Roaming Assembly#33 ~ The Script That Passes Through Here ~ a field of unresolved presence. Convened by Elisa Giuliano ~ Hosted by Palestra & Cinema Piccolo in Matera.

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Roaming Assembly#33 ~ The Script That Passes Through Here ~ a field of unresolved presence. Image credits: Painting by Vincenzo Ciardo, 1950. Photographed by Pierangelo Laterza, 2019. Entrance of a Sasso in Quartiere Albanese in Matera. Photographed by Elisa Giuliano, 2019.

Without a permanent home, students, tutors and crew of the Dutch Art Institute congregate seven times per year at different places throughout Europe (and beyond) to study together, weaving an archipelago of distinct localities and initiatives, each with their own rhythms and objectives. Curator, educator, artist and DAl alum Elisa Giuliano is Archipelago Weaver 2026: guiding an extended journey to Southern Italy.

We warmly welcome you to join DAl in Matera for the public part of its programme on the 8th of March 2026, convened by Elisa Giuliano in conversation with Gabriëlle Schleijpen and hosted by Palestra and Cinema Piccolo: 

Roaming Assembly #33:

The Script That Passes Through Here ~ a field of
unresolved presence

As Italy and Europe grapple with migration, extractivism, and the afterlives of colonialism, the South persists as a critical frontier—shaped by global forces yet sustained by local practices of survival, resistance, and collective organization that generate new aesthetic and political vocabularies across the Mediterranean, beyond dominant narratives. Roaming Assembly #33 approaches Matera as a terrain where historical strata surface into the present, treating the city not as a cinematic backdrop or symbolic margin but as a site through which wider geopolitical dynamics—particularly those tied to Italy's colonial entanglements in Africa—can be read, contested, and re-scripted.

Roaming Assembly#33 brings together cinematic, artistic, and research-based
practices that unsettle representational regimes and confront historical erasures.

Within these frames, Matera emerges as a site for collective inquiry, infrastructural imagination, and new critical alliances.

We couldn't be more excited to introduce offerings by:

Tewa Barnosa, Viola Castellano, Carmine Conelli, Associazione COVA Contro, Jihan El-Tahri, Alessandra Ferrini, Anselm Franke, Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi, Giulia Crispiani, Mark Mushiva, Muna Mussie, Yvan Sagnet and last but not least Killer Bob.

PROGRAM 8 March, 2026

10:00 Door open at Palestra - please join us in time because at 10.25 we enter the Cinema and the doors will close at 10:30. 
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10:30 Gabriëlle Schleijpen Word of Welcome
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10:45 Elisa Giuliano Introduction
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11:15 In Diana's Lookin Glass, filmmakers Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi trace the genealogy of imperial fantasy through Mussolini's 1927 order to drain Lake Nemi and recover the ships of Emperor Caligula.
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11:45 Anselm Franke examines Western modernity as a self-mythologizing cosmology whose "white mythopoeia" culminates in fascism, revealing how origin myths obscure colonial foundations while universalizing the European experience.
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12:15 Antropologist Viola Castellano addresses the externalization of European border control in Libya and its effects on migrants and Libyan populations, situating these processes within the longue durée of Italian colonialism and its contemporary reconfigurations.
*
12:45 Alessandra Ferrini's essay film Gaddafi in Rome: Anatomy of a Friendship examines the Berlusconi-Gaddafi alliance and the afterlives of the 2008 Treaty of Friendship between Italy and Libya.
*
13:30 Lunch 
*
14:30 In Cinema Impero, Muna Mussie reflects on the fascist-era cinema in Asmara through a layered narrative drawn from archival and personal materials.
*
15:00 Giulia Crispiani will cast a spell: part l.
*
15:15 Carmine Conelli discusses his research in Il rovescio della nazione ( the flip side of the nation) examining Italian national identity through coloniality, race, and the margins, alongside his work as founder of Tamu Edizioni.
*
15:45 Activist and author Yvan Sagnet presents his struggle against agricultural exploitation through the founding of No Cap and his experience during the filming of The New Gospel, directed by Milo Rau in 2020 in Matera.
*
16:30 Break
*
17:00 Giulia Crispiani will cast a spell: part ll.
*
17:15 Associazione COVA Contro, founded in 2013, counters eco-mafia activity, corruption, and environmental harm through citizen science, advocacy, and grassroots engagement.
*
17:45 Through spoken word and critical unpacking, Mark Mushiva will articulate African Accelerationism as both aesthetic strategy and political proposition, foregrounding the strategic reclamation of ethnographic instruments to unsettle inherited epistemologies and project insurgent African futurities.
*
18:05 Jihan El-Tahri presents The Heist of the Century: The Story of Gaddafi’s Gold, tracing the disappearance of 143 tons of Libyan gold as a geopolitical story of power, resources, and secrecy spanning three continents.
*
18:35 In Insurgence of Ghibli Winds – تمرد رياح القبلي, Tewa Barnosa traces a counter-history of aerial warfare from Italy’s first bombing of Libya in 1911 to later forms of gamified militarism, reclaiming the Ghibli winds as an insurgent force resisting colonial violence, surveillance, and imperial control of the desert.
*
19:05 Conclusion
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19:30 Dinner 
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21:00 DJ set by Killer Bob
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Additionally, on March 7th, the Matera book launch of Like Swarming Maggots by Alessandra Ferrini will take place at TAM Bookshop, opening a series of book events as part of the collaboration between the Tower Art Museum in Matera, Kiosk Rotterdam and Archive books in the context of DAI's landings in Matera in March and July 2026. 

