2018 NUOVE CATEGORIE
How to get to Matera
By air, train, bus, sea or car. Travelling to the European Capital of Culture 2019 has never been so easy!
By air
The nearest airport to Matera is Bari Palese, which is 55 kilometres away and serves the Italian cities Milan, Rome, Verona, Turin, Venice, Trapani, Bergamo and Bologna, as well as international destinations: London (Stansted and Gatwick), Paris, Barcelona, Brussels, Cologne, Bucharest,
Tirana, Stuttgart and Munich.
Bari Palese Airport operates flights by Alitalia, British Airways, Lufthansa, MyAir, Ryanair, Hapag Lloyd, AirOne and Club Air.
Alternative airports are Brindisi (140 km) and Naples (250 km).
A shuttle service runs between Matera and Bari Airport. Timetables are available online and booking is recommended.
By train
Trenitalia Official Carrier di Matera 2019
Frecciarossa and Intercity:
2 Frecciarossa Milan-Taranto stop in Ferrandina - Scalo Matera
4 Rome-Taranto Intercity with stop in Ferrandina - Scalo Matera
Freccialink:
2 connections with Bari C.le
4 connections with Salerno
26 Regional Trains per day for Ferrandina Scalo - Matera:
2 connections from / to Naples
4 connections from / to Salerno
10 connections from / to Potenza
10 connections from / to Taranto
Connections from Ferrandina Scalo to Matera
FAL from Bari
By car
From the Mediterranean coast:
Take the Salerno-Reggio Calabria Autostrada followings signs for Potenza and Metaponto on the SS 407 Basentana road, then turn off for Matera after the Ferrandina Scalo FS exit.
From the Adriatic coast:
Take the Bologna-Taranto Autostrada to the Bari Nord exit. Continue to the industrial zone and exit at Modugno for Altamura-Matera, following the SS 96 then the SS 99 roads.
From the south of Italy (Calabria and Sicily):
Take the Reggio Calabria-Salerno Autostrada to the Sibari exit, then the SS 106 Jonica road for Taranto. The Matera exit is near Metaponto.
By sea
Ferries to/from Bari
Bar (Montenegro), Corfu (Greece), Dubrovnik (Croatia), Durazzo (Albania), Igoumenitsa (Greece),
Patras (Greece), Sami (Kefalonia, Ionian Islands, Greece), Zante (Zakynthos, Ionian Islands,
Greece).
By bus
Buses from Milan, Rome, Naples and Bari
Marinobus
FAL
Flixbus
Marozzi
Local buses
The Matera 2019 Passport also provides you with free urban public transport in Matera.
For Matera bus services, routes and timetables are available online from the Miccolis company.
Capital For One Day
'Capital For One Day' Municipalities can be reached on the shuttle service which leaves from Matera.
For information and reservations, please contact:
Ridola Viaggi, Via Domenico Ridola 54 (MT) - +39 0835 314233 - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - www.ridolaviaggi.it
Why Matera
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Matera's aim of being at the forefront of a movement stripping away the barriers to culture, especially through new technologies and learning, is visionary. |
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The panel was impressed with the vibrancy and innovation of the artistic approach. There are several projects which have the potential to attract a wider and varied European audience, including the major Southern Renaissance exhibition. |
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The panel appreciated the engagement with the existing mainstream cultural institutions and organisations especially how they had already started to change their practices. This approach may have wider application for European cultural institutions. |
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The panel appreciated the strong focus on digital technology which by 2019 will be far more prevalent in the cultural and social sectors than it is now. The programme ranges from an online TV channel to the digitisation of heritage archives to coding clubs for young people. This is a forward looking and innovative approach for an ECOC. |
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The policy towards inclusion is progressive with an emphasis on bringing those frequently excluded from culture into projects rather than creating parallel project lines. The panel appreciated the strong intention of foregrounding participation and co-design. |
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The bidbook acknowledged this weakness, indeed the need for capacity building in the cultural sector and public administration is one of the main goals. |
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The panel explored the intention to increase tourism from an annual 200,000 to 600,000, and its possible impact on the fragile eco-system of the region. The panel was re-assured that research has indicated this is a sustainable number. |
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The panel was impressed on how what was initially a grass-roots initiative has developed into a formal central element of the city and regional planning. |
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The concrete commitment of 70% of the funding, regardless of the outcome of the competition, is a clear demonstration of the centrality of the ECOC programme to the city and region’s development. It is one of the clearest examples, in recent years, of a candidate’s programme being part of a strategic plan rather than simply a bid for a competition. |
