Matter in Mutation, Visions in Movement

In the two-year period 2024–2025, Alessandro Carboni develops two intertwined paths: visual and performative artistic research, and pedagogical design for childhood and adolescence. Both share an interest in transformation, living matter, and the body as a space for experimentation.

Among the visual projects, Fragment of a Hollow Structure explores the concept of “semi-,” representing the body as an incomplete and porous structure inhabited by imaginary bones that become speculative maps. Drawing gives shape to sculptures and three-dimensional models, while the choreographic practice transforms the body into a metamorphic cavity.

The Accidental Contingencies of Mutation investigates the relationship between body, space, and matter, turning the stage into an unstable landscape of objects and mutable forces. Inspired by microscopy and geology, the project shows matter in continuous becoming, with the performer interpreting its internal tensions.

In parallel, Carboni leads the festival RADA – Temporary Landings for Growth, which unites art and pedagogy for children aged 0 to 11, offering workshops and performances. From this experience arises Traversata, a nomadic workshop on a sailing boat that explores travel as transformation and listening.

Since 2022, he has taught art in public schools, a commitment he considers a political act and a hope for new collective visions.

Context: Performative Weavings

Between 2019 and 2021, Context becomes a cornerstone in Alessandro Carboni’s artistic and performative research. The project investigates the notion of “context” as a dynamic weave of interrelated elements, echoing Timothy Morton’s idea that “nothing exists by itself, and nothing is completely itself.” The triangle, serving as the project’s foundational unit, forms a narrative and performative network that generates endless relationships and a rhythm of seriality and incompleteness. Performers act as “fabricating bodies,” articulating the multiple permutations of context and transforming performance into a three-dimensional map of spatial and emotional fragility.

Developed through international residencies and collaborations across Europe, the United States, and Canada, Context was supported by BeSpectACTive, Formati Sensibili, and Tir Danza. Between 2019 and 2020, Carboni explored its performative and theoretical potential through workshops and site-specific productions in various cities.

Premiering at the Kilowatt Festival in 2021, Context revealed its fluid and adaptive nature within diverse spatial configurations. In parallel, Carboni expanded his pedagogical practice through urban mapping workshops and EM Tools_KIDS, a toolkit for children’s urban exploration and movement. This triennium bridges practice, research, and education in a dynamic dialogue between space, body, and community.

Geographies of Childhood and New Rootings

In 2017, Alessandro Carboni completed his PhD at the City University of Hong Kong with the thesis Embodied Map: Tools for Urban Mapping and Performance Art Practices, marking the culmination of his EM Tools method — a system for urban mapping through performative practices.

Upon returning to Italy, Carboni intensified his work with the association Formati Sensibili, focusing on art and education for children. This led to Pingelap, a project combining workshops, performances, and training programs that merge visual arts, creative movement, and storytelling. The first works — L’Atlante di Judith and Isole Remote, inspired by Judith Schalansky’s Atlas of Remote Islands — were presented at children’s festivals such as BIM! Microfestival and the Salerno Literature Festival.

In parallel, Carboni continued to develop performative projects for adult audiences. The new version of Always Becoming was presented in Venice (Dark Matter Games, S.a.L.E.-Docks) and Hamburg (PSi#23), engaging in an international dialogue on body, urban space, and performative materiality.

He also shared his research outcomes at academic and professional venues, including the Between Spaces Symposium (University of Chichester), the DES Conference (Bologna), and the Ammutinamenti Festival (Ravenna), initiating a phase of dissemination that bridges artistic research, pedagogy, and cultural regeneration.

Collective Body and Complex Thought

In 2013, Alessandro Carboni began a new phase that bridged artistic research and academic inquiry. As a visiting researcher at the South China University of Technology, he developed Learning Curves/Liwan in Guangzhou, presented at the 2013 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, the Danza Urbana Festival in Bologna, and the Detour Festival in Hong Kong. The project combined multimedia mapping and interviews, revealing the river landscape as a living archive of memory and urban transformation.

That same year, he exhibited My Italian Landscape Practices at the School of Architecture in Hong Kong, presenting urban mappings created across Italy. His project on the Kaitak River received the Hong Kong Arts Development – Arts Education Award 2013 for its integration of art, pedagogy, and urban reflection.

Carboni also began an interdisciplinary collaboration with physicist Alessandro Chessa, developing Complex Body Networks at Linkalab (University of Cagliari), a project exploring the relational and spatial complexity of human behavior in urban environments.

He continued his collaboration with the Faculty of Architecture in Cagliari, curating SHIFTING, a festival dedicated to experimentation on urban transformation.

That same year, Carboni started his PhD at the City University of Hong Kong with the project Embodied Map Tools, developing a choreographic method that uses the body as a tool for mapping and performative action in urban space.

Expanded City and Performative Mappings

The experience in China opened a new cycle of research with What Burns Never Returns, a project exploring the relationship between body, urban space, and technology through the intertwining of choreography, geography, and visual arts. Originating in the Pearl River Delta—between Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen—the project later expanded to regions such as Tibet, Henan, and Sichuan, addressing accelerated urbanization and fragmented densities through performative practices.

