Palermo hosts the second edition of BAM, an international theater, music and visual arts festival

From Nov. 6 to Dec. 8, 2019, Übermauer, the second edition of BAM-Biennale Arcipelago Mediterraneo, is scheduled in Palermo, with a core program curated by the Merz Foundation, European Alternatives and with a BAM - Palermo section with initiatives resulting from the synergy with the city’s cultural institutions.

BAM is an international theater, music and visual arts festival dedicated to the peoples and cultures of countries bordering the sea, focusing on the themes of welcome and dialogue. Palermo thus continues to advance its ethical and cultural vision as one of the most important social laboratories in the Mediterranean.

The 2019 edition of BAM takes place in the year in which three anniversaries of strong political and symbolic significance occur: the 30th anniversaries of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square uprising, and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. It is from these historical cues that the project kicks off, with a rich schedule of events scattered throughout the city’s historic sites, from downtown to the suburbs, featuring internationally renowned artists. The program was co-written by Fondazione Merz and European Alternatives, which for the occasion moves its Transeuropa Festival to Palermo, together with the various actors in the cultural, artistic and political life of the City of Palermo.

“Palermo, which has become the capital of Cultures and active participation,” says Leoluca Orlando, mayor of the Sicilian capital, “celebrates in the best way three extraordinary moments of claiming rights and differences, three extraordinary moments that have marked the history of movements for the recognition of fundamental rights of citizenship. Palermo does so, as is now in its tradition and DNA, with a cultural event of the highest level, which once again focuses on the contamination between cultures and peoples, between sensibilities and artistic and cultural styles. A big thank you goes out to the Merz Foundation, European Alternatives and Transeuropa Festival, who have believed in this new bet that for a month will make Palermo a laboratory of experimentation not only artistic and cultural, but of a new model of community development.”

“BAM represents a highly innovative and valid cultural model that aims to be guidelines for the city’s future,” says Cultural Councilor Adham Darawsha. “In the construction of BAM, the partnership between the public and private sectors was best expressed by sharing tasks and activities to organize an event rich in events and dense in meaning. I would like to thank Transeuropa Festival and Fondazione Merz who were able to involve local artists and the best cultural energies of the area.”

“With the first edition of BAM in 2017, Palermo once again became a cultural reference for global artistic and cultural issues and research,” says Andrea Cusumano, creator and artistic director of BAM. “The Biennial saw a vibrant citizen participation and marked a cultural awakening that today appears consolidated. BAM dictated the formula that later became indispensable, for the city’s cultural offerings: the partnership with important national and international cultural institutions, the widespread dimension of the activities and the transdisciplinary nature of the programming. I am happy to have curated this second edition as well, which I hope will increasingly become a reference point for all those people, artists and dreamers who see in the Mediterranean not only a home but a horizon.”

“Palermo is something far beyond a city,” emphasizes Beatrice Merz, president of the Merz Foundation. “In fact, he is someone: he has a real and strong personality. It is a dynamizer of humanity, an accelerator of cultural processes. Full of contrasts she is in many ways a paradox, placed as she is in the middle of this great Mediterranean lake that has no north or south shores but only a single, endless, jagged coastline, dense with narratives and peoples. Between the various shores of the world, beyond the walls of indifference or myopic nationalism, art plays a conscious and, in some ways, still revolutionary role. It offers a change of perspective, overturns and subverts the perception of experience and projects it forward. In this leap of the bull, the international artists who have accepted the invitation for ÜberMauer have espoused the role of builders of ideas, fishermen of relationships, ambassadors not of strange and distant countries but of the good practices of a bridge-place like Palermo and its island that proudly rediscovers its authentic nature as a port, laboratory and home. The same enthusiasm that sees several generations and backgrounds of artists confront each other and has enabled an articulate and widespread exhibition between the kalsa and the càssaro, has been guiding the Foundation’s presence in Palermo for years, where relationships and projects seem to be becoming more authentic and promising.”

For all information you can visit the official website of the Merz Foundation.

Source: release

Palermo hosts the second edition of BAM, an international theater, music and visual arts festival

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.