Documents
THE CANDIDACY OF MATERA FOR THE TITLE OF THE EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 2019
Matera 2019 first Bid Book Matera 2019 final Bid Book
DESIGNATION OF MATERA AS THE EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 2019
MiBact Decree for the Final Approval of Matera as the European Capital of Culture 2019 (IT) Final report for the selection of Matera as the European Capital of Culture 2019
MONITORING PANEL OF MATERA AS THE EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 2019
Progress Reports by the Foundation
Final Formal Monitoring Meeting. Progress report of Matera 2019 (EN)
Report sent for the formal monitoring meeting held in Brussels at the European Commission on 18th April 2018 First Formal Monitoring Meeting. Progress report of Matera 2019 (EN)
Report sent for the formal monitoring meeting held in Brussels at the European Commission on 12th October 2016 Informal Meeting. Progress Report of Matera 2019 (EN)
Report sent for the informal post-designation meeting with the Monitoring Panel held in Brussels at the European Commission on 16 Settembre 2015
Recommendations by the Monitoring Panel
Recommendations by the Monitoring Panel - First Formal Meeting (IT)
Recommendations by the Monitoring Panel following the first formal meeting held in Brussels at the European Commission on 12th October 2016 Recommendations by the Monitoring Panel - First Formal Meeting (EN)
Recommendations by the Monitoring Panel following the first formal meeting held in Brussels at the European Commission on 12th October 2016 Recommendations by the Monitoring Panel - Informal Post-Designation Meeting (IT)
Recommendations by the Monitoring Panel following the informal post-designation meeting held in Brussels at the European Commission on 15th September 2015 Recommendations by the Monitoring Panel - Informal Post-Designation Meeting (EN)
Recommendations by the Monitoring Panel following the informal post-designation meeting held in Brussels at the European Commission on 15th September 2015 Report by the Monitoring and Advisory Panel - Second Monitoring Meeting (EN)
Recommendations by the Monitoring Panel following the second monitoring meeting held in Brussels at the European Commission on 18th April 2018
LEGACY PATHWAYS
Legacy pathways (EN)
Matera’s experience as a model for the future European capitals of culture. A document which gives some numbers of the cultural project and the first steps towards creating a legacy.
Logo
Consult the use of logo regulations to understand the Matera 2019 logo licensing procedure.
To use the logo for commercial purposes it is necessary to consult the merchandising regulations. Please complete a license application if interested.
In the event that use of the logo is granted, please follow instructions in the user manual for correct use.
Become a volunteer
The city of Matera as European Capital of Culture 2019, as with many other collective events relies on volunteers who wish to take part and be involved. For instance, this happened in London for the 2012 Olympics, as well as Guimaraes, Marseille-Provence, and many more. Our call for volunteers (more than 30 in September 2012) is evidence that many Materani, especially young members of the community, are willing to get involved in this project.
Are you ready? Join us today!
Form
I-DEA
Archive of Archives: A voyage through the collections of Basilicata
“The archive has always been a pledge, and like every pledge a token of the future.” Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever.
I-DEA is a project of Matera European Capital of Culture 2019 that explores the archives and collections of Basilicata from an artistic perspective. I-DEA is an experiment in how archives and collections can be understood as living entities through which the stratified complexity of a region’s history and culture can be interpreted.
Five artists and designers with research-based practices have been invited to guest curate five consecutive and overlapping exhibitions using the archive as a starting point. Drawing on seemingly disparate documents and materials, the artists were invited to delve into the archives and formulate their own readings in the form of temporary exhibitions.
The I-DEA research team began building up the foundations of the project based on an early study by the University of Basilicata mapping archives and collections in the region. Over the course of several months, the team visited dozens of these: from large public archives to small private collections and everything in-between. The aim throughout has been to maintain an inquisitive approach towards the shifting question of what constitutes an archive or collection over time and across space.
The project will adopt and follow a process of accumulation. After the inaugural exhibition, each artist will be invited to add, re-arrange and subtract from the material already installed in the space by the previous curator. In this way, I-DEA will become a collective performance in constant flux. Visitors will watch as new artists come in and re-arrange the space, each introducing their own research and yet allowing for the unexpected and the dynamic to come about during the final steps.
