Pilota
Santuario Della Nebbia
17 October 2025 - 19 October 2025
with: Martine, Stef, Meike, Lawrence
This three-day program unfolded through shared practices — initially labeled assignments —, rather than instructions, propositions rather than tasks.
LEAFING, FOGGING, and SOWING were not designed to produce knowledge, solutions, or measurable outcomes, but to cultivate / curate conditions in which not-knowing can be collectively inhabited. Each practice attended to processes that exceed individual agency — seasonal change, hydrological circulation, and growth — and invited participants to make notations as traces of situated attention rather than representations or evidence.
Together, the practices hoped to form / where designed to establish, a temporal arc without closure: from ‘letting go’ (LEAFING), to dissolving boundaries (between bodies and environments) (FOGGING), to acting toward an unclaimed future (SOWING).
The shared archive — this web publication —, functions not as documentation but as sedimentation: a collective record of passing through uncertainty.
In this way, the program proposed not-knowing as an ethical and ontological stance — one that resists control, prediction, and optimisation, while remaining attentive, responsible, and in relation.
Practices in Pilota
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#1 - LEAFING
To Human is a Verb
It is autumn. Sitting here on the deck overlooking the valley, you notice leaves falling: heavier, dried ones landing audibly in the grass below; lighter ones turning and hesitating in the mild, warm air. Trees are leafing — not as a single act but as a condition shaped by season, weather, gravity, and time. If you wish, take a moment to attune to the tree, the leaf, or the space in between. Stay with what is at play without naming it too quickly. Then make a notation — not an explanation, but a trace — attending to the players, the conditions, and the ways agency shifts or dissolves. How does leafing happen? How do you leafe?
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#2 - FOGGING
Hydrological Cycle
Water moves through all bodies: clouds, soil, wood, air, skin. It circulates, condenses, evaporates — never fully separate, never owned. Sit with the planks, not on them. Let hands touch. Notice moisture, warmth, pressure, exchange. Fog your lens if you wish: breath becoming water, water becoming image. Where does one body end and another begin? Is the difference between self and other any clearer than the difference between left leg and right? Make a notation — not to explain the hydrological cycle, but to trace how being-with, becoming-one, or not-being-separate briefly appears.
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#3 - SOWING
Un Sacco di Semi
We received a sack of grain — enough for eight square meters — with a simple promise: next year, we return double the amount: dynamic conservation. Together we prepare the land and cast the grain, knowing that what follows depends on weather, soil, time, and forces beyond intention. Sowing is an act without guarantee, oriented toward a future that cannot be claimed in advance. Make a notation — not of results or plans, but of trust, obligation, and the shared conditions that allow something to grow.
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#1 - BURSTING
It is spring. After a few days (and nights) of strong Alpine winds, suddenly it happens. Eruption everywhere. Gravity defying life. From the earth, from the trees, from the sky.