Programme 2023

The fourth edition of the Cima Norma Art Festival will be held from 24 June to 3 September 2023 in the spaces of the Fondazione La Fabbrica del Cioccolato in Torre/Blenio. At the center of the festival, as in the past editions, there is an art exhibition, which can be visited from Thursday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. In addition to the exhibition, the festival programme includes concerts, readings and theater spectacles. All the events will be held at the former Cima Norma chocolate factory in Torre, except for the Billie Bird concert on Saturday 12 August and Piera Gianotti’s show Genealogie Caprine on Sunday 13 August, which will be booth held at Castello di Serravalle. This is the complete programme of the festival:

24 June-3 September
Giving Birth to the Sky
Vanessa Billy, Melanie Bonajo, Isabelle Krieg, Zilla Leutenegger, Valentina Pini,
Pipilotti Rist
Exhibition
Opening hours:
Thursday-Sunday
10.00-18.00
Monday-Wednesday
closed
In the occasion of the evening events opening hours are extended until 23.00

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Isabelle Krieg, Black Tit Cloud, 2018

The exhibition, presented in the spacious rooms of the Foundation La Fabbrica del Cioccolato within the former Cima Norma chocolate factory, is an invitation to reflect on the complex, articulated and often controversial implications that arise from a reflection on motherhood in contemporary reality, with particular attention to environmental issues and gender reflections. Through the works of some important representatives of the Swiss art scene such as Pipilotti Rist, Zilla Leutenegger, Isabelle Krieg, Vanessa Billy and Valentina Pini, and those of the Dutch artist Melanie Bonajo, the exhibition unfolds an investigation that, starting from the metaphors connected to motherhood, is proposed as an invitation to imagine alternative models of life and therefore also of social organisation, starting from the ancestral relationship that binds us to what is other than ourselves.

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Melanie Bonajo, Night Soil – Nocturnal Gardening, 2016
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Vanessa Billy, Utero, 2019

24 June
18.00
Official opening of the edition 
2023

Official opening of the fourth edition of the Festival and exhibition vernissage with speeches by Elio Schenini, artistic director of the Festival and Giovanni Casella Piazza, president of the Foundation La Fabbrica del Cioccolato.

24 June
18.30

Laura di Corcia with Zeno Gabaglio
Reading

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Photo: Stefano Spinellli

Accompanied by Zeno Gabaglio’s cello, Laura Di Corcia, one of the young female voices of Ticino poetry (winner of the 2017 Critics’ Prize at the Rimini Prize and Terra Nova Prize of the Schiller Foundation in 2022), presents a reading of her poems (including some until now unpublished) in which the themes of female identity and the relationship with the body emerge on the one hand, and on the other the need to rethink the relationship we have with the world and with the other species that populate it. After the poetic collection Epica dello spreco (Epic of waste), with which she made her debut in 2015, Laura Di Corcia published In tutte le direzioni (In all directions) (LietoColle, 2018 – finalist for the Maconi and Fogazzaro Prizes) and Diorama (Tlon, 2021).

24 June
21.00

Kety Fusco
Concert

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Photo: Sebastiano Piattini

Born in Pisa, but since several years living between Grisons and Ticino, where she gratuated at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana, Kety Fusco has transformed a classically feminine and angelic-sounding instrument such as the harp into an instrument of incessant experimentation, combining it with pedalboards and electronic effects. After her debut album Dazed in 2018, she released a new record this year entitled The Harp. Over the years, her work has met with increasing recognition, leading her to perform at prestigious events and venues, such as the Locarno Festival, the Arena of Verona, the Paléo Festival in Nyon, La Notte della Taranta, the Montreux Jazz Festival and the Royal Albert Hall in London

24 June
22.30

Béatrice Graf
Concert

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Using a traditionally male instrument such as the drums, which she often reinvents from everyday objects, Geneva artist Béatrice Graf has been making a name for herself on the Swiss scene since the 1990s. As a musician and a composer, she works with an experimental attitude in a variety of genres, like jazz, rock, world music, contemporary and electro. Winner of numerous awards, including the Swiss Music Prize in 2019 and the City of Nyon’s Artistic Merit Award in 2022, Béatrice Graf’s solo work includes songs whose lyrics often deal with issues related to female identity and the ecological crisis. Four Roses, Country Cooking and, in recent years above all, the duo Ester Poly with Martina Berther are just some of the names of the groups in which she is involved as a drummer and composer.

7 July
20.00
Sara Rossi Guidicelli
with Delta Caroli Geiler
Reading

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Photo: Stefano Spinelli

Voi che avete visto il mare. La mia famiglia, il Sessantotto e altri ideali is the latest book by Sara Rossi Guidicelli, an author who lives in Ponto Valentino in Blenio Valley. The book, written at the same time as her mother’s illness, aims to rediscover the experiences that characterised her family’s life at a time, the second half of the 1960s, when the way of living gender identity, motherhood and the relationship between parents and children changed profoundly. Starting with the reading of some passages from her book, Sara Rossi dialogues with Delta Caroli Geiler, who, in addition to having lived through the experience of Sixty-Eight in the first person, has been involved in natural childbirth for years, being, among other things, one of the founders of the Nascere bene association.