The idea of accumulation is related to the interchangeability of the archives. I-DEA has therefore adopted an open and modular exhibition design system, designed by the Open Design School, in order to introduce a fluid, non-didactic spirit to the curation of archival and collection materials.
The I-DEA project space will evolve throughout 2019 in the form of exhibitions, performances, workshops, publications, and a growing online platform.
Open Design School
An international workshop serving the community and creative scene
Imagine a middle ground between Silicon Valley and the Bauhaus. All of this is at Casino Padula, in the Le Piane district, a suburb of Matera, symbol of a firm agreement between the residents and the town planners who found themselves redesigning the city in the post-war period. In the wake of this tradition, Open Design School was born from an idea by Joseph Grima.
It is a hive of ideas where teachers and students of the world can meet and design the essential concepts for the Matera 2019 preparations.
School because it is an opportunity to learn points of view, trades and cultures. Learning takes place between peers. A committee comprising, from time to time, a team of professionals with the most diverse stories behind them: the important thing is that each work group is one third foreign nationals, one third Italians and one third Matera citizens.
Design because this is the workshop watchword. The teams invent, prototype and build creative and technological solutions to be made available to the event planners who will take charge of the exhibitions for Matera: European Capital of Culture.
Open because every phase of the work actively involves residents and encourages them to participate.
Every second Saturday the School hosts a workshop open to the public, whilst Friday evenings alternate between debate and an opportunity for the team to discuss the work in progress with the community and ask for feedback. For August 2019 there will be an international Summer Camp based on themes of design and self-builds.
The Poetry of Primes
'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.
Apollo Soundtrack
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 Danza
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
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.
EU Japan Fest
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
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.
19 Schools x 19 Archives
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.
Heritage in Game
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.
Suoni del Futuro Remoto (The Sounds of the Ancient Future)
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.
Open Sound | Where Music is a Common Good
Built thanks to the contribution of the local community, the project explores the roots of music as a collective production phenomenon. Open Sound Festival presents two sections, both animated by research and performance activities: URLA and O.S.A.
IN VITRØ ~ Artificial Sønificatiøn
To find a new pitch, it is necessary to start again from silence. This is the aim of IN ViTRØ, a sound art project that seeks to investigate the relationship between sound and silence by listening to the voice of Matera: amongst the streets and squares, and even slipping into alleys and caves. Exhibitions, installations, performances, residences, workshops and studios will be harmonised under the direction of prestigious national and international partners and young artists.
Voices of the Spirit | Sounds from Parallel Universes to Caves
What do Matera’s stars sound like? Three excellent composers, Georg Friedrich Haas and Nicola Campogrande and Damiano D'Ambrosio, will be answering this question when they compose three works for the very first time, inspired and created in a process of experimental co-creation, during a series of artistic residencies held in Matera between 2018 and 2019.
Silent City
What if the concept of opera were rebuilt on the foundations of silence? Arriving in Matera, the feeling of contrast is strong. It is a city of juxtapositions: The Plains and the Sassi (Matera’s Ancient Cave Dwellings), shame and pride, stone and cement, noise and silence. The Sassi district, in particular, holds onto the memory of changes.
Heritage Games
Neighbourhood, community, socio-cultural models are a (role-playing) game. Matera 2019 will host a L.A.R.P. (live action role playing) even and different urban games in an artistic and creative context dedicated to the importance of involvement and enhancement of social capital.
The Sounds of Stone – MaterArmoniae
Matera is the only place where entire neighbourhoods are created out of cave dwellings. And from now on, it will also be the home to timeless music. Embark on a journey to rediscover folk music from Lucania (the old name for Basilicata) and bring it into 2019.
Airport City: Tuning Gravity's Strings
Sometimes it takes more than just a quick glance to connect the sky to the ground. In nature there exists an elegant, almost magical, example which shows us that it is possible to live in the space between the ground and the objects extending from it, be that a tree, plant, flower or any other natural structure: a spider’s web.
Essenza Lucano
It might seem like the beginning of a fairytal e set in a faraway land, but it really is going to happen, in Pisticci, in 2019. Essenza will be a place, a house, where visitors can immerse themselves in an interactive experience inspired by the world of Amaro Lucano, Essential Partner of Matera: European Capital of Culture 2019.
Visions from Europe
Matera European Photography / Visions from Europe, an international project promoted by Matera European Photography and Matera Diffusa with Canon Europe and the Matera-Basilicata 2019 Foundation, combining personal knowledge and iconographic diffusion with an original and contemporary vision of Matera and Basilicata through the eyes of young European students of photography and their professors.
