For this edition of Gender Bender, we have chosen popular as our keyword, our “lens word”.

Tonight, it is clear that Gender Bender is also a populated festival. So my first words of thanks and welcome go to all of you here with us tonight – our wonderful audience.

We also wanted to explore another meaning of popular: the idea of bringing culture to a wider public. And in this sense, I cannot help but think immediately of Vicino, Vicinissimo, a performance we conceived and created together with Daniele Ninarello and a community of local residents, who took to the stage last Saturday and Sunday, October 24th and 25th.

The performance took place inside Le Corbusier’s Esprit Nouveau Pavilion, a prototype for social housing, conceived as a model for the future. We found ourselves immersed in a space inhabited by bodies embracing pleasure, slowness and physical contact. Bodies belonging to different generations which, at a time when so much is being said about class conflict between generations, embodied a new model of coexistence, sharing the same space.

On Saturday, as the city was ablaze and the violent inequalities running through our society were laid bare, the performers and audience at Vicino, Vicinissimo were able to inhabit a space of connection that was contemplative, unproductive and intense. Together, we cultivated a subtle awareness of our surroundings, an awareness that gradually extended to everyone present.

Over the past few days, I have been thinking that, like Le Corbusier, we have not built a utopian space or created a utopian project. Rather, we have created a prototype: an example, a space for the imagination.

I’d like to return to the role of imagination, because on Monday evening Céline Sciamma, who joined us at the festival to present two of her films, described herself as an “activist of the imagination”. I immediately felt a strong connection between this definition and what we seek to do through Gender Bender.

To imagine is to open up new horizons, to envision new possibilities – and it is these possibilities that drive change.

Art teaches us the beauty of imagination, of that vibrant, vital imagination we rediscovered last night at the opening of the retrospective exhibition dedicated to Jacopo Camagni’s work.

The exhibition shows us how Jacopo continues to invite us into a world where sensitivity and sensuality – understood as the stimulation of the senses – become extraordinary forces, true superpowers: the superpowers of empathy, discovery and desire. And this is precisely what we seek to share through Gender Bender.

My heartfelt thanks go to all the institutions that support us, and to those joining us here this evening. Thank you for your solidarity and for sharing our vision. Thanks also to all our sponsors and private supporters, as well as to the cultural institutes and foundations that are invaluable allies in helping us build a diverse, international programme.

Thank you to everyone who makes all this possible: Il Cassero, the festival’s home, and, above all, the entire team of staff and volunteers, who have quite literally brought this edition to life and will now proudly carry it out into the city.

We wish you all a wonderful 24th edition of Gender Bender!