The relevance of Volcanic Attitude consolidates year after year. Five days of heuristic travel along a route – from Naples to Stromboli and then Vulcano – that follows magmatic paths, creating a spatial contamination that intercepts transgenerational audiences and involves them in artistic generation processes. The experience is always transformative, some devoted participants assure me. Magnetica⭈Magmatica is the thematic title of this fourth edition in which the relationship between art and scientific projects is explored once again. The volcanic landscape, the subject of the festival’s investigation, allows for connecting the research of artists and experts from various scientific disciplines, while the actions manifest as visual arts, performance, sound art, and debates. This is the festival’s operational philosophy: a laboratory in progress and an active context for artists and participants.
Cratere di Vulcano, Isole Eolie, una delle sedi di Volcanic Attitude Festival. Foto di Eugenio Vanfiori per Juliet
The 2025 edition opened on June 24, with a visit to the Royal Mineralogical Museum of Naples, curated by Carmela Petti, the Museum’s director. Notable in the Aeolian Islands were the installation “Inviolability of Female Body, Gran Pavese” by Margherita Morgantin; the performance “Aktion mit Stiefel” by Roman Signer; the talk between naturalist Pietro Lo Cascio and artist Luca Trevisani; the dialogue between artist Federica Di Carlo and volcanologist Francesco Sortino. Three organizations cooperated in the creation of Volcanic: That’s Contemporary, a network of spaces for art and the co-creation of cultural projects, directed by Giulia Restifo; Centro Itard Lombardia and the Arthur Cravan Foundation, represented by Susanna Ravelli and Helga Franza. The dialogue with these three festival protagonists follows.
Margherita Morgantin, “Inviolability of Female Body, Gran Pavese”, installazione sulla Nave Laurana, 24 giugno 2025. Foto Emilio Messina, courtesy Volcanic Attitude Festival
Sara Fosco: In an increasingly globalized cultural landscape, what are the distinctive and unrepeatable elements of Volcanic??
Helga Franza: The vision of science and art in a context where nature sets the measure. Here the place determines and conditions the actions.
Susanna Ravelli: It’s clear that this is not a canonical festival, but a travel company. This is possible because the festival’s scale is small. The program is until the end a directional program, this puts us back in our place with respect to Nature’s scale and is one of the unrepeatable aspects of the festival, beyond the geographical context (volcanoes, water, islands). The action is not predatory, colonizing. The work done here year after year, beyond the international outlook which is one of our aspirations, carries forward something that has increasingly strong energy.
Margherita Morgantin, bozzetto per “Gran Pavese”, 2025, foto di Eugenio Vanfiori per Juliet
What is the most significant legacy you intend to leave in the Italian cultural landscape?
Giulia Restifo: : Participation in the Festival is also a path of knowledge. Since the first edition we have worked with INGV researchers; thus researchers and artists work with the unknown and do pre-codification even within different systems. The possibility of contact with the artist gives different methods of relating to the cosmos, knowledge, and research.
Helga Franza: It’s not your gaze but also your presence that makes the work. Everyone takes care of others and is part of everything that happens.
Roman Signer, “Action with Pan”, performance spiaggia Sabbie Nere di Vulcano, 26 giugno 2025. Foto Emilio Messina, courtesy Volcanic Attitude Festival
Could you tell us about a particularly positive or unexpected experience that reinforced your conviction in the festival’s formula?
Helga Franza: The moment when the work activates and resonates in others’ gaze. There you feel like a witness to a miracle being accomplished. I think of The 181 or Fabrizio Vattieri and this year Roman Signer.
Giulia Restifo: It’s really significant when projects touch people who don’t participate in the festival, increasing its resonance. For example, “Talking to the Universe” by Sophie Usunier. With this project, children in schools in Lipari and Vulcano were taught Morse code. This gave them ancestral knowledge that allows communication between the islands even during a blackout.
Susanna Ravelli: Seeing Filippo Romano’s work from last year again. With the storms, the frame only got a bit tanned but the work remained intact.
Luca Trevisani, “Fender Bender”, gesto, Valle dei Mostri, Vulcanello, 26 giugno 2025. Foto Emilio Messina, cortesia Volcanic Attitude Festival
You have reaffirmed your commitment to sustainability. Could you give us a concrete example of a low-impact choice that was implemented for the first time in the 2025 edition?
Susanna Ravelli: The zero impact of artistic actions: it is not the Festival’s intention to leave a dominating imprint.
What criteria do you use to select artists who you believe have a particular alignment with Volcanic Festival’s vision?
Helga Franza: It’s the festival itself that has attracted artists involved in work on volcanoes. Last year the Shaken Grounds collective, this year Roman Signer, who had unfinished business with Stromboli!
Francesco Cavaliere, “Subaqueous Glim”, performance, Valle dei Mostri, Vulcanello, 26 giugno 2025. Foto Emilio Messina, courtesy Volcanic Attitude Festival
The 2026 edition is already in progress…
Susanna Ravelli: Rachele Maestriello and Alessandro Manfrin are here in residency. Rachele is conducting research that develops on the volcano. Alessandro has an archaeological approach to contemporary marginality. It’s also based on the instances that come from artists that the festival’s construction is modeled and varies in content, direction, geometries. We’ll see.
Sara Fosco
Info:
AA.VV., Volcanic Attitude
between Naples and Aeolian Islands
24-28/06/2025
www.volcanicattitude.org
is a contemporary art magazine since 1980
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