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow In Craco
Landscape for Culture, art and research in Europe. A workshop to re-modulate the scenery, a new language to make it immortal. The town of Craco invites artists, engineers and designers to talk about the colors, the sounds and the shapes of Basilicata’s landscape. The idea is to organise a competition in order to select five professionals who will map the territory in a three-day immersion. After studying, the five candidates will be asked to turn the vision into a virtual representation of art and architecture.
Pythagoras Rewind
Seeking Pythagoras. A journey all the way through Basilicata. Pisticci, the ancient Heraclea, Metaponto: these are some of the towns crossed by the brilliant mathematician from Sarno, after he was sent away from Crotone. A travelling event called 'Pythagoras Rewind', will pay tribute to the great philosopher.
Aqua
What do music and water have in common?
We can discover this with the 'Aqua' project. In the beginning sound waves, then sea waves will immerse the public into a journey of colours, images and sensations. During the afternoon, when the sun shines over the water’s surface, we will follow the river’s flow discovering the landscape of Savoia, and its flow through the Forest of Luceto, up to the six Tuorno falls. The excursion will be full of surprises and enchantment (for example, a part of the itinerary can be done by travelling on an oxcart). On the way to the falls, visitors can admire the landscape and the fantastic water sound installations with musical instruments which will start playing at every passage, delighting the visitors with their waves.
Once Buried And Now Future City
Cersosimo is a small village and at the same time an ancient city.
How is that possible? By looking across the Castello hill, then rapidly down, through the ground’s layers, as far as the human eye can go. This is Cersosimo’s secret: an ancient city buried under the soil, where only a small amount of the monumental relics, found by the archeologists, have surfaced. Therefore, Cersosimo shields an extraordinary archaeological treasure that can only be imagined and is yet to be completely discovered and revealed.
Rocco Scotellaro Lucania Festival
Creating a community of purposes, passions and civil commitments in Tricarico. In memory of Rocco Scotellaro, former mayor of Tricarico and illustrious citizen. The Rocco Scotellaro Lucania Festival edition 2019 intends to establish a Community Play, more international and open to the future community, but still attached to its tradition, a community for all the people.
The Night Of Franco
The night of Franco will be staged in Francavilla in Sinni, a show inspired by the story of the Risorgimento brigand, Antonio Franco.
A stable and, at the same time, simultaneous travelling show with a number of animated pictures with an independent drama, involving the 'Don Pino Terracina' association for the disabled in a great journey that will bring visitors to a great parade up to the stage, with music, street artists and video installations.
Ri-corda (Remember) / Community Binds
Maratea grandmothers used to multitask: they knew how to bind thin blades of grass in order to make resistant ropes, while chatting, telling stories and sharing knowledge.
Until the late 70s, women from Maratea used to entwine ropes while chatting and exchanging ideas. A temporary community of residents and visitors will replicate this tradition in every working phase.
The Capital Of Stars
'And thence we came forth to see again the stars'. Anzi, a small town near Potenza, is famous for one of Italy’s most important Astronomic Planetary Observatories, and for its dark sky which is a rarity today: two spectacular characteristics with which to enjoy the eternal beauty of the universe.
The confine of water. Words, Visions, Scenery on the blocked Agri
Contrarily to the title of last year’s Oscar-winning film, water does not have a shape.
Being a liquid, water changes and adapts according to what holds or surrounds it, and it is this fluid nature that allows it to flow along natural routes, to penetrate the smallest cracks or to be manipulated by man. Whenever water changes, the landscape transforms with it, putting on new clothes.
A Capital Under The Moonlight
From the Apollo 11 steps to the smoky colour of the ground: the greatest step for mankind is now 50 years old!
It was exactly 12th July 1969 when three American astronauts made one of the most important days of the history of mankind. And now, during the event 'Matera 2019 Capital for a Day', 50 years later, the town of Sasso di Castalda wants to celebrate one of the greatest protagonists of the moon adventure: Rocco Petrone. He was the director of the Apollo 11 launch, raised in Little Italy, New York by his mother Teresa and his father Antonio, who both came from Sasso di Castalda.
