The Art of Darkness

On Thursday, May 28, 2026, from 9:00 pm, Piazza Scaravilli hosts an evening dedicated to the Art of Darkness.

Video mapping, sound and light come together to reactivate the nocturnal dimension of Piazza Scaravilli. The works are projected in a loop from 9:00 pm to 11:00 pm onto the façades of the square. Each cycle consists of two short works followed by 5 minutes of shared darkness.

• What If It Were a City | Martina Stella
  Approx. 7 min
  The work proposes a representation in the form of an imaginary city called Buia, inspired by Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. The project unfolds as a sequence of textual and visual chapters, each dedicated to a paradox of darkness. The city is personified as a critical device reflecting on darkness as a space of opacity and relationships.
• Offorwith | Collettivo -ATI
  Approx. 7 min
  A sound-based multimedia work without spoken words, in which smiling mouths and laughter emerge from the darkness as intermittent and overlapping apparitions. The video explores the tension between the playful and unsettling sides of the square, investigating laughter and light as ambiguous and never neutral elements.
• Shared Darkness
  5 min
  Five minutes of shared darkness: not an absence, not a malfunction, but a moment of programmed darkness within a public space.

The event is part of the European project Art of Darkness (Horizon Europe, GA 101177779), coordinated by the Department of Architecture of the University of Bologna.

For more information, download the flyer at this link.