echoes of february

The first sessions took place in the informal setting of an apartment in Rome’s Sallustiano district, built on the ruins of the temple of the goddess Fortuna (203 B.C.). Later on, VF sessions were hosted by allied artist-run spaces (Studio Kamillo, Porto Simpatica) and institutions such as MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma, Fondazione Pistoletto Cittadellarte in Biella and Entity of Decolonization in Carlentini. VF continues to organize open audio/text sessions in homes, art spaces, museums, and other contexts where collective listening can take place.

Each monthly session cultivates active listening, inviting the audience to co-author a shared sonic landscape. For each gathering, the collective proposes a reading selection as a source of inspiration, offering participants a point of departure for their textual or vocal contributions. By playing secondary instruments, participants are invited to attune into a common vibration and sustain the voice of those who approach the microphone and enter the space of the words to sound a personal or pre-existing text.

During the last year, a growing community gathered around its events, identifying itself through a language made of sounds: a form of communication that, in its musical nature, unsettles symbolic meanings to promote the errors, cracks, and misunderstandings of the world. The multitude of spoken fragments—entangled, layered, sometimes mixed—sets in motion a cut-up process capable of producing new meanings. Excerpts of the selected texts, read out loud at the microphone, somehow work as a community-making device. Words become matter, tongues become tools. In the face of a historical moment characterized by censorship, silencing practices, and oppression, VF summons freedom of expression.
In September 2024, VF published its first editorial, a collection of writings by invited members of its community, titled Se ti chiamo Fortuna, ti giri? (If I call you Fortuna, do you turn?).

For the Struer Tracks Almanac, VF produced:

A) two designed double-page spreads, comprising a descriptive and formal text about VF’s experience, plus a visual contribution made of excerpts and cut-ups from the community’s contributions;

B) a 30-minute audio recording in the format of a radio show, featuring an introduction followed by a sonic dive into a revisited and reverberating collection of voices and experiments that took place during the sessions. Guest voices (in order of appearance): Maud Gyssels, Camilla Giaccio, Ariell Zéphyr, Yva & The Toy George, Valerio Pastorelli.