Civitonia: The Imaginary Festival That Never Happened, Now a Book

Civitonia, a performing arts festival conceived for Civita di Bagnoregio by Giovanni Attili and Silvia Calderoni, never actually took place. Instead, its entire concept, program, and artistic interventions are documented in a two-volume book published by NERO Editions. The festival was designed as a collective experiment to question mass tourism and the commodification of fragile territories. From January to June 2021, twenty-one artists—including Chiara Bersani, Alice Rohrwacher, and Alessandro Sciarroni—temporarily lived in Civita, creating gestures, performances, and installations intended for an October 2022 festival that was deliberately canceled to avoid being co-opted by the tourist system. The book's first volume simulates a festival catalog with programs, documentation, and promotional materials; the second volume, locked with a code obtainable only via email, contains reflections by philosophers and intellectuals on the conceptual operation. Civita di Bagnoregio, a hamlet of Bagnoregio in Lazio, Italy, known as 'the dying city' due to erosion and depopulation, now attracts one million tourists annually despite having only twelve permanent residents. The project raises urgent questions about sustainability and UNESCO candidacy.