Shadow Festival – Marpi’s journey
Imagine Pirro del Balzo castle, the lordly villas in Piazza Orazio, Piazza Municipio with its majestic cathedral, L’Incompiuta, the Hebrew site of the catacombs and the Paleolithic site becoming, for a period, enormous canvases, boundless screens crossed by magnificent, dreamy forms dedicated to passers-by. In the meantime, the orchestra plays music, a musical tale that blends narrating voices with mute tracks. It is a wonderful historical fresco, participated in, where each piece - inanimate stones that guard time as much as the flesh-and-bone citizens - plays its part.
Lucaniattiva
Nature Culture Science And Technology Between Future And Past. This year in Basilicata every town can become the protagonist of culture thanks to the 'Matera 2019 Capital for a Day' initiative. The aim of the project is to create a network that encourages a dialogue between the participating towns, a digital platform where ideas and projects can be shared.
On The Road To Juan Caramuel Y Lobkowitz
There is somebody in Sant’Angelo Le Fratte, which can unite faith and science. The project will follow in his footsteps and try to create a link between the Past and the Present along the town’s streets. His name is Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz, a bishop and mathematician who travelled across Europe, leaving a lasting impression in Basilicata. An emblematic figure of the 17th century, he is still considered the symbol of the city. This can be clearly seen thanks to the murals that decorate the town to tell his story.
Digital Community Archive
Before smartphones allowed us to constantly share our life in real time, photography required time and care, a rare event, sometimes unique, which brought families together to wear their best clothes to pose in front of the photographer. Therefore, dressing up was a strong symbolic action, an expression of the desire to show ourselves in the best possible way.
Landscape, Identity And Paths
One of mankind’s most distinguished characteristics is the instinct to tell stories. We feed on bread and stories, and we mould our destiny through them.
Stories will be the protagonists of the 'Landscape, identity and paths' event, organized by the Avigliano municipality. The first part will involve schools, associations and the entire community who will share their idea of identity and how to regenerate it. They will be involved in a storytelling workshop, to create that link between the present and the future.
A perfect universe
It is said that behind every great man there is always a great woman.
We do not know if this is always true, but it certainly is for Pythagoras: his wife Theano was the first mathematician in history. The legend says that upon the death of her husband, the woman directed the school he had founded and, in the mountain area that is today part of Pollino National Park, she established the summer headquarters of the Pythagorean School of Metaponto.
Block Lab
Sharing information on public and private networks, making purchases and investments safely and without intermediaries, protecting data confidentiality, preventing forgery.
Will blockchain, the new technology initially tied to bitcoins and transactions using digital currency, applicable to many sectors and destined to change the concept of network, access to information and computer safety, become widespread in the near future?
A Typical Middle Age Day In Moliterno
Those who say that it is impossible to travel in time have never been to Moliterno Castle.
Think about what could happen if you combined the Middle Ages and new technologies to see the original rooms of a castle thanks to a 3D reconstruction, to scan a QR code and to be catapulted amongst fire-eaters and jugglers. You can find out when the Moliterno Castle comes back to life, allowing the visitors to enter a magical ancient atmosphere.
Future Digs
In The Power by Naomi Alderman, future archaeologists are bewildered by trays engraved with an apple that we all recognise as tablets. In fact, often excavations serve both to rediscover the past and to discover the future.
Matera 3019
500 years ago Thomas More wrote Utopia. It’s time now to imagine a new world.
Here the idea of a project able to listen to the words and suggestions of youngsters, coming from Italy and Europe, working on the growing divide between the virtual world of digital and the corporeal one of reality.
Architecture of Shame
Seventy years have passed since De Gasperi, visiting Matera, called the place that is now a UNESCO heritage site a national disgrace, and ordered the eviction of its residents.
The Atlas of the City’s Emotions: I. La Secretissima Camera de lo Core
'You take delight' Italo Calvino said, 'not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours'. A city thrives on memories and emotions intertwined in its streets by the inhabitants, and sometimes an answer can arrive even without any question being formulated.
Poetry of Shame
According to an interpretation of contemporary psychology, there are four different kinds of shame that we have all experienced in life; among these, the sense of embarrassment that follows exclusion from a group stands out, the inability to process the concept of not being liked.
The original production 'The poetics of shame', from the theatrical collective #Reteteatro41, brings to the stage themes of marginalisation, courage and passion with a performance that deals with the urgency for collaboration between Europe and Matera.
Rivelation Revelation Rid (Riv.Rev.)
