MILAN NYE 2021 | PENSIERI ILLUMINATI

A site specific performance, multimedial and multidisciplinar, conceived only for streaming due to Pandemic, diffused in Piazza del Duomo main architectural and cultural topics: Duomo di Milano – Milan Cathedral, Museo del Novecento, Sala delle Cariatidi.

2020 was a special year, in which we were surprised by a unique and tragic event. The year of social distancing, quarantine, loss of loved ones and work, the disruption of social environment. In this sense, a deep reflection on the meaning of NYE was all the more necessary this year.

A NYE of toasts, dances, parties and fireworks would not only have been inadequate and outlawed but also disrespectful. We were therefore called to contribute to reinventing a sociality, a way of being together, starting from the deep sense of being one community in listening, contemplate, thinking. The project is not the title of an event, but a celebration that spontaneously demands perennial condolences for the victims, induces feelings of deep gratitude for the health personnel and, leveraging social action, hopes for the future PENSIERI ILLUMINATI of cultural change, rebirth and hope.

From the city that symbolized the beginning of the pandemic in the Western world, from the deserted Piazza del Duomo as one of the main icon of Italian lockdown, to the same square dressed in light, sounds and words, to spread a countdown of enlightened desires and thoughts to the country and the whole world.

A project that feeds on the active participation of Milan citizens, from early December to the New Year, reaching and creating a connection with tens of thousands of participants, many more than those who could have participated live in a “normal” NYE scenario. A call invited civil society and representative people of citizens to send PENSIERI ILLUMINATI on the digital platform

A newsroom filtered the contents that subsequently made up the dramaturgy of the performance, becoming a collective narrative shared through the digital platform and artistically reworked in generative graphics projected on the facade of the Duomo.

The project lives within the cultural sphere of Digital Humanities with the idea of hybridizing humanistic languages, art and technology. A multidisciplinary performance and a dialogue between the architecture of the place with the majestic façade of the Duomo, projected visual and generative arts, execution of compositions from a contemporary key and narratives interpreted live by actors.