Curated by Lavanderia a Vapore and Workspace Ricerca X
Supported by Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo
Research Camping returns for its fifth edition: the spaces within the Lavanderia a Vapore—from the foyer to the theater—are transformed into hybrid environments blurring the line between fiction and reality, serving as vehicles for the exchange and dissemination of artistic research processes.
Research Camping 2026 explores the concept of a “change of state”—both bodily and spatiotemporal. By challenging the precision of focus and the linear principle of cause and effect, we disrupt worlds and celebrate atmospheres that are hazy, liminal, and nuanced.
Shifting bodies embraces transformation and transition as a perpetual state rather than a mere stepping stone toward a reassuring destination. We explore the threshold and the liminal state to open pathways into a new morphology of matter—one that is fluid, fragmented, and vulnerable.
Research Camping is a shifting world where bodies are free to experiment with unconventional postures and tensions that converge within a realm of possibility. Amidst this changing, hazy atmosphere, gazes turn upward or toward other directions. Orientations are disrupted, opening onto vast horizons and places where potential can erupt in unexpected directions and new forms of articulation.
The environments embodying these dynamics in this edition are the parking lot and the observatory: thresholds that shape bodies and postures, inviting us to rethink how we position ourselves in space and how we share practices and materials within the collective spirit of the Camping. It is precisely through the sharing of research practices and materials that these spaces will come alive, activated by the temporary community of artist-researchers, participants, and visitors who inhabit them.
