Within the framework of the international programming of Fondazione Pistoletto, UNIDEE Residency Programs officially opens the call for the Spring–Summer 2026 Modules of the Languages, Please program. Conceived and curated by Visiting Research Curators Nina Fiocco and Gaia Martino, the cycle unfolds as a biennial curatorial journey launched in 2025, in which the Modules function as intensive moments of activation, dialogue, and experimentation. The program will take place in Biella from March 23 to June 26, 2026.

Languages, Please is an invitation to a collective series of rehearsals that explore languages as geopolitical spaces of conflict, narration, and encounter. This field of inquiry traverses bodies in action and the stories they inhabit, questioning how to remain polyphonic within the fragile and unstable conditions of the present.

The Modules take shape as outcomes of a shared and progressive curatorial research, where artistic, theoretical, and performative practices intertwine to investigate language not merely as a tool for communication, but as a political, corporeal, and social phenomenon. The call addresses international participants with diverse backgrounds in cultural practice and research, with no disciplinary, linguistic, or methodological restrictions.

To further explore the curators’ research framework, we invite readers to consult the curatorial text related to the Modules across these two years.

Module V – Piersandra Di Matteo

March 23–27, 2026

Led by dramaturg, scholar, and curator Piersandra Di Matteo, the module Beyond Acoustic Supremacy—Gestural Voice and Transcorporeal Listening interrogates listening regimes shaped by oralism and audism, moving beyond perceptual models centered exclusively on hearing and cochlear experience. Through collective experiments, the work explores the voice as a vibratory, tactile, and affective force that moves across bodies, gestures, spaces, and material environments, opening up transcorporeal modes of listening and a political and performative redefinition of language.

Module VI – Elvira Espejo Ayca

April 13–17, 2026

Artist, poet, and director of the Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore in La Paz, Elvira Espejo Ayca leads a residency grounded in Andean epistemologies. Through hands-on work with wool and moments of collective verbal exchange, the module explores oral practices—storytelling, shared reading, speech, and listening—as modes of transmission, reflection, and meaning-making, in dialogue with Biella’s textile history. The process is rooted in her text Uywai – Uywaña. La crianza mutua de las artes and brings into relation situated knowledges, materiality, and collective knowledge.

Module VII – Cromoactivismo

June 15–19, 2026

The collective of artists and activists Cromoactivismo presents Spell of Color, a workshop that employs color as a tool capable of activating the bodies’ sensory dimension and becoming a collective practice of knowledge. Conceived as a metaphor for plural, unsettled, and perceptible knowledge, color functions as a device to challenge dominant narratives and hegemonic norms. Through shared practices, participants will develop a common working protocol in which language emerges as a political gesture and a form of collective activation.

Module VIII – Francisca Benítez

June 22–26, 2026

With In crescendo: tool for assembly, multidisciplinary artist Francisca Benítez invites participants to engage in a collective practice involving human and more-than-human beings within the specific context of place. Structured as a crescendo—from silence to full voice, from individual intention to the weaving of a collective, the residency employs improvisation, somatic listening, and bodily engagement as strategies of participation. The proposed methodologies draw from sign language immersion programs, activist choirs, popular assemblies, and irrigation communities, examining language as a pedagogical, performative, and political space.

Practical information and application process

The Modules of UNIDEE Residency Programs take the form of one-week residencies, hosted within the spaces of Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella. Designed as an immersive format, the program involves cohabitation among participants and the development of individual and collective practices in dialogue with mentors, invited guests, and the working group, within a shared residency environment.

Each Module hosts a limited number of participants—twelve per session—coming from diverse fields of cultural practice and research, with no disciplinary restrictions. The work unfolds through seminar sessions, workshops, experimentation, and moments of exchange, weaving together discursive and material devices within a dynamic space of collective practice. The Modules are embedded within the 2025–2026 program and constitute interconnected stages of the Languages, Please curatorial trajectory.

To apply, candidates are required to complete the online application form, selecting their Module of interest. The call is open until April 15, 2026. Detailed information regarding participation requirements, fees, partial travel grants, logistics, and deadlines is available on the program’s official webpage, together with the full curatorial framework outlining its context and objectives.

UNIDEE Residency Programs is supported by Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, Regione Piemonte, illycaffè S.p.A., Fondazione Zegna, UniCredit Group, Fondazione Deloitte, Fondazione CRT – Cassa di Risparmio di Torino, and Ecotermica Servizi ETS.
UNIDEE residencies are further developed in collaboration with an international network of partners, including A.M. Qattan Foundation, Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation, Institut Français Italia, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and Bienalsur.