Linda Ronzoni, visionary artistic director of the Milan-based Foundation, talks about the seventh edition of the Festival della Peste – Ordinario e Mostruoso, a reflection on contemporary monsters between collective fears and new possibilities.
A few steps from the historic center, there is a non-profit foundation that takes its name from the ancient lazaretto of Milano that once stood there. Made famous by Alessandro Manzoni’s novel I promessi sposi, it was built between the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth century, as a shelter for the sick during epidemics. A wide agenda of talks, laboratories and workshops pave the way for the central event of the year of Fondazione Il Lazzaretto: the Festival della Peste. Yes, you read that right, “peste” (Italian for plague). Il Lazzaretto is indeed a place where viruses reinforce human bonds and epidemics are positive contaminations of ideas and good collective practices. The festival’s seventh edition – November 6 to 10, 2024 – was co-curated by Salvatore Cristofaro who, investigating the theme Ordinary and Monstrous, designed the Holobiont Project. “[…] the monster encompasses everything that escapes control, deviates the path of linearity. It is a complex, multiple, and fluid entity. The contemporary monster hybridizes, becomes something else and generates symbiosis. This is how the holobiont is born: an entity that surpasses the individual”, explains the curator. In this fluid and all-encompassing vision, Cristofaro and the team of Il Lazzaretto have called together a varied selection of emerging artists – such as Noura Tafeche and Andrea Fiorino – and professionals from different fields of creativity and human sciences. In scientific jargon, a holobiont is an assemblage of a host and the many other species living in or around it, which together form an ecological unit through symbiosis; in the colorful ecosystem of Il Lazzaretto the holobiont appears as an interdisciplinary mix of ideas and projects driven by an authentic desire for sharing and synergistic co-design of humanly enriching experiences.
Since the festival has just ended, I would like to start by briefly summarizing this latest edition.
It’s been a special and hectic year because there was a change of curatorship on the fly. Luckily, we found Salvatore Cristofaro who was already familiar with our foundation. As often happens, however, something beautiful and unexpected came up with this young curator. One of the things that over the years has given us and continues to give us great satisfaction is that we have a super heterogeneous audience, in terms of age, origin, social background, education. With our work we try to enhance different points of view, visions and expertise, the fact that the festival attracts such varied audiences is for us an extraordinary asset.
I suppose that Salvatore Cristofaro's curatorial contribution was crucial to the success of the festival.
Salvatore definitely gave us a boost in a slightly more contemporary direction, even though we always try to offer insight into contemporaneity, he gave us a boost of energy and freshness that we needed and that we were also seeking. It was very interesting to work with him. This edition confirmed that young audiences are approaching and appreciating our project, certainly also thanks to the Premio Lydia, an art award designed for emerging artists. This time around, too, some kids came to the festival attracted by a laboratory and literally fell in love with the space, and these things are happening more and more often. I think the care, attention, and dedication that we put into our projects is noticeable.
The theme of the 7th edition was Ordinary-Monstrous: what are today’s monsters? What are our fears?
All the themes we address are a bit controversial, like old age, madness, and so on. These topics are meant to provoke our audiences, they invite us to move away from our certainties, from our comfort zone. Every now and then having a sort of estrangement from one’s own life can help us have a different look at things. Of course, the monster is something scary if compared to our ordinary lives, when it arrives it upsets everything, for better or for worse. With this edition we wanted to tell people that the monster is terrifying as it puts us in front of our dark and hidden parts, but it is also a prodigy, its very etymology says so. It is something that shakes us, a possibility of prodigy that moves us from our tracks of ordinariness and makes us understand that we can be many incredible things. Monsters are fears that also hide possibilities. The right questions here are: what are we afraid of? But also: what do we really need? The monster is that thing that you cannot define because it has no name and no boundaries, when you give it a name it ceases to exist.
This edition was characterized by great diversity also in terms of artistic research, workshops, and projects. How did you select the artists and professionals who contaminated the agenda of the festival?
It was a mix of choices between us and Salvatore Cristofaro that opened up to two relatively young and emerging names, such as Andrea Fiorino and Noura Techefe. And then a series of more consolidated names such as Elisabetta Consonni and Nicoletta Cinotti. What really interests us is having many points of view and a multidisciplinarity with which to address a theme, so in a single edition we have an illustrator with whom we worked on the masks, two emerging artists, a psychotherapist, a landscaper and architect, and many other professionals. Within the small exploration of the theme that is our festival there are always many very distant approaches and points of view.
This was the seventh edition of the festival. What are your goals for the future?
I think we have to continue on this path, it’s the right one, although every year we question everything we have done until then. Working around themes is stimulating and helps us steer our research. In December we start thinking about the theme of the following year, the artists we would like to involve and the curatorial direction we want to embrace. Last year we created the Club dei Pestiferi (Club of Pestiferous): a bunch of people close to the Lazzaretto, such as artists we have already worked for people who support research in different ways. It’s a small nucleus that we want to grow and that will be actively involved in the choice of next year’s theme. We would like our creative choices to be extended to the public. Throughout the years we engaged the public through workshops and laboratories, but now we would like to involve them further to understand their points of view and what are the urgent issues they want us to address.
At this point I think we should speak briefly about the Foundation, its mission, and its values.
As I said, what we care about the most is the active participation of the public, which is expressed in laboratories – that we call “viruses” -, meetings, workshops. The festival is in fact the result of the work and research done during the year together with the artists and the public. The Lydia Award, also in its seventh edition, is another milestone in our yearly program. Lazzaretto is many things at once and expresses itself through a multitude of other smaller projects and activities.
Virus, lazaretto, plague: your language is very powerful, you use words that in common jargon have negative connotations and you transform them into something beautiful and joyful.
It is the same principle that guides the choice of themes. Ten years ago, when the foundation was born, this was the Spazio del Lazzaretto, because it is located in via Lazzaretto, and I insisted on keeping this name. Not to talk about the lazaretto as a place of death and illness, but to talk about positive contaminations. We do not want it to be a confined place, but an open, fluid, and inclusive one, where barriers are broken down. We do not want separations between the sick and the healthy, between the old and the young, between the crazy and the normal, between the monstrous and the ordinary. These names are therefore provocations that overturn old meanings to reflect on their generative and non-deadly aspect as it was in the past. The virus becomes a way to be contaminated and infected and therefore change for the better in relation to the other.
LINK
- NINETY PERCENT OF EVERYTHING: Interview with the curator Maria Pina Usai - October 2, 2026
- Christina Nakou: the fragility of matter as a metaphor for the human condition - July 3, 2026
- The Island: Hito Steyerl at Osservatorio Fondazione Prada in Milan - December 19, 2025