Water covers 71% of our planet’s surface; the same percentage in which it is present in a child's body. And just like a child, the Earth needs to be cared for and defended against danger, protected so that it can grow healthy for future generations.
The Beautiful Shame
In his work Christ stopped at Eboli, Carlo Levi was one of the first to denounce the shameful hygiene and sanitation conditions of the Sassi Districts of Matera. He describes children who die of malaria 'in those black holes' but also tells the infinite beauty of those 'black holes' that later became a World Heritage Site.
Tòpoi. Theatre and New Myths
For human beings, the instinct to tell their story is as primal as survival; the oldest written history document dates back to 4500 years ago and we can suppose that even long before then, stories were told around the fire. Myths and legends handed down to satisfy the human need to share collective knowledge.
Petroleum, Man and Nature in the Anthropocene
With oil in the background as an obscure engine - for 150 years, for better or for worse - of the world's events, the project is inspired by the unfinished work of the same name by Pier Paolo Pasolini, which, published posthumously 17 years after his violent death, probes the radical and underground transformations of social, urban and natural landscapes.
The most beautiful shame
They say that to pick oneself up takes courage, we believe that it takes shame. Shame that stimulates the consciousness, that mobilises pride and triggers a reaction. Shame as a formidable push that breaks down immobility and creates movement, questioning, awareness and, therefore, rebirth. A positive, redeeming, wonderfully tragic and cathartic shame: the most beautiful shame.
Materadio
Each story must have a voice, and that of Matera 2019 comes clearly and strongly from the speakers of a radio.
The competition with Spotify and YouTube doesn’t matter much: maybe because of its slightly vintage touch, certainly for its ability to create guided routes between music and words and to look further into some matters, radio has been elected as the voice for the European Capital of Culture in 2019.
The Matera Lectures on Radio 3
Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility and Multiplicity. These are the values of Italo Calvino’s 'American Lectures' followed by Radio 3 in the Matera Lectures, with the original format in the hope of inspiring the audience to tune into a monthly broadcast throughout 2019 and warm the heart of the city.
Resilient Cities
In 2012, an area of Modena’s province was hit by a terrible earthquake that caused very serious damage to the city’s architectural and artistic heritage, as well as its industrial areas. With exceptional resilience, many areas were rebuilt in a very short time. After a few months, a delegation from Matera met many regional emigrants in Emilia and a dialogue began, resulting in a shared cultural programme and a memorandum of understanding between the two cities.
Terrae Motus
As part of Matera 2019 there will be a large photography exhibition inspired by the tenth anniversary of the earthquake that devastated the city of L’Aquila on 6 April 2009. The display aims to create a space to reflect on the difficulties of dealing with the earthquake’s after-effects throughout the whole country.
Music, The Universal Language, Unites People
How many languages are spoken across the world? According to a recent study, seven thousand languages exist, even if most of them are at risk of extinction. However, there is a more profound and universal language, which crosses all geographic and cultural borders: music.
In order to communicate to a constantly multifaceted community, the town of Pomarico on its day as a Capital organises a musical event by mixing traditions and different cultures in an inclusive concert representing a period of a specific community.
The Bandit’s treasure
The life and activities of the bandit Angelantonio Masini, nicknamed Ciuccolo (Marsicovetere, 1837 – Padula, 20 December 1864), who “worked” in Basilicata, in Terra di Bari and Vallo di Diano will be the object of a theatre performance on the day of the event for “Matera 2019-Capital for a day”.
Back To Montegrano. Edward C. Banfield’s Chiaromonte
During the mid-fifties the American researcher Edward C. Banfield began his studies on Chiaromonte. A few years later he published a very successful book in the United States causing a number of debates in Italy, stemming from the book’s title 'The moral basis of a backward society'. Even though the name Chiaromonte was replaced with Montegrano, every reference was quite clear, including in the description of the locations and the people’s word.
Here and Together
'Here and together' will enliven Accettura by showing that values such as identity and migration can perfectly coexist.
The journey will start from the archaeological site of Tempa Cortaglia, where archaeology teachers and students will map out and analyse the area.
The Train To Oblivion
Balvano, 3rd March 1944. The population was in disarray, exhausted by war, and by a country divided in two. Hundreds of people, coming from Campania, leave at night, as illegals, jumping on a freight train to Basilicata, seeking food and peace of mind. On the train number 8017, which stops in Balvano, 600 people died, in the worst Italian railway tragedy.
