A three-year co-creation project

SENTIERI SELVAGGI \ THE SEARCHERS is a brand new project by FIT Festival, which aims to give young people the opportunity to be protagonists of a co-creative artistic production process, to give shape to what they feel. Boys and girls will be asked to tell their stories through the means that are most suited to them such as photos, videos, music, songs, illustrations, texts, and alternative composites.

A call will be launched for each of the three years of the project. The process will involve a professional artist, different each year, who will play the role of curator/tutor/guide for the youth, and what emerges from the process will be transformed into an artistic work (different each year) that will be presented as part of the FIT 2025, 2026 and 2027 editions.

The project will give young people the opportunity to participate in socio-cultural life in a direct way, sharing a path of exchange, confrontation and research through an artistic sharing experience. It aims to offer them a space that can become a place for listening and free expression. With a participatory and innovative approach, we wish to offer them guidance and tools to give form and content to their thoughts and needs, to broaden their critical gaze on the world.

Last but not least, SENTIERI SELVAGGI \ THE SEARCHERS aims to generate a positive, enriching and innovative experience both for the young participants, but also for the festival and region that is home to it.

The three-year project is supported by:
UFC Ufficio Federale della Cultura, Stanley Thomas Johnson Stiftung,  Cornelius Knüpffer Stiftung, Fondazione Weak Ends, 
Contributo annuale alla creazione artistica 2025: Cantone Ticino, DECS/Fondo Swisslos

Conception, executive production, organization, project communication: FIT Festival
Conception of each year’s artistic projects: FIT Festival in collaboration with the artists
Artistic production: FIT Festival

IS IT POSSIBLE TO MEASURE THE BORDER BETWEEN US AND THE WORLD?

I started doing theatre as a teenager – says Camilla Parini – when I still did not know which way to look at myself and how to place myself in the world. Theatre immediately revealed itself to be the place of the possible and the impossible. A place where one can be and does not have to be. A place for listening: to oneself, to the body, to space, to others, to something else. Then I grew up. I am no longer an adolescent, but forever, I have been.

Over the years I have cultivated my artistic practice by placing at the centre of my work a research linked above all to a ‘politics of the intimate’. I have tried to maintain a vulnerable gaze on people and the world, made of that same material of which, in my opinion, the age of adolescence is made. That age on the threshold, between being told what to do and starting to ask ourselves what we actually want to do. Who do we want to be? Adolescence is the age of subversive and revolutionary potential. It is an extremely sensitive, vulnerable and permeable age. I always like to go back to it, listen to it and give it a voice. And I believe art is a wonderful medium through which to create a listening space for the things we want to say to the world, a medium with which to try to measure that boundary that separates us from the world or to the world unites us.

«Who are you? What do you care about? What is urgent and necessary for you? What would you like to change?»

«Inequalities, globalisation, cultural flattening, how to unite ideas, simplicity, the deep side of existence, protecting childhood, returning to innocence, finding messages to do good, dreams, dreaming of music that does not exist, not getting angry, trying to accept anger, anxiety, freedom, freedom as a place where pain is accepted, confronting badness with kindness, become children again, the revolution of kindness, taking care of one’s inner self, the inner self, nostalgia, sharing with others something that ends, in every moment parts of us slip away and stay there, everything ends, malaise, hidden fragility, we exhibit what we are not, power relations» (Concepts emerged during a workshop of the FIT Young Jury, 29. 01.2023)

THIS IS WHERE THE JOURNEY BEGINS

…a journey yet to be discovered, that will take participants to the next edition of the FIT Festival, 2/12 October 2025. We look forward to meeting you in there. Detailed information on venue, show times and days will be announced later.

CAMILLA PARINI (CH)

She was born and raised in a small village in the Italian part of Switzerland where she still lives. Her first studies and work experiences were in the social field as an educator (SUSPI-DSAS), fascinated above all by the relationship with people who read the world and express themselves through other mental and perceptual schemes. She moved to Milan to study dance theater (Teatrodanza at Civica Scuola di Teatro Paolo Grassi), a practice that to this day she is still unable to define and perhaps not even fully understand, but which was the starting point to begin to deconstruct and build her own personal artistic research. Fundamental in her training was her encounter with Teatro delle Radici (directed by Cristina Castrillo Swiss Theatre Award 2014) with whom she had the opportunity to travel to Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Denmark, Ecuador, Germany, Italy and Peru.

In 2014 she began her practice as an author, placing her body at the center of each of her research processes and using the expressive and associative universe of images as an important element and tool in her creations. Within her works she always tries to create a space to allow the viewer to enter and trespass, trying to question the points of separation and contact between the viewer and the work/artist.
Her research moves between theater, performance and installation, creating works that engage with what she defines as a “politics of the intimate”.

She is a co-founder of Collettivo Treppenwitz (2018), a co-creator of the Ticino is Burning movement (born in 2021 and Swiss Performing Arts Award in 2022) and a member of the IDRA Association (2022), which brought the experience of “La Straordinaria – Tour Vagabonde” to Lugano and was a spokesperson for “La carta della Gerra”, a document that proposes reflection with respect to the urgent need for space, support and, more generally, recognition of the role that independent culture plays in Ticino.

Furthermore, she was selected by Pro Helvetia for the promotion of the new generation of theater and dance for the “Seminar in Avignon 2016,” the “Seminar in Taipei 2019,” and the “Swiss Selection Edinburgh: Virtual Residencies 2022.”
She was chosen by Expédition Suisse by taking part in the “Handle with care 2021/22” group, was selected for the “Extra Time Plus” program (national network for the promotion of emerging artists) promoted by far° Nyon, Südpol Lucerne and in collaboration with the FIT Festival for the 2022/23 edition, and was chosen as a Ticino artist for the national network program “Dance and Dramaturgy 2024/26”.

Among her creations: STILL LEBEN (2014), Princesses karaoke or something like that… (2016, co-created with Anahì Traversi), Io sono un’altra – I am another (2018), KISS! (Loving Kills) (2021), je suisse (or not) (2023).

Are you between 16 and 22 years old?

Do you feel the need to express yourself, in the way you prefer, about what you think, desire, dream, what makes you angry, makes you cry or makes you smile?

Would you like to participate in a creative process with an artist?
Are you curious/open to sharing moments, spaces with other young people?

SENTIERI SELVAGGI \ THE SEARCHERS is not a theatre class.

It is a SHARED process aimed at creating an artistic project that will be presented within the FIT Festival 2025.

The final form of the project is not yet defined and the purpose is to define it and create it TOGETHER. 

PRESENCE and ACTIVE PARTICIPATION are important elements because it is only in this way that a shared path, a journey together, comes to life.
A process happens only if you WISH it to happen and EXPERIENCE it with openness, curiosity and dedication.

I AM CAMILLA, the artist you will work with.
I LEAVE YOU AN AUDIO MESSAGE
THIS IS MY VOICE

Participation in the project is FREE OF CHARGE.

To get started block these dates:

– Thu Feb 28 – 18h00/20h00 ONLINE
– Sun March 2 – 14h00/18h00 LIVE
– Sun, March 23 – 14h00/18h00 LIVE
– Sun, April 13 – 14h00/18h00 LIVE
– Thu 24 to Sun 27 April INTENSIVE
– Sun May 1 – 14.00/18.00 LIVE
– Tue 29 July to Sun 2 August RESIDENCY

I,
, will see you soon!

And for now, one more hint for you: this is my face…