LUMEN

Lumen is a will-o’-the-wisp, both ephemeral and magical, that appears and disappears as it issues a nocturnal invitation to a communal ball and party. Its duration is marked by the burning of a large pyre, and its life sparks off the thrill of joining in a dance whose rhythm is the flickering of the flame, and whose temperature is its heat. Lumen inaugurates the opening of both an animist feast and the Festival. The Sferisterio is transformed into a place of ritual where fire draws out unpredictable geometric shapes and marks the length of a musical experience that approaches a state of possession and recalls memories of initiation. Here the natural force of the fire is a time signal and a formal and visual element created by artist Giorgio Andreotta Calò and by set designer Nicola Fagnani. Lumen brings together pieces from an archive of recordings, from trances in Haitian voodoo rites to Sioux war songs to the lonely voice of a Colombian shaman, cataloguing them and blurring the boundaries that are supposed to differentiate them from each other. He recognizes their shared bloodline and combines them with present-day musical divination, down to the contemporary dance floor experience.