Agricultura Next
Sharing the urban spaces of Castelsaraceno and creating a wide community of 'cultural' citizens. This is the core of the Agricultura Next project, when residents, associations, schools, foreign students, immigrants and digital nomads in a three-day event will become the ambassadors and narrators of the Festival in the World experience.
A Treasure Chest Of Rituals And Knowledge
For many years people considered Colobraro as a place that brought bad luck. The people nearby used to call it 'that town' and pointed at the village without pronouncing its name. Soon after the war Colobraro shared with Matera the same reputation of a poor and unfortunate place, destined to disintegrate into oblivion because nothing positive could have come from there.
Confusions
The band plays in Ferrandina!
The borough reunites with the lasting tradition of street music and studies the staging of a travelling show through the town’s streets, recalling the past and celebrating the region’s future. The band is the symbol of a playful community where everybody can find their own place and can create a collective composition. A solemn provocation, an invitation to sing, a laic procession drawing the visitors’ attentions. Besides the music, there will be artists and performers who will color the town centre’s alleyways, involving people in atmosphere that harks back to the old days.
The Festival Of The Gaze
The premises were not the best: mountains, inadequate infrastructures, a social and ethnic allegiance accentuating the differences and disregarding similarities. Guardia Perticara has been for a long time a difficult enclave to reach from a physical and a cultural point of view. However, it is in these difficult situations that the best paybacks take place. Rediscovering the ancient and important values – hospitality, generosity and tolerance – investing the funds from the 1980 earthquake in the best way, Guardia Perticara has reinvented itself, creating a solid community in one of the most beautiful places in Italy. In fact, after the renovation of the old cobble-stone village, this town claims not only the Touring Club Orange Flag, but also the reputation of one of Italy’s most beautiful villages.
Satriano Street Festival
Graffiti is art. Artists such as Keith Haring, Bansky and Blu are some examples of how street art has turned from illegality into proper art, from the dark alleyways with spray paint to the greatest recognitions, to museum exhibitions. Satriano di Lucania knows it very well. This town can be considered the capital of murals in Southern Italy, with more than 200 works of street art. Everything started in 1983, when the Romanian artist Costantin Udroiu visited the town, a political dissident who found a safe place where he could be free to express himself in the streets of Satriano, turning art into an enchanting form of thankfulness.
Blind Sensorium | Il paradosso dell'Antropocene
From James Watt's first patented steam engine to the treaties to combat global warming, the last three hundred years of climate history have seen a single major player: the human race.
The Renaissance As Seen from the South
Whoever said that the Renaissance only happened in the centre and north of Italy? Let’s take a fresh look, starting from the South – from the shores of the Mediterranean, the age-old crossroads of culture and civilisation, people and the arts.
Inhabiting the Opera
'The horse paws the ground, | the bells ring out, | crack the whip': Cavalleria Rusticana is arriving at the Sassi di Matera! This is courtesy of 'Abitare l’Opera', a project that aims to bring the arias of great operas from the past to different and unusual venues, in collaboration with the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, which is one of the greatest opera houses in Italy and worldwide.
PURGATORIO Public Call for "Divina Commedia" by Dante Alighieri
'Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself in Matera'. No, Dante’s words have not been changed; this is an initiative by Marco Martinelli and Ermanna Montanari. In fact, it’s a challenge to turn Dante’s masterpiece into a play and to use the whole city of Matera as a stage.
People Places Purposes
Is it possible to become a local ‘Materano’ for one day? Of course! ‘People, Places and Purposes’ allows tourists to transform into ‘temporary citizens’, to become an integral part of daily life in Basilicata and explore a fresh, authentic and unedited Matera, not easily available to the traditional transient tourist.
Formula Cinema
Cinema is a free space – cinema is participation. As Giorgio Gaber might say, this is the objective of Formula Cinema.
Silent Academy
This project gives a voice to those who have lost theirs in a terrible journey and in the difficult circumstances of a new life, by galvanising their outlook, commitment and all the little things that make life worth living.
MaTerre, Euro-Mediterranean Poetry Film Workshop
Cinema and poetry seen as a lingua franca to bring together peoples, civilisations and cultures: this is the objective of Rete Cinema Basilicata, to seek connections and points of contact between the different European countries in the Mediterranean through cinema and the universal language of poetry.
