INTRODUCTION

The project A futura memoria originates within the artistic and relational experience of the company Zerogrammi, as a coherent outcome of a poetic approach that for many years has intertwined choreographic creation with dialogue with communities. At the core of the work lie the themes of memory, roots, and the construction of shared meaning, developed through artistic practices capable of activating listening, proximity, and relationship.

Zerogrammi has always accompanied its creations with actions rooted in the territory, opening spaces for exchange and engagement, and recognizing the body as a living archive: a place where experiences, lived realities, and memories are deposited and can be reworked into narrative form. Within this perspective, dance is understood as a tool for research and a universal language, capable of connecting individuals and diverse contexts.

The project unfolds through participatory experiential pathways that weave together literary references, cultural contexts, and social environments, fostering reflections on identity, belonging, and social cohesion. Movement thus becomes a practice of personal and collective storytelling, through which stories, memories, and imaginaries emerge and are transformed into a shared vocabulary.

FORMS AND METHODS

The project A futura memoria can take on different forms and durations, depending on the number and profile of participants and on the characteristics of the host context. Each activation is conceived as an adaptable, site-specific process, developed in dialogue with the territories and communities involved.

The pathways are addressed both to professional performers interested in socially engaged artistic practices, and to people of all ages and backgrounds belonging to local communities, informal groups, and territorial associations. The diversity of participants represents a central resource for the project and actively shapes its development.

Activities are structured as participatory, practice-based workshops in which dance and movement become tools for relationship and narration, encouraging the emergence of individual memories, experiences, and imaginaries. The workshops are conceived in continuity with the creations of Zerogrammi, sharing their themes and poetic trajectories, and offering communities an active space for engaging with and reinterpreting the artistic work.

Depending on the specific context, the process may culminate in a public performative sharing, conceived as a moment of encounter and exchange and as an integral part of the overall process. The project is preceded by a phase of co-design with the host institutions, aimed at jointly defining objectives, timelines, and operational methods, and at ensuring a deep rooting in the context and the development of lasting relationships.

THEMES

The poetic landscape that runs through Zerogrammi’s artistic work lies in a liminal zone between dream and reality, nostalgia and loss, memory and distance. Memory is understood as a living matter that contributes to shaping identity, but also as a site of fracture, generating a sense of separation and inner exile.

The project explores this exile not as a geographical condition, but as an emotional state: a suspension between what has been and what is not yet, between absence and desire. From this tension arises not immobility, but a drive toward transformation—the search for a place, real or symbolic, capable of restoring a sense of belonging and opening up possibilities for change.

The images that compose the choreographic narrative are fragments of an inner journey, inhabited by figures carrying disorientation, melancholy, and a desire for redemption. The distance that separates them from the audience is an emotional distance, a space to be crossed together. The action takes the form of a parade of bodies in transit, akin to clowns from a theatre without a stage, capable of unfolding in a variety of settings: a field, a courtyard, a narrow street.

In this vision, nostalgia becomes a generative force, and loss loses its definitive character: nothing is ever truly lost, but continuously reworked through time, the body, and relationship.