Altofest is a human-specific experimental sociality project based on proximity, gift, and hospitality values. It is conceived as an act of artistic and political resistance “to give rise to” a large and heterogene- ous community, generating critical thought. The citizen is the essential element of the Altofest project; they are the core of its structure and foundation, playing the maker of the process. Their role is never user/consumer or addressee. Instead, the host takes care of the artwork, the artist, in turn, takes care of the host and their community.
This inclusive experience generates “original relationships” thanks to a semantic interference between the flow of daily life and the feat of artistic creation in the domestic space. Everyday life is permeated by the foreign vision, which is carried by international artists and languages of the live arts hosted in the program. The citizen who hosts the foreign artist in his home for two weeks – which in turn becomes a public space by opening up to the observers – find themself living in alien space, albeit with familiar forms, where the borders of public and private spaces are blurred. The inhabitant who donates his home and time takes a proactive position. An unusual movement of people then moves the city. From one place to another on the map of events, spontaneous groups of visitors organise themselves into exceptional itineraries, separating and reuniting at every corner to share the Altofest experience. The voices multiply on the streets, bringing images, narrations,
opinions. Thus, an interstitial emotional map of urban space emerges, poetically inhabited.
