Public Program XV Edition

The Public Program, titled Sottosopra and curated by Stella Succi—art historian and independent researcher—offers a series of talks, presentations, and encounters spanning art, philosophy, and science to expand and share the research processes behind the exhibited projects.

Sottosopra approaches the underground as a perceptive, poetic, and political possibility of the present. Subterranean cavities have sometimes been interpreted as cognitive technologies: penumbra, echo, and the loss of reference points destabilize the senses until they overflow. In suspension and vulnerability, perception reconfigures itself and becomes hyper-receptive. One feels sottosopra (upside down). Sottosopra settles in the tunnels beneath the railway tracks: an underground that, like many urban infrastructures, erodes the idea of the surface as a stable boundary. Cavities, conduits, and junctions—high and low do not exist in opposition but as a permeable grid of exchanges. The work that gives the festival its title, Never Ground by Natália Trejbalová, takes this notion further, drawing on the nineteenth-century fantasy of a hollow Earth—a hypothesis in which the sky above our heads could be a land beneath other feet, and the ground under our feet another sky: Sottosopra ascends and descends a system of internal worlds, interlocked and mutually possible. The underground is also the real one upon which our digital infrastructures depend: a deep geological history inhabits our machines. Sottosopra, this text, and the videos on view exist thanks to resources extracted from undergrounds around the world under conditions of violence. Sottosopra considers the underground as the cultural trajectory of the subsoil, inviting dialogue between practices and languages that grow at the margins of dominant flows, coexist with the surface, and influence it.
Stella Succi

Program

Friday 28 November

6:00 PM: Exhibition opening

7:00 PM: Presentation of the Open Call 2025 – Dialogues from the Underground, with:
Francesca Colasante (curator), Sofia Salvatori (winner of the Open Call), Rita Duina (TAB – Take Away Bibliographies), and Letizia Scarpello (artist and Program Manager at Pollinaria).

Saturday 29 November

10:00–11:00 AM: Tuning for Relationships workshop with Sofia Salvatori
The workshop offers practices of inner listening, sensory activation, and spatial exploration, focusing on perception in the dark. Guided by the voice of Sofia Salvatori, participants will engage in a process of sensory reorganization in which sight is temporarily excluded.

Public Program Sottosopra (Upside Down)

Curated by Stella Succi

2:30–3:30 PM: Sottotesto (Subtext)
A conversation between writer, curator, and Mousse Editor-in-Chief Barbara Casavecchia, historian of philosophy and writer Paolo Pecere, and artist Luca Trevisani on the relationship between the arts and the underground over time, from prehistoric forms of expression to contemporary practices and imaginaries.

4:30–5:30 PM: Sottospecie (Subspecies)
Based on scientific research and the artistic and editorial project Never Ground by Natália Trejbalová and Stella Succi, published by Mousse Publishing and produced by VSA with the support of the Italian Council 2024 of the Ministry of Culture, microbiology researcher and lecturer Martina Cappelletti, speleologist Francesco Sauro, and artist Natália Trejbalová will discuss the underground as a crossroads between the terrestrial and the extraterrestrial, between deep time and the future.

6:30–8:30 PM: Sottofondo (Background)
Readings from the underground of Milan with Altalena – interdisciplinary collective and research group, Annamaria Ajmone – dancer and choreographer, Sandra Cane – independent author and researcher, Ivan Carozzi – writer and author, Attila Faravelli – sound artist, Frankenstein Magazine, Medusa – literature and ecology newsletter, and Murmur, contemporary poetry collective.

Sunday 30 November

10:00–11:00 AM: Tuning for Relationships workshop with Sofia Salvatori
The workshop offers practices of inner listening, sensory activation, and spatial exploration, focusing on perception in the dark. Guided by the voice of Sofia Salvatori, participants will engage in a process of sensory reorganization in which sight is temporarily excluded.

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This year, the Festival once again reaffirms its mission to explore the relationship between contemporary art and exhibition spaces outside the usual circuits, choosing a new venue in the city of Milan: the Magazzini Raccordati, located in the tunnels of Central Station.

The venue is deeply connected to the theme of the 15th edition: the underground understood as both a physical place and a symbolic threshold—a metaphor for the voices that throughout history have been submerged by structures of power, a gateway to initiatory descents, and a place of metamorphosis.

On display are works by Natália Trejbalová, Adele Dipasquale, Nicoletta Grillo, and Andrea Mauti.

XV Edition Video Sound Art Festival
Never Ground
28 – 30 November 2025

Location:
Tunnel of Stazione Milano Centrale
Magazzini Raccordati, Milan
Via G. B. Sammartini, 38

The project is supported by the
Italian Council program (2024)
promoted by the
Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

With the support of:
Municipality of Milan

Organization of Regional Importance
Lombardy Region

Artistic Direction
Laura Lamonea

Public program curated by
Stella Succi

Open Call curated by
Francesca Colasante

Communication and Development
Francesca Mainardi, Federica Torgano 

Education
Tommaso Santagostino, Thomas Ba

Production
Lino Palena

Press Office 
Sara Zolla

Visual Identity
Gloria Favaro, Nicola Narbone