Roaming Assembly 33: The Script That Passes Through Here—a field of unresolved presence

Without a permanent home, students, tutors and crew of the Dutch Art Institute congregate seven times per year at different places throughout Europe (and beyond) to study together, weaving an archipelago of distinct localities and initiatives, each with their own rhythms and objectives. Curator, educator, artist and DAI alumna Elisa Giuliano is Archipelago Weaver 2026: guiding an extended journey to Southern Italy. We warmly welcome you to join DAI in Matera for for the public part of its programme, hosted by Palestra and Cinema Piccolo, and convened by Elisa Giuliano in conversation with Gabriëlle Schleijpen.

Roaming Assembly 33: The Script That Passes Through Here—a field of unresolved presence
As Italy and Europe grapple with migration, extractivism, and the afterlives of colonialism, the South persists as a critical frontier—shaped by global forces yet sustained by local practices of survival, resistance, and collective organization that generate new aesthetic and political vocabularies across the Mediterranean, beyond dominant narratives. Roaming Assembly 33 approaches Matera as a terrain where historical strata surface into the present, treating the city not as a cinematic backdrop or symbolic margin but as a site through which wider geopolitical dynamics—particularly those tied to Italy’s colonial entanglements in Africa—can be read, contested, and re-scripted. 

Roaming Assembly 33 brings together cinematic, artistic, and research-based practices that unsettle representational regimes and confront historical erasures. Anselm Franke examines Western modernity as a self-mythologizing cosmology whose “white mythopoeia” culminates in fascism, revealing how origin myths obscure colonial foundations while universalizing the European experience. In Diana’s Lookin Glass, filmmakers Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi trace the genealogy of imperial fantasy through Mussolini’s 1927 order to drain Lake Nemi and recover the ships of Emperor Caligula. Anthropologist Viola Castellano addresses the externalization of European border control in Libya and its effects on migrants and Libyan populations, situating these processes within the longue durée of Italian colonialism and its contemporary reconfigurations. Alessandra Ferrini’s essay film Gaddafi in Rome: Anatomy of a Friendship examines the Berlusconi–Gaddafi alliance and the afterlives of the 2008 Treaty of Friendship between Italy and Libya. In Cinema Impero, Muna Mussie reflects on the fascist-era cinema in Asmara through a layered narrative drawn from archival and personal materials. Activist and author Yvan Sagnet presents his struggle against agricultural exploitation through the founding of No Cap and his experience during the filming of The New Gospel in Matera. Carmine Conelli discusses his research in Il rovescio della nazione, examining Italian national identity through coloniality, race, and the margins, alongside his work as founder of Tamu Edizioni. Associazione CovaContro, founded in 2013, counters eco-mafia activity, corruption, and environmental harm through citizen science, advocacy, and grassroots engagement. Jihan El-Tahri presents The Heist of the Century: The Story of Gaddafi’s Gold, tracing the disappearance of 143 tons of Libyan gold as a geopolitical story of power, resources, and secrecy spanning three continents. In Insurgence of Ghibli Winds Tewa Barnosa traces a counter-history of aerial warfare from Italy’s first bombing of Libya in 1911 to later forms of gamified militarism, reclaiming the Ghibli winds as an insurgent force resisting colonial violence, surveillance, and imperial control of the desert. Additionally, on March 7th, the Matera launch of Like Swarming Maggots by Alessandra Ferrini will take place at TAM Bookshop, opening a new series of book events and a collaboration with Kiosk Rotterdam.

Within this frame, Matera emerges as a site for collective inquiry, infrastructural imagination, and new critical alliances. In July, the DAI will return to the city for the COOP Summit, where students and tutorial teams will gather to mark the culmination of the 2025–26 research trajectory developed between  DAI and its international COOP partners.