⚠️due to the weather alert the festival program is being rescheduled⚠️
FESTIVAL






MOBILITY, MIGRATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE
18-28/5
Mobility justice, b/ordering processes, migration and climate change: Reimagining Mobilities proposes a Festival, inside and outside the academy, aimed at regenerating imaginaries on issues fundamental to cohabitation on our planet.
From May 18 to 28, 2023, Forlì and Bologna will come alive with debates, workshops, music, films, exhibitions, theater and walks to discuss and imagine possible futures, beyond the rhetoric of crisis and emergency that is often used to frame the complex phenomena that characterize our age.
A time when climate change has revealed to us that the way we have made sense of the world needs to be challenged, that the idea of nature as an infinitely extractable resource is profoundly unfair, as well as unsustainable. An era that invites us to think about practices, languages and spaces to deconstruct fear and boundaries, to transform them into places of care and alliance, not only between humans but also with other species that co-inhabit the Earth.
Check out the program
⚠️ UPDATED⚠️
- Debates
- Presentations
- Music, performances, exhibitions, labs
Thursday
18/5
Thursday
18/5
15.00
21.00
Building climate justice
Day of discussion between research and activism
In collaboration with Researchers for Climate Justice Bologna
In October 2023, the World Congress for Climate Justice will be held in Milan., where delegates from all walks of life and from around the world will meet to arrive at common strategies. In recent months in Bologna Researcher for Climate Justice has organized a day that is part of an approach path, which sees in the encounter between research and activism the space to build climate justice. In a dialogue between research and activism, the climate crisis and its social and economic dimensions of war and exploitation will be discussed.
Link for further reading here.
Monday
22/5
Monday
22/5
10.00
13.00
Migration, cultural transformation and tourism. The Rural Migrantour project and other experiences in urban and rural environments
Roundtable discussion with
Francesca Bigliardi (Kwa Dunìa, Parma), Pietro Cingolani (Università di Bologna e FIERI), Maria Molinari (Piccolo Festival dell’Antropologia della Montagna), Pierluigi Musarò (Università di Bologna), Roberto Sartor (Chiocciola la casa del nomade), Ali Tanveer (Next Generation Italy, Bologna), Francesco Vietti (Università di Torino)
10:00 a.m. Pietro Cingolani (University of Bologna and FIERI). Whose culture is it? Reflections on the role of migrants in rural and inland areas.
10:15 a.m. Pierluigi Musarò (University of Bologna). Rethinking mobility. Beyond the tourism/migration opposition.
10:35 a.m. Francesco Vietti (University of Turin). Rural Migrantour. Narratives and experiences from Italy and Europe.
10:55 a.m. Francesca Bigliardi (Kwa Dunìa, Parma). In the city or in the country? A reflection on the Migrantour Parma experience and its transferability.
11:15 a.m. Coffee break
11:30 a.m. Ali Tanveer (Next Generation Italy, Bologna). Children of migration and their protagonism. Social and cultural intervention actions in the city of Bologna.
11:50 a.m. Roberto Sartor (@la casa del nomade, Pennabilli – RN). New mountain dwellers. Narratives and community activations in the Apennines.
12:10 a.m. Maria Molinari (Piccolo Festival dell’Antropologia della Montagna, Berceto – PR). When newcomers make culture. The phenomenon of return to the Apennines and the socio-economic integration of migrants.
12:30 – 1:00 p.m. Discussion, discussion and conclusion.
15.00
17.00
The words to (not) say. Analysis of online hate campaigns and hate speech.
Presentation of group work by students in the course “Methods and Tools for Countering Discrimination in the Digital Age”
Discussants: Emily Marion Clancy (Deputy Mayor of the City of Bologna), Silvia Brena (journalist, co-founder of VoxDiritti and member of the national board of the Rete Contro l’Odio), Stefania Peca (University of Bologna). Introduced: Elena Giacomelli (University of Bologna)
Students in the Department of Sociology and Economic Law’s master’s degree program “Methods and Tools for Countering Discrimination in the Digital Age” will analyze online hate speech and existing information and awareness campaigns countering hate speech on “hot topics,” such as migration, Islamophobia, ethnic minorities, gender issues and LGBTQI+.