8 July
21.00
Emilie Zoé
Concert

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Foto: Jeremie Luke

Hello future me is the latest album by Emilie Zoé, who with her powerful lo-fi rock is one of the most interesting voices on the French-speaking Swiss scene, already the winner of a Swiss Music Award in 2019 and a Swiss Music Prize in 2020. The album is the result of 18 months of work, divided between a flat and a rehearsal room in search of a personal sound capable of creating dizzying landscapes in which to lose oneself. The songs that compose the album are a kind of message of hope that the artist sends to a future self. Self-produced and released by Hummus Records, the album expresses Emilie Zoé’s inner wanderings, delicately crafted with her favourite instruments: a guitar that just turned 60, a sturdy hand-made guitar amp, a dusty organ from a flea market and a broken piano.

12 August
21.00

Billie Bird
Concert
Castello di Serravalle

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In recent months, Lausanne-based Billie Bird has released her first album entitled Incendies. Both folk and experimental, this album, rich in guitars and with lyrics inspired by her own personal experience, marks a turning point in the career of the singer and musician from Lausanne who has already performed at prestigious venues in Switzerland and abroad, including the Paléo Festival, the Montreux Jazz Academy, the MarocFolies, the Cully Jazz Festival and La Cigale in Paris. Among the songs on the album is La fin du monde, a tribute to her mother who gave her her first guitar. A loving, caring and at the same time absent mother, who sadly passed away in 2020. This touching disc born of grief and mourning, but with all the strength of rebirth and inner metamorphosis, is dedicated to her. The album has been co-produced by Monte Mai guitarist Fabio Pinto.

13 August
20.30

Genealogie caprine
By and with Piera Gianotti Rosenberg
Production: Plim creazioni

Castello di Serravalle

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Photo: Jacopo Martinoni

At the same time storytelling spectacle and gesture theatre, Genealogie caprine (Goat Genealogies) tells of the family and personal ties that exist, are created and unravelled within a herd of goats. The observation of the flock suggests reflections on human behaviour, generates empathy, fuels curiosity, nourishes the narrative thread. They are, those of the flock, stories of mothers and daughters, sisters, cousins, friends and enemies, female stories, because the flock is matriarchal. Tales of births, lives, vicissitudes, illnesses and deaths are transformed into an interweaving narrative of life. Piera Gianotti, a graduate of the Dimitri School, has been active for years on the theatre scene as performer and author. She is also co-director of the Castelmur Theatre Festival in Bregaglia.

1 September
20.00
Lola Arias

Archivo Madre (part 1)
“Un útero muy bello” (Laura Jiménez)
“Dos madres” (Anna Mariscal
)
A series of lecture performances curated and directed by Lola Arias
Text and concept : Laura Jiménez, Anna Mariscal, Jasmine Bakalarz, Laura Santos and Nicol Rivera Aro
Dramaturgy and production : Laura Cecilia Nicolás (Lola Arias Company)
Production : Marcela Villanueva, Belén Marinato (Karne Kunst) 
Technical coordination : Miranda Barrón Quinteros
Tour management : Mara Martínez (Lola Arias Company)

The lecture-performance will be held in spanish with italian subtitles

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Argentinean, but since several years now transplanted in Berlin, Lola Arias is one of the most significant international figures of the documentary theatre. Active as a writer and theatre director, but also as a film director, she has received numerous prestigious awards for her work, which brings together people from different backgrounds in theatre, film, literature, music and visual art projects with the aim of investigating uncomfortable and often forgotten realities. Archivo Madre is a lecture-performance in which migrant women artists from different Latin American countries interrogate their archives on the theme of motherhood. Over a period of six months, women from Argentina, Mexico, Chile and Colombia created an intense performance as part of a collective work process that reflects the theme of motherhood in our time much more authentically than any staging.
The performance is divided into two parts, the first will be presented on Friday 1 September, the second on Saturday 2 September.

2 September
20.00
Lola Arias

Archivo Madre
(part 2)
Cronología de un gen (Jasmine Bakalarz)
Madre animal (Laura Santos)
El complejo de Medea
(Nicol Rivera Aro)
A series of lecture performances curated and directed by Lola Arias
Text and concept : Laura Jiménez, Anna Mariscal, Jasmine Bakalarz, Laura Santos and Nicol Rivera Aro
Dramaturgy and production : Laura Cecilia Nicolás (Lola Arias Company)
Production : Marcela Villanueva, Belén Marinato (Karne Kunst) 
Technical coordination : Miranda Barrón Quinteros
Tour management : Mara Martínez (Lola Arias Company)

The lecture-performance will be held in spanish with italian subtitles

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Argentinean, but since several years now transplanted in Berlin, Lola Arias is one of the most significant international figures of the documentary theatre. Active as a writer and theatre director, but also as a film director, she has received numerous prestigious awards for her work, which brings together people from different backgrounds in theatre, film, literature, music and visual art projects with the aim of investigating uncomfortable and often forgotten realities. Archivo Madre is a lecture-performance in which migrant women artists from different Latin American countries interrogate their archives on the theme of motherhood. Over a period of six months, women from Argentina, Mexico, Chile and Colombia created an intense performance as part of a collective work process that reflects the theme of motherhood in our time much more authentically than any staging.
The performance is divided into two parts, the first will be presented on Friday 1 September, the second on Saturday 2 September.