During this period, Carboni built a transdisciplinary network involving urban planners, programmers, theorists, and artists, giving rise to performances, site-specific interventions, installations, and workshops. The project was supported by numerous institutions, including Guangdong Modern Dance Company, City Contemporary Dance Company (Hong Kong), DOX – Centre for Contemporary Art (Prague), the Department of Architecture of the University of Cagliari, NABA, Fabbrica Europa, Santarcangelo Festival, and 1a Space Gallery (Hong Kong).

Among the most significant works were Optimized Systems of City Paths, a performance along the Kai Tak River in Hong Kong, and the lecture series From Objective Map to Subjective Mapping, presented in Hong Kong, Rome, Turin, and Florence. Carboni joined the scientific committee of FestArch – International Festival of Architecture in Cagliari, activating collaborations with research centers such as CIRMA and Kiberpipa.

With NABA’s Master in Digital Environment Design, he developed Glimpse and Your Enactive Space, projects investigating dance as an interactive system. He also began a new educational path for children with Cantiere Infantile, co-created with Elena Morando.

The period concluded with L1, a choreographic performance based on the CPU – Choreography Plot Unit, an algorithm processing movement data in real time. L1 was a finalist at Premio Equilibrio – Teatro Studio, Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome.

Systemic Choreographies and Sonic Architectures

In 2003, OOFFOURO was founded by Alessandro Carboni and musician Danilo Casti, marking a new beginning—both artistic and geographic—with their move to London. There, Carboni completed a Master’s in Scenography and Performance at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, deepening his exploration of the relationship between visual art, dance, and spatial composition. From this context emerged The Vision of the World Through an Instant, the first piece of the Climax trilogy, presented in London, Poland, and the Czech Republic.

That same year, the duo curated the ENTOPAN Festival at The Foundry, bringing together international artists such as Cosmesi. By the end of 2003, they relocated to Wrocław, Poland, establishing a dual base between the UK and Eastern Europe. Their practice evolved through performances, workshops, and residencies showcased in venues and festivals such as Art Festival and Schindler’s Factory (Krakow), Mózg (Bydgoszcz), Homo Novus (Riga), EURO-SCENE (Leipzig), and Teatr Wiczy (Toruń).

In 2004, Carboni developed Trilite, a real-time modular composition system forming the foundation of Exercise of Combinations, presented at events such as Contemporanea Festival (Prato). He continued teaching at Central Saint Martins and created ROT – Rules of Thumbs, a choreographic tool assigning functions to performers. In 2005, he produced Epigenesi and participated in DOC.K COD, a project mapping Amsterdam’s post-industrial urban landscapes.

Painting, Map, and Body

In 1995, Alessandro Carboni moved to Florence to study painting at the Academy of Fine Arts. His early research developed along two intertwined paths: on one side, large-format gestural painting; on the other, cartographic abstraction, where maps and topographic signs gradually evolved into three-dimensional works. The body soon entered his creative process as both instrument and subject, paving the way toward performance.

During this time, he began studying Butoh and, in 1997, co-founded the collective Aistanomai with Gregory Petiqueux. At the social center CPA FI-Sud, he created Daidalos, a visual and choreographic performance for seven performers, later presented at the Splitsko Proleće Festival in Split. His interest in ritual and transformation led him to explore Sardinian healing rites—particularly the Argia—through ethnographic fieldwork that culminated in his thesis Brusha, now archived at the Ethnomusicological Archive of the Italian State Discotheque.

He also produced OSTUN, a cross-media project spanning drawing, video, and performance. In these years, Carboni came into contact with radical currents of Italian performance art, collaborating with Masque on Eva Futura (published by Ubulibri) and engaging with groups such as OginoKnauss, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, and Kinkaleri. This formative period marked the beginning of his interdisciplinary and visionary approach—an ongoing dialogue between body, space, and language that continues to define his artistic practice.

Peripheral Origins

Alessandro Carboni was born in Cagliari in 1976 and grew up in Assemini, a town situated between the agricultural and industrial belts surrounding the Sardinian capital. His childhood unfolded in a landscape marked by transition — where factories and fields coexisted, and urban and social transformations were driven by the economic crises that struck the Macchiareddu industrial area. Within this hybrid and contradictory environment, between nature and asphalt, emerged the early tensions that would shape Carboni’s artistic vision: an urge to observe, move, and understand the spatial, social, and symbolic transformations of his surroundings.

The absence of strong cultural references or structured artistic education led to a path that was less linear but rich in self-directed experimentation, where the body and urban space became primary tools of inquiry. His adolescence was defined by a spirit of autodidacticism spanning visual arts and music — a transdisciplinary impulse that would later mature in his academic and performative work. Sardinia, with its archaic nature and fractured industrial landscapes, has remained a constant source of inspiration: a porous threshold to cross and reinvent. Over time, Carboni’s artistic formation has taken shape through a continuous tension between center and periphery, gesture and thought, body practice and visual research.