Note that not only Roaming Assembly#33 on March the 8th is open to the public, also the Kitchen ACTS on the 6th and 7th of March are welcoming anybody who is interested to join us for a day, or for just some hours in Matera. Contact: elisa.giuliano@dutchartinstitute.eu

Learn how Roaming Assembly#33 is part of the extensive study program of DAI Roaming Academy during Confluence#4 in Matera: March 4 - March 16

In July, the DAl will return to Matera for COOP Summit 2026, where students and tutorial teams will gather to mark the culmination of the 2025-2026 research trajectory developed between DAl and its international COOP partners:

Archive Ensemble, de Appel Amsterdam, Hosting Lands , If I Can't Dance I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, Neringa Forest Architecture, SAVVY Contemporary.

Meanwhile, to those wishing to join DAI as a student 2026-2028 we say:

APPLICATIONS OPEN!!!!!

 

Roaming Assembly (logo)

What is a Roaming Assembly? Visit earlier editions, including video-documentation.

PRACTICALITIES

Roaming Assembly#33 will be generously hosted by Palestra and Cinema Piccolo, located on different floors in the same building:

Address: Via XX Settembre, 14, 75100 Matera MT, Italy

FREE ENTRY ~ NO RESERVATION NEEDED ~ BE WELCOME !

HOWEVER: JOINING DAI LUNCH and/or DAI DINNER IS ONLY POSSIBLE UPON RESERVATION !

For any external visitors registration for the dinner is mandatory: our vegan/ vegetarian chefs must know the number of people they are catering for. Please register no later than March 5, 2026 upcoming with Jacq van der Spek <j.vanderspek@artez.nl> and bring cash to pay to her on the spot for your lunch and/or dinner ticket. If you are registering for both lunch (10 euro) and the dinner (12 euro) you will only pay 16 euro in total (including a glass of wine during dinner)!

AFTER DINNER THE BAR WILL BE OPEN !

@ 2 euro per drink in cash only.  

INITIATIVE AND REALISATION 

Framework: Elisa Giuliano (Archipelago Weaver 2026) in conversation with Gabriëlle Schleijpen (DAI's artistic director 2002-2026).

Local Research, Guidance and Support: Marco Laterza

Cultural Partners in Matera: Mauro Acito (Tower Art Museum, TAM), Mikaela Bandini (Palestra & Area 8), Andrea Santantonio & Nadia Casamassima (Centro Arti Integrate, IAC),while Kiosk Rotterdam is temporarily merging with TAM's bookshop in Matera, as part of Confluence#4.

Guest writer: Ioli Kavakou

Video-documentation: Paolo and Giuseppe Fedele

Photography: Nikos Doulos

Technical & spatial infrastructure: Peter Sattler

Hospitality:  Jacq van der Spek and Kastė Šeškevičiūte

Roaming Chef de Cuisine: Sophia Zbinovsky Braddel with sous chefs Rowan Beasly and Holly Taylor

BACK OFFICE

Travel: Hemminkways

Bookkeeping: Corine van der Wal 

Communication design: Lauren Alexander & Hanna Rullmann

Editorial support: Giulia Crispiani

 

Roaming Assembly (logo)

Read in Italian here.