Xing's Holes: GPS-Guided Night Performance in Bologna

Xing's curatorial project Holes, initiated in 2021 by Silvia Fanti and Daniele Gasparinetti and realized since 2022, offers a radical alternative to post-pandemic festival rhetoric. The project activates non-institutional sites as temporary public spaces, leaving no trace after each event. The latest iteration took place on June 24, 2022, at GPS coordinates 44°29'57.8"N 11°16'58.2"E in the Barca district of Bologna, near the Reno River. Attendees gathered at 10 PM, guided by a laser light along a dirt path to a clearing under a large tree. Performers Latifa Laâbissi, Marcelo Evelin, and Tomas Monteiro presented "La Nuit tombe quand elle veut" (Night Falls When It Wants), described as a vigil. Laâbissi and Evelin, clad in polymer lamellar armor that obscured their faces and refracted violet and electric blue light, engaged in an anarchic flow of vocal spores and cadenced movements with ritualistic undertones. Monteiro sculpted sound with a theremin. The performance aimed to activate an Atlantic movement of the imaginary, hybridizing elements from culturally and temporally non-aligned universes. The armor, by occluding facial perception, emphasized the destabilization of identity. The work evoked ghostly friends, including a fleeting reference to Pier Paolo Pasolini, before dissipating upon return to civility.