Tuesday
23/5
Tuesday
23/5
09.30
Who is afraid of the future? Mobility, migration, and climate change
- Event postponed to date to be announced
Festival opening
Emanuele Menegatti (President of Forlì Campus, University of Bologna), Pierluigi Musarò (University of Bologna), Francesca Gatta (Director Department of Interpretation and Translation, University of Bologna)
Institutional greetings by the President of the Forli Campus, the Scientific Manager of the Project, the Director of the Department of Interpretation and Translation
10.00
Migrant lives: remembering the past, living the present, imagining the future
- Event postponed to date to be announced
Screening of the documentary NEW ABC, followed by discussion
(Documentary made by G. Mazzaferro as part of the Horizon project)
Gerardo Mazzaferro (University of Turin) in dialogue with Charlotte Menin (photographer, COMBO Association) and Rachele Antonini (University of Bologna)
The docufilm ‘Lives of migrants: remembering the past, living the present, imagining the future‘ illustrates the lives and migratory trajectories of young asylum seekers and refugees in contexts of forced or involuntary mobility and immobility with a focus on processes of construction and reconstruction of subjectivity and identity through individual pathways of formal and informal learning within and outside temporary migrant shelters. The docufilm combines collaborative and participatory research approaches with digital ethnographic research tools. The goal is to contribute to the understanding of migration processes in order to take active and concrete actions to support the integration of young migrants.
11.00
Verses of human endurance by Zheng Xiaoqiong:
poetry of migrant workers in China
- Event postponed to date to be announced
Presentation of the poetry collection and bilingual reading
Serena Zuccheri (University of Bologna) Han Wang (University of Bologna)
Verses of Human Resistance (Orientalia publisher, 2022) is Zheng Xiaoqiong’s first Italian-language collection,
edited by S. Zuccheri, who is also its translator. Zheng Xiaoqiong (1980) is among China’s most significant contemporary poets, the recipient of numerous awards at home and internationally known as a leading representative of migrant workers’ poetry: “In a world built on material desires, pervaded by injustices of all kinds, where careerists attack justice and the principle of equality with brutal wars and ambiguous ideologies, poetry, as in the past, should assume the heroic responsibility of safeguarding fairness, justice, equality and freedom. “
11.30
Once upon a time there was a penguin who lived at the South Pole and a little bear who lived at the North Pole, until one day…
- Event postponed to date to be announced
Presentation of the Translation Workshop of the illustrated album A wide chimney by Beatriz Eugenia Vallejo. Reading of the album in its Italian version
Gloria Bazzocchi (University of Bologna),Valeria Lupattelli (teacher at the Carlo Matteucci Economic Technical Institute in Forlì),students of the Carlo Matteucci Economic Technical Institute in Forlì
A wide chimney, by Colombian writer and illustrator Beatriz Eugenia Vallejo, was created as a tool intended for children to build historical memory in the context of the Colombian armed conflict. But the story of its protagonists, a penguin and a little bear forced to leave their homeland, is repeated the same in so many parts of the world. So here once again translation fulfills its most profound task: to make that story travel so that it can resonate in another language for other little readers who have been waiting for it.
12.15
Kids on their own
- Event postponed to date to be announced
Presentation and screening of the video clip RISKI BARCO SUERTE MALAGA, followed by the opening of the photo exhibition
Charlotte Menin (photographer, COMBO Association)
VIDEO-CLIP RISKI BARCO SUERTE MALAGA. One of the artistic practices experimented with for the NEW ABC project in both Melilla and Marseille was the creation of a video-clip with unaccompanied minors. The children wrote a song with a theme of their choice (and their experience of migration was central to the lyrics they created), learned how to recite the words, recorded in the studio, and later made the video clip.
As part of the NEW ABC project, the French COMBO Association co-created a pilot action with unaccompanied minors in an errant mobility situation with the aim of improving their access to education and, more broadly, rebuilding their ties with their target societies.
The exhibition presented here is the result of two photography workshops conducted by photographer Charlotte Menin in Melilla and – joined by Zakaria Bouatir – in Marseille, and carried out with unaccompanied minors and unprotected young adults.
14.00
Ecotone – Desirable Futures
Imagination workshop (limited number)
Edited by Roberto Paura (Italian Institute for Future)
Ecotone: boundary space between different entities, where unexpected encounters make multiple forms of interaction possible. Let’s explore the most desirable ones together.
18.30
Writing as resistance to the border industry
Dialogue from the book No friends but the mountains
Behrouz Boochani (writer, journalist, activist) in dialogue with Pierluigi Musarò (University of Bologna), translation by Charles Biagioni
Behrouz Boochani (1983 Ilam, Iran) graduated from Tarbiat Moallem University in Tehran with a master’s degree in political science and geopolitics.
