Matera 2019

Ancient future

'We are a divine race and possess creative power', wrote the great mathematician Richard Dedekind in a letter in 1888. The atmosphere of excitement and euphoria combined with spiritual and intellectual audacity that only ingenious mathematical thought can create is the same process that will fire the imagination in Matera and Metaponto from June to November 2019.

In July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin achieved one of the most remarkable feats in the history of mankind: landing the Apollo Lunar Module on the surface of the moon. The whole world was glued to the television, clutching newspapers when the Apollo module touched down on the land that poets had only envisaged in their wildest dreams.

Quantum mechanics and art: a Nobel Award-winning pair! In this project, led by the CERN of Geneva and the Centre for Space Geodesy, sub-atomic particles and electronic music will perform a waltz in an original production.

Onda is multidisciplinary: sound, seismic and electromagnetic waves.  Onda is multiform: harmonic, rotational and gravitational waves.
Pythagoras had already noticed the transversal fascination of the waves when he maintained that from the observation of a single vibration of the monochord one could discover the microscopic aspects of sound propagation and at the same time study the laws that govern the entire universe.

If distance could be measured in cultural differences, then Japan would be much closer than we imagine. Botticelli’s Venus, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, lasagne, sushi, Japanese pagodas, Sassi di Matera (Matera’s Ancient Cave Dwellings), are just some of the wonders created by these two populations.

Lumen | Social Light is a light shining over Matera, to illuminate the past and future of Southern Italy. But there is more to it. The project consists of two parts, two different ways of producing a single great floodlight. Lumen rediscovers the ancient tradition of illuminations, made for the occasion by the Basilicata community and by some of the most important companies in this sector in Southern Italy. 

History is not simply a series of dates, but a repository of facts, decisions, individual and collective memories: the sequence of moments and events that lead us up to the present and which we often question.

Basilicata? A heritage of land, history and stories, which can be interesting and fun… just like a game! The idea behind 'Heritage in Play' is to raise awareness and appreciation of Basilicata’s artistic and cultural heritage among children, in the name of creativity.

Imagine a symphony orchestra composed of hundreds of elements:  kestrels, white tuff, the eddies of Gravina, the slopes of Murgia, expanses of wild mallow.  This is the story of Matera through the acoustic musical score of its places.