Storylines | the Lucanian Ways
People coming, people going. People also deciding to stay in Basilicata, where others are leaving in large numbers and a land left by itself. 'Storylines | The Lucanian Ways' is dedicated to these people. The project, presented by the Youth Europe Service, consists of the docufilm 'I’m going where I come from', written by Luigi Vitelli with the scientific consultant by Vito Teti and directed by Nicola Ragone, and a video exhibition.
Ka art. For a Collective Map-making of Basilicata
Going back to your origins is not a process that can be done standing still; rather, it is a series of different yet complementary actions, and a process that needs to be completed. The idea of Ka Art is to transform the Pollino area into a large natural map.
Sinfonia per l’Europa
In the tuff stone quarries north of Matera, the Chiesa del Sole appears to visitors as if it were an elderly lady asleep among the blocks of tuff. This place, set in the rock of a medieval monastery, will be the setting on Wednesday 24 July 2019 at 21.30 for a concert by the RAI National Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Conlon, an American who originates from Lucania and who has been the principal conductor of the Orchestra since 2016.
Subcategories
Matera 2019 Article Count: 25
Mettiti in gioco Article Count: 2
Programme Article Count: 164
Open Design School Article Count: 1
Ancient future Article Count: 36
The cultural projects contained in the “Ancient Future” section allow for a careful reflection on the millennia-long relationship of humanity with space and the stars. By retracing the steps of Pythagoras, one of the region’s most illustrious residents , it explores the ancient universal beauty of mathematics. At the same time, the infinite possibilities of dialogue between man and nature will be analysed, through concerts and visits to spiritual places - such as rock-hewn churches - or places of cosmological interest - such as the Space Geodesy Centre- . Very old practices and new life models will be put on trial, hypothesizing new development models for the coming decades.
Continuity and disruptions Article Count: 24
As in many other European cities, Matera’s relationship with modernity is conflicting. Twenty-five years after the inclusion of the “Sassi”, once a “national shame”, in the UNESCO World Heritage list, the city is still trying to come to terms with its physical identity. The section of the program called “Continuity and Disruptions” represents an opportunity to develop a collective therapy and the possibility to face not only the shame of the city itself but also its multiple forms at the European level. These range from increasing social inequalities, to the resurgence of racism, the inability of many European countries to offer a future and hope to their youth and the drama of the exodus of desperate people fleeing the ongoing wars in Africa and Asia. Matera 2019 will be an opportunity to witness the beauty of the city, not only in theatres and museums, but also in the spaces we live in everyday.
Reflections and connections Article Count: 45
The theme “Reflections and Connections” starts from the classic Latin motto, later adopted by Lorenzo de’ Medici, “Festina lente” (make haste slowly). We must rediscover the value of time and slowness, distance ourselves from the hegemony of the immediate present and take a step back from the accelerated pace that marks life in the 21 st Century. The cultural program also intends to prove that art, science and widespread practice of cultural citizenship can represent, throughout Europe, the catalysing elements of a new, revolutionary model of community rooted in the “practice of daily life”. The physical environment of Matera encourages us to rethink things “ab initio” and to consider crucial questions and fundamental values.
Matera Residencies 2019 Article Count: 8
Utopias and dystopias Article Count: 16
Starting from the irrepressible utopian tension in the history of Matera, the theme “Utopias and Dystopias” intends to test new innovative schemes that represent a challenge to preconceptions about the cities of the South including that tourism is the only way to achieve economic stability, technology is the only model of mediation possible for relationships, industrial monoculture is the only opportunity for development and that food and wine are the main identifiers of a territory. There is a need for a profound change of mentality, which goes beyond fatalistic attitudes, amoral familism, and the opacity of information and management of public affairs, which have often hindered the renewal of Southern Italy. Through a series of urban and rural games and sports, Matera will be transformed into a terrain on which we can imagine possible alternatives to the realities that we take for granted.
Roots and routes Article Count: 39
The “Roots and Routes” section precisely explores the extraordinary possibilities of the mobility culture that unites Europe. The instinct for movement is rooted in the daily life of Matera, ever since the tradition of “transhumance”, which every year sees the herds of cattle move across the Murgia plateau. Mobility is the lifeblood of the region: from Magna Graecia to Rome, or from the age of the Byzantines and Longobards, Arabs, Swabians or Angevins, Basilicata has always been a place of meeting and convergence. Recently, like many other rural regions of Europe, Matera has had to face devastating migratory diasporas, to then see the recent beginning of a return of a generation of young people, attracted by the values rooted in southern Italian culture.