Wanted by the regime for his journalistic work in defense of Kurdish language and culture, he fled Iran in May 2013 in an attempt to reach Australia. Intercepted by the Australian Navy, he was detained at Christmas Island, Manus Island, and Port Moresby centers in Papua New Guinea (2013-2019). In July 2020, Boochani was granted refugee status in New Zealand. He is now a nonresident researcher at the Sydney Asia Pacific Migration Centre at the University of Sydney, and a visiting professor at Birkbeck University in London.
Since his imprisonment, he has come into contact with journalists and associations and has attracted international attention by documenting gross human rights violations inside Australian camps through articles (Guardian, Huffington Post, The Financial Times and The Sydney Morning Herald), the full-length film Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time (2017, sending videos secretly to director Arash Kamali Sarvestani), and the memoir No friends but the mountains (2018, typed via whatsApp to Moones Mansoubi and Omid Tofighian), which earned him Australia’s most prestigious literary prize in 2019.In 2018 in Italy he was awarded by Internazionale Anna Politkovskaya award for journalism.
Wednesday
24/5
Wednesday
24/5
16.00
Who is afraid of another world? Imaginaries of elsewhere, from the Panicocene and Senegal
Book presentation:
- Imagining Elsewhere in the Age of the Anthropocene. Media, boundaries and climate change , Valentina Cappi (2023), Milano, FrancoAngeli.
- Panicocene. Narratives on climate change, mobility regimes, and environmental migration. ,
Elena Giacomelli (2023), Milan, FrancoAngeli. - Climate crisis, mobility and social justice. Voices and stories from Senegal by Giacomelli E., Magnani E., Musarò P., Walker S., DeriveApprodi (2023)
Greetings and welcome by Claudia Golino (Director Department of Sociology and Economic Law, University of Bologna). Paola Parmiggiani (University of Bologna) and Vando Borghi (University of Bologna) in dialogue with the authors Valentina Cappi (University of Bologna), Elena Giacomelli (University of Bologna), Pierluigi Musarò (University of Bologna), Sara Walker (University of)
The books Imagining elsewhere in the age of the Anthropocene and Panicocene explore social imaginaries, perceptions, and narratives of places and phenomena central to our time: migration, climate change, Europe, Africa, and border landscapes. Through the testimonies of people who experience the effects of the changing climate every day, the book Climate Crisis, Mobility, and Social Justice chronicles the different facets of the broader crisis at hand, denouncing the capitalist, racist, colonial, and patriarchal matrix of the crisis itself.
17.30
Beyond the Anthropocene?
Exhibition opening
Edited by the students of the Sociology of Culture course, Valentina Cappi (University of Bologna), Paola Parmiggiani (University of Bologna), Lorenza Villani (University of Bologna)
The public will be introduced to an exhibition of 16 collages on the Anthropocene and climate change. The works are the result of a workshop conducted with the students of the course in Sociology of Culture, with the aim of creating cultural objects from the exploration and re-signification of elements (visual, textual and contextual) recurring in social space and constructing new frames of meaning around climate change.
18.15
Thursday
25/5
Thursday
25/5
21.00
Trees
Theatrical performance
For me, trees have always been the most persuasive preachers. In their branches storms the world, their roots sink into infinity; yet they are not lost in it, but pursue with all their life force a single purpose: to fulfill the law inherent in them, to bring their form to perfection, to represent themselves. Nothing is more sacred and more exemplary than a beautiful and strong tree.
Friday
26/5
Friday
26/5
17.30
Who is afraid of the future? Migration, climate change, and global citizenship
Roundtable discussion with professors from the University of Bologna
Intervengono: Maria Giovanna Belcastro (University of Bologna),Alessandro Berti (actor, director, playwright),Alessandra Bonoli (University of Bologna),Dario Braga (University of Bologna), Michele Lapini (Freelance photojournalist),Pierluigi Musarò (University of Bologna), Federica Zanetti (University of Bologna),
Mobility justice, b/ordering processes, migration and climate change, Reimagining Mobilities proposes a Festival, inside and outside the academy, aimed at regenerating imaginaries on issues fundamental to cohabitation on our planet.
A time when climate change has revealed to us that the way we have made sense of the world needs to be challenged, that the idea of nature as an infinitely extractable resource is profoundly unfair, as well as unsustainable. An era that invites us to think about practices, languages and spaces to deconstruct fear and boundaries, to transform them into places of care and alliance, not only between humans but also with other species that co-inhabit the Earth.
19.30
Connections. A visual exploration of migration in inland areas
Exhibition opening
Edited by Melissa Moralli (University of Bologna) and Chiara Davino (University of Bologna)
An exhibition that starts from a traveling visual survey to the peripheries of Europe to explore the intersections of migration and interior areas. The photographs were taken directly by and from the inhabitants of these transforming communities to tell the story of how spaces of welcome (or not) are also shaped outside urbanity. The aim is to reverse the gaze, to be contaminated by a new imagery that, this time, comes from the suburbs and speaks (also) to the cities. An invitation to plunge into a wandering exploration to get to know, through the stories of and by its inhabitants, a lesser-known Europe, the Europe of connections.
