ADRIFT: camminare come atto politico

In May 2025, BASE hosted the first phase of the artistic residency by Mammalian Diving Reflex: an intensive workshop involving the participants of the Sottospecie program, part of the international project Mammalian Droppings.

For one week, a group of young participants “drifted” through the Tortona neighborhood, engaging in a radical form of urban observation. Guided by the Canadian artistic collective, they collected dozens of stories, details, questions—and, above all, relationships. They met with residents, shopkeepers, commuters, and passersby, practicing a deep, unfiltered form of listening based on empathy and curiosity.

Mammalian calls this method “social acupuncture”: a way of reading the territory through what remains unseen, connecting personal micro-stories to collective tensions, and generating new imaginaries for public space.

The result? More than 30 concepts for participatory performances, all born from the desire to flip traditional roles between artist and audience, center and margin, ordinary and extraordinary.
Some of the ideas included:
→ a neighborhood café run by retirees,
→ an intergenerational rave,
→ performances that turn everyday gestures into poetic rituals,
→ urban explorations confronting the tension between the district’s polished image and its lived reality.

This phase, titled Adrift, lays the foundation for the Mammalian Droppings project: a collective exercise in radical imagination that travels across different cities—Milan, Québec City, Riga—bringing together emerging artists and local communities.

The workshop concluded with a public presentation, open to the city: a sharing of the ideas and stories that emerged throughout the process, giving the audience a chance to engage with the narratives and reflections that surfaced.

The project continues with Many Many Ways