Merz), and Silvia Fanti and Daniele Gasparinetti (artistic directors of Xing Bologna).

*Le ultime fabbriche rimaste in lontananza intonano gospel ripetitivi…* attempts to trace the life cycle of the Internet: from its arrival in the 1990s as an upgrade to the home telephone line to its supposed end—which began quietly on the precipice of the pandemic. It suggests that returning to the moment when the Internet inhabited our neighborhoods is necessary to bring into focus how it now inhabits our bodies. Staging a "lying-in-state" for the Internet is conceived as a celebration—understood as the cultivation of the necessary conditions for there to be something worth celebrating.

FESTA 2026-27 comprises eight commissions entrusted to various artists, each tasked with devising and realizing a specific type of "festive" event.
FESTA 2026-27 does not offer mere leisure activities, but rather performance-based works designed for functionally neutral spaces—works that accompany a state of suspension: held in parentheses, outside the operational and functional cycles of the everyday. A (temporary) shift in regime. A series of interconnected situations, unfolding across an imagined calendar.

What, then, can a *festa*—a celebration or gathering—be today? The artists invited to address this theme are: Simon Vincenzi, Riccardo Benassi, Claudia Castellucci, Michele Rizzo, Mårten Spångberg, Ashes Withyman, and Cristina Kristal Rizzo.
The FESTA program is part of the ongoing research into Live Arts that Xing has pursued for over two decades, showcasing the breadth of contemporary practices and languages ​​that manifest through extended temporality (duration) and space defined by presence.

For full details, click here