Rome, performance turns Esquiline pharmacies into discos: dancing under signs

An artistic performance in Rome to dance under the signs of the capital’s pharmacies: the bizarre idea, titled Pharmacy Night, is by art historian Fabrizio Federici and is part of the Urma project. Public Space and Contemporary Landscape in the City of Rome, by cultural project creator Maral Kekejian. The date is Friday, Sept. 10, and Saturday, Sept. 11, at the Esquiline, where participants will dance in silent disco mode under the illuminated pharmacy signs.

“The days and, more importantly, the nights of our cities,” reads the project’s presentation, “are lit intermittently by countless cruciform signs. Their electronic frenzy distances them from the spirit of the places they signal, which people enter, silently and perhaps apprehensively, to seek help and find remedy for their ills. Instead, it connects them to spaces that may seem opposite: those frenzied lights hark back to the lasers and spotlights that accompany and rhythmically rip through the darkness of nightclubs. Very distant places, undoubtedly, although the need to feel better that drives one to cross the threshold of both is not so different.”

In short, according to the organizers, it is not so absurd to gather to dance at the foot of these salutary crosses. All the more so now that the health emergency has deprived us of spaces dedicated to dance, locked us in our homes for months, limited our social contacts, and drastically reshaped the concept of public space as a place for meeting, exchange, and appropriation of the city. Thus, now that we are timidly returning to the outdoors, Pharmacy Night can be a fun opportunity to reclaim and revive the idea of public space. Not only that, for the organizers it also constitutes a grassroots occasion to resemantize the symbols that populate the urban areas of our cities.

Three DJs will kick off the dancing: Eva Geist, Hugo Sánchez and Juanito Jones. It will be an opportunity, the organizers conclude, “to taste in a somewhat unexpected way the different sounds of some of the protagonists of the Roman and Madrid nightlife music scene, and above all an original and regenerating way of experiencing common spaces.”

Rome, performance turns Esquiline pharmacies into discos: dancing under signs

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.