A FUTURA MEMORIA

A futura memoria is a community-based project that intertwines dance, memory and human connection, transforming the body into a living archive of experiences, roots and shared imaginaries. Developed within Zerogrammi’s long-standing artistic and relational research, the project is part of an ongoing exploration of the relationship between contemporary creation, communities and places, placing the body at the centre as a site of knowledge, transition and transformation.

For many years, the company has investigated themes related to individual and collective memory, belonging, identity, and the traces that time leaves upon people and places. Within this perspective, memory is not understood as a static repository of facts and recollections, but as a living, shifting material that is continuously rewritten through experience. Every body holds an invisible geography made of encounters, absences, desires, inheritances and transformations. A futura memoria emerges from the desire to give form to this geography and transform it into a shared experience.

The poetic landscape that informs the project moves between nostalgia and longing, loss and belonging, dream and reality. The exile evoked by the title is not merely geographical, but also internal: a universal condition linked to our relationship with time, origins, what has been, and what has yet to find fulfilment. It is within this suspended space between memory and future that the project identifies a generative possibility, where the fragility of remembrance can be transformed into gesture, presence and relationship.

A futura memoria unfolds through participatory processes developed in dialogue with the contexts that host it. Each activation begins with a preliminary phase of listening and co-design involving institutions, associations, cultural organisations, informal groups and local communities, with the aim of defining objectives, participants, working methods and forms of public sharing that respond to the specific characteristics of each place.

At the heart of the project are experiential workshops in which dance and movement become tools for listening, connection and storytelling. Through accessible movement practices, observation exercises, memory gathering, improvisation and collective composition, participants are invited to uncover and share fragments of their personal histories. Gradually, these traces are transformed into a shared vocabulary of images, gestures, narratives and performative actions.

The process is not aimed at the simple creation of a final performance, but rather at building a temporary space of encounter in which people can recognise themselves as carriers of memory and imagination. Artistic practice thus becomes an opportunity for proximity and dialogue, capable of generating new connections between individuals, generations and communities.

The project maintains a strong continuity with Zerogrammi’s artistic creations, sharing their themes, questions and poetic trajectories. The communities involved are not invited merely to observe an artwork from the outside, but to enter into a relationship with it, engaging with its materials and contributing to the creation of new meanings. Each process therefore becomes an autonomous form of cultural activation which, while remaining connected to the company’s artistic productions, generates unique and unrepeatable experiences.

Depending on the context, A futura memoria can take different forms: intergenerational workshops, community-based participatory projects, urban explorations, site-sensitive practices, memory-gathering processes, performative sharings, relational installations, or audience-engagement pathways connected to artistic works. Its open structure allows the project to adapt to a wide variety of social, cultural and territorial contexts while preserving the poetic core that animates it.

Over the years, the project has generated numerous experiences in Italy and abroad, including Interconnessioni in Sardinia, Walzen in Turin and Collegno, the international project Be Part OF in Iceland, and Danzando memorie sul mare in Pesaro. Each stage has contributed to enriching a continuously evolving practice, reaffirming the capacity of art to create spaces of connection where individual memories can be transformed into shared heritage and into new possibilities for imagining the future.