Like a cadavre exquis, GIUNGLA has developed from 2020 to today, weaving lines from one edition to another, involving artists and researchers from various parts of the world, dialoguing with public and private institutions, patrons, educational entities, cultural institutes, inhabiting many places in the city center and the outskirts of Lucca.
Each year brought a thought and a reconsideration, a word that echoed throughout everything else: garden, vegetable patch, home, moon, bucolic, radical — creating in those who have always frequented it an imaginary museum of symbols and meeting realities.
In a country populated by festivals, we constantly question the need to continue producing events limited in time and space, especially today when digital is so disruptive, and much now happens via streaming in a world where carbon neutrality should prevail over the pleasure of proximity. Finding a compromise between being physically present together and being connected remotely is a theme. So is the importance of creating more spontaneous, recurring, and non-episodic occasions, closer to everyday life and the ordinary, and less to the extraordinary and sensational. Perhaps a return to an old concept of associationism — which should still be relevant — that of clubs, convivial meetings, ordinary and extraordinary assemblies in which together we reason and build knowledge: knowledge of oneself, the other, and what both self and other know through experience or study and can bring to the table.
For this reason, GIUNGLA this year is a REMIX. It is so because it takes up the content and spirit that moved previous editions to create something new, perhaps a form closer to a collective work than to a festival. A poetic work, in the sense of poiesis, of making, but more together, in a horizontal way.
Thus, from January 2025, Artedimarte takes place at Ciclodivino with a monthly appointment moderated by a volunteer focusing on a work or a theme of the arts. We will continue on May 27th and until someone wishes to propose themselves as the Master of Games.
On June 8th, at the Oasi di Massaciuccoli, from an idea by Sharon Tofanelli and Federica Mariotti, curated by Irene Panzani, Parlatoio is born: a new format, almost a dramaturgy, along the wooden walkway between water and land. Poetic and prose texts, together with sounds and images, will follow the rhythm of footsteps on a late Sunday afternoon.
Then a remote workshop with Giuditta Vendrame, who, starting from the archive, will lead us to produce something — a fanzine? A newspaper? A multimedia product? Who knows… We will decide together with old and new members willing to embark on this experience along with the artist and former teacher at the Design School of Eindhoven during the Formafantasma direction, whose research themes are dear to GIUNGLA.
In October, Josse Renda will present the continuation of his research, initiated in 2023 and inspired by a rare volume preserved in the library of the Botanical Garden: Physiognomy of Plants by the intellectual, alchemist, and writer Giovanbattista Della Porta. From this literary encounter was born the workshop Magiae Naturalis, carried out with the students of the Classical High School of Lucca.
Between October 11 and 19, 2025, in the new art space MAGMA (Lucca), we will explore together the next chapter of this journey at the crossroads of art, science, and magic.
Alongside the exhibition, a cycle of meetings will open in harmony with the spirit of the project. Taking place both during Renda’s exhibition and in November — in person and online — these encounters will each approach, from different perspectives, a central and timeless question:
“How do we build knowledge?”
Words by Irene Panzani