Tomorrow at the Pincio promenade in Rome there is the White Night of Villa Medici, contemporary art and performances

Two years later, the “White Night” of the French Academy in Rome, curated by Saverio Verini, is back. Scheduled for Thursday 4 November, from 7 pm to midnight, the initiative – free admission – is the first meeting point between the city of Rome and the scholars in residence at Villa Medici until summer 2022. The event, in fact, sees the participation of the sixteen pensionnaires (fellows) currently guests at the Academy: visual artists, art historians, composers, writers, architects, designers, videomakers are the protagonists of this moment dedicated to contemporary creation. Their interventions, scattered in different points of the Villa, will constitute an essay of their individual and multidisciplinary research.The proposals of the pensionnaires will take shape through visual works of art, performances, video projections, installations, sound interventions, conferences, creating a dynamic path that it will touch the garden and the main building of the Villa, but also environments usually not accessible to the public. From this point of view, the White Night represents a unique opportunity to visit the Villa, in a condition full of suggestions. (continues) The interventions of the ‘pensionnaires’ will illuminate the rooms of the Villa: ample space therefore for video projections, as well as live performances, which will emphasize the ephemeral and momentary nature of the initiative. The Notte Bianca is also notable for its laboratory dimension: not a real exhibition nor a traditional “open studio”, but an evening in which the fellows will have the opportunity to present themselves in Rome and its public, explore and become familiar with the spaces of the Villa, showing attitudes and approaches. “The title of this edition ‘Presto, la notte’ – explain the organizers of the event – refers to the context in which the initiative takes place, between dusk and the first hours of the night. And it can also be interpreted as an incentive for the night to manifest itself quickly, with the load of suggestions and inspirations that it brings with it. The nocturnal condition is suspended between darkness and illumination, loneliness and sharing, stillness and agitation “. The Villa Medici event is an invitation to regain possession of those extreme hours of the day, after a period in which “our relationship with them has been questioned due to confinement and curfew due to the pandemic”.