Created by Orsola Rignani, professor of Philosophy at the University of Parma, in collaboration with the Lenz Foundation and selected for the two-year period 2025/2027 among the winning paths of the Fape 2025 Call (University Fund for Public Engagement) of the University of Parma. Made under the artistic direction of Maria Federica Maestri.
The international performing arts festival Natura Dèi Teatri has launched the Parentele project starting in 2022, based not on biological continuity but on the recognition of affinities and differences and the possibility of coexistence.
Parentele is researching new naturalcultural performance models, hybridizing philosophy, mythology, science and the arts, and in the next three-year period 2025_2027 it will be further divided into the following sections:
Permanences
Activations of relationships associated with the Lenz production project, with a view to legacy and transmission, to broaden the artistic geography of the Foundation.
Artist3 in dialogue for 2025: Beatrice Baruffini, Alessandro Conti, Lorenza Guerrini, Orsola Rignani
Temporary stops
Reception of female artists invited to produce projects of annual duration.
Sustained Artist for 2025: Muna Mussie.
Created by Rignani in collaboration with Lenz Fondazione, selected for the two-year period 2025/2026 among the winning paths of the Fape Call (University Fund for Public Engagement) of the University of Parma.
In an age marked by radical ecological, cultural, social, and technological discontinuities, the body becomes the primary place of impact and challenge. Bodies ravaged by war, disturbed by climate change, queer, disabled, reproduced or replaced by technology, anesthetized by algorithms: faced with these conditions, critical, community-based, and participatory reflection becomes urgent. The project aims to interrogate the body not as a simple tool to be used and discarded, but as a relational place of encounter, exchange, and construction of individual, collective, and trans-specific identities. Are bodies considered disabled alternative possibilities for relationships? Shouldn't the world rather misadapt to welcome them? Are animal and plant bodies passive resources or active interlocutors? Can the algorithm replace the body? What remains impossible without it?
Through cultural, artistic, theatrical, and performance languages, the project aims to raise awareness among citizens and students about the body's non-obviousness and non-neutrality, promoting its rediscovery as an inescapable dimension and a breeding ground for generative relationships on a cultural, social, trans-specific, and ecological level.
More info -> https://www.unipr.it/corpi-post-umani-202cinque-sei-sette-rappresentazioni-visioni-riflessionirifrazioni-narrazioni
In today's disturbing discontinuity, what is immediately impacted and challenged is the body: battered by wars, disrupted by climate change, exhausted by algorithms, violated, reified. But the body is not predictable, it is not passive, it is not neutral, it is not reducible; it cries out its surplus.
Not even the head, even if we don't pay attention to it, is something for granted… and Marisa Merz reminds us of it!
It can be an uncomfortable and comfortable companion to a day without hours, and it can be a hat that is too hot.
Surely we must keep in mind that the most she can do is what her body can do, without her!
The laboratory entitled Bodies without Heads, part of the popular research program funded by the University of Parma, of which Lenz Fondazione is a partner, conducts a multidisciplinary and multi-level exploration through the theme of the body: impacted by the discontinuities and changes that represent today. The project was developed through a series of events connected to this common thread but of a different nature.
The workshop with philosophy undergraduate and graduate students and the Lenz ensemble investigated issues related to the body in a post-humanist context. Post-humanism does not refer to the overcoming of humanity or its technological reductionism, but to trans-corporeality, that is, a hybrid, transversal body, in continuity with other entities such as the environment and technology.
What remains of the head in a post-humanist context?
What remains of a performative act always in a post-humanist context?
The material developed during the workshop was presented at the meeting on April 10, 2026, in Lenz Teatro, in front of an audience of spectators, scholars, and artists. Following, the round table animated by Monica Barone performer, Adriano Engelbrecht poet, Ubaldo Fadini philosopher, Manuela Macelloni philosopher, Maria Federica Maestri performance composer and visual artist, Carlo Maini, physician, and philosopher Orsola Rignani, is available for viewing on this page.
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Research project, kindship Orsola Rignani
Artistic direction Maria Federica Maestri_Francesco Pititto
Speakers Monica Barone, Adriano Engelbrecht, Ubaldo Fadini, Manuela Macelloni, Maria Federica Maestri, Carlo Maini, Orsola Rignani
Workshop participants Tiziana Cappella, Margherita Marvasi, Davide Pellegrini, Alice Scartapacchio, Carlotta Spaggiari, Jacopo Volpi
Curating Elena Sorbi
Organization Ilaria Stocchi
Press office, communication Giovanna Pavesi
Promotion, graphic design Alessandro Conti
Technical care Giulia Mangini, Alice Scartapacchio
The project was financed with FAPE funds from the University of Parma