21.30
Bologna Bridge Band
Concert
The Bologna Bridge Band is a brass band that draws inspiration from the rich musical tradition of New Orleans. A style characterized by the spontaneity of early jazz is enriched by adding a good dose of funk and hip-hop. This mix of genres, accompanied by eccentric and colorful choreography and outfits, evoke the singular atmosphere of New Orleans festivals and parades where the audience is as much a participant and involved as the musicians.
Saturday
27/5
Saturday
27/5
15.00
18.00
Aquatic creatures
Storytelling workshop and construction of small objects for children and adults
The workshop, intended for children (ages 6-10) and adults, invites practical and playful thinking about the relationship between climate change and migration processes.
Led by the artist Sara Pour, they will build small assemblages with human and non-human characters grappling with the problem of water. Together with Pietro Floridia they will come up with small narratives that weave these characters into a common adventure.
At the end there will be a small return to the audience of what was created in the workshop.
18.00
Cricket Sonic Attack
Concert
Cricket Sonic Attack is a musical and research project that draws heavily from different traditions (maloya, Cuban folklore) blending them with jazz and funk sounds. Founded by Timothy Raeymaekers (saxophone, clarinet), Nicoletta Betta (percussion), and Tommaso Grassi (percussion), and featuring Theresa Kanak (violin) and Chris Riseley (bass), the group alludes in its name to the Caribbean insect responsible for the alleged “sonic attacks” that disturbed the sleep of American diplomats in Havana in 2016.
20.30
Tales from Senegal
Documentary Fishing Communities’ blues. The impacts of the climate crisis in Senegal by Elena Giacomelli and Sarah Walker.
Documentary “Count Courant” by Andrea de Georgio and Michele Cattani
In dialogue: Michele Cattani (documentary photographer), Elena Giacomelli (University of Bologna), Elisa Magnani (University of Bologna), Pierluigi Musarò (University of Bologna), Sara Walker (University of Bologna)
Fishing communities’ blues. The impacts of the climate crisis in Senegal by Elena Giacomelli and Sarah Walker, an action-research documentary, created in the Climate of Change project, on the complex nexus of migration and climate change in St. Louis and Dakar, Senegal.
Two stories, those of Bass and Madj, young people who decided to stay in Senegal despite the difficulties to pursue a life project in their native country. Contrecourant is a multi-part documentary filmed by Andrea de Georgio, journalist and West Africa expert, and Michele Cattani, photo and video reporter, in 2021 between Bamako and Dakar.
Tuesday
28/5
Tuesday
28/5
10.00
13.00
Migrantour: in search of traces of Italian colonial history in Bologna
Migrantour of the Cirenaica neighborhood
by Next Generation Italy, Bologna
Walk through the streets of Cirenaica on the trail of Italian colonial history.
A reflection from images, stories, and street names to try to reframe
a repressed past and strongly linked to contemporary racism.
Start from the Lorenzo Giusti garden.
Project sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Economic Law (University of Bologna)
Scientific responsible: Pierluigi Musarò
Scientific Committee:
Pierluigi Musarò, Paola Parmiggiani, Claudia Golino, Maurizio Bergamaschi
(Department of Sociology and Economic Law)
Dario Braga (Department of Chemistry Ciamician)
Elena Lamberti (Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures)
Antonello De Oto (Department of Legal Sciences)
Elisa Magnani, Claudio Minca, Timothy Raeymaekers (Department of History Cultures Civilizations)
Maria Giovanna Belcastro (Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences)
Sandro Mezzadra (Department of the Arts)
Marco Borraccetti (Department of Political and Social Sciences)
Federica Zanetti, Bruno Riccio (Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Educazione “Giovanni Maria Bertin”)
Alessia Mariotti (Department of Quality of Life Sciences)
Cristina Bernini (Department of Statistical Sciences “Paolo Fortunati”)
Rachele Antonini, Gloria Bazzocchi, Silvia Bernardini (Department of Interpretation and Translation)
Organized by Reimagining Mobilities: Valentina Cappi, Chiara Davino, Elena Giacomelli, Melissa Moralli, Pierluigi Musarò, Stefania Peca, Lorenza Villani
Festival co-funded under the “ISA Topic 2022” call for proposals
Graphic design by Michele Brusutti
In collaboration with: