Welcome on the Trasformatorio web site!

We are about to launch, with a number zero, this event about performance art, sustainable design and location specific theater; a project in south europe, in the island of Sicily.

The event is scheduled from 1 to 14th of April, in the small town of Montalbano Elicona, on the mountains of Nebrodi.

The structure for the event is mixed and came out mostly from collaborations with other talented artists, as a group of pairs, and spans over many years of thinking, trying and wondering. The idea as “art as transformator” comes from far.

In 2000, I (Federico) was walking and brainstorming with Maurizio Martinucci around Amsterdam Westergasterrein (then a abandoned wasteland just at the border of the town). Suddenly we bumped into a synchronicity and stopped frozen in front of a door with “transformatorgebouw” written upon. Transformatorio was the name we were looking for to “depict” the concept we were expressing. In May, two years later, I remember a night in Zandam, with Tijn Kortekaas, and a very experimental internet streaming live with Japan and Kentaru Fukuki. The idea of Trasformators, as elements of algorithmic representation of processes to be included in a situation to represent and at the same time enhance it’s energetic flow was in full swing.

Time passes, good ideas flow and get to blossom in unexpected environments. As in every crisis period while the knowledge take different shapes and organises differently, we are passing through the most interesting of the phenomena. No one knows anymore really who he is and what is it’s profession! What a moment to propose something new, without the boundary of disciplines, that takes shape only to serve it’s purpose, and that, as a rainbow, shall bridge earth, keeping our factual feet on the ground, but passing through the sky of utopia.

As it is a number zero we will busy experimenting, charting, drawing and planning, and there is no pressure to perform, even if there are plenty of performative possibilities and ideas will be explored actively.

Side by side with the research period we will do a workshop, open to students and researchers alike, to share techniques and to learn together how to plan and produce a full fledged theatrical performance off the grid, in the nature, with full respect of the environment and harvesting our own energies.
And this task is the most appropriate, I believe, to explore the spirit of the new humanistic art, an art that goes back to be an art of transformations.

The findings and dreams we will share in Montalbano will be documented and shared. We will get there as in an empty space, and leave traces with what we can conjure to happen there. Al documentation will be in open license and if the case as a DIY instruction set. The group is open to intervention and participation, as a open interest group.

After this number zero we shall re-think about it

Get involved if you resound, get in touch if you like.

Federico Bonelli