8 Albe is an annual contemporary art festival held in eastern Sicily; the name pays homage to the natural landscape surrounding this area, which is deeply valued for its biodiversity. The first two editions, both curated by Carolina Ciuti, were dedicated to certain elements of the earth, with the aim of dreamlike highlighting the issues emerging within the ecosystem.
The fourth edition, like the third, will be curated by Lucia Pietroiusti, head of the ecology department at the Serpentine in London. As a curator and programmer, she works at the intersection of art, ecology, and systems, often outside the traditional exhibition space.
The project is fully supported by Dimora delle Balze.
The festival has collaborated with foundations such as TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, In Between Art Film, and the Lemaitre Collection, as well as with artists including Jonathas de Andrade, Anna Dot, Rachel Rose, Basim Magdy, Johanna Billing, Fito Conesa, Camille Henrot, Lina Lapelyte, and Agneszka Polska.
What happens to us in times of upheaval? When the ground begins to shake beneath our feet, politically and ecologically, how does this change the ways in which we perceive, come together, listen to, and understand our present? Across different histories and geographies, periods of environmental and social instability
have often coincided with a renewed sensitivity to forces that transcend the individual: spirits, landscapes, ancestors. Forms of knowledge that sometimes seem marginal, from ritual to prayer to ecstatic vision, once again capture our attention. We seek intensity, the sublime, a different kind of connection.
30.07 – 6.08 – 13.08 – 20.08 – 28.08
For the fourth edition of 8 Albe “The Time of the Moon,” the video art program is organized into five screening evenings. During the opening night on July 30, curator Lucia Pietroiusti will introduce the program, followed by a performance by multidisciplinary artist Nicole L’Huillier. From this opening, the program unfolds over five evenings that guide the audience on a journey of perception, transformation, and altered states of reality. Throughout the program, the films explore rituals, mysticism, and metamorphosis, interacting with the present through non-linear and sensory forms of knowledge. Each evening opens a space where narratives unfold between the human and the more-than-human. Rather than offering fixed meanings, the program invites the audience to dwell on instability and attune themselves to cyclical time, creating a shared space to perceive and navigate an ever-changing present.
SCHEDULE
30.07.26 – Vibrations, Resonances, Raptures
06.08.26 – Synthetic Sublimes
13.08.26 – Storying the Cosmos
20.08.26 – The Unstable Real
27.08.26 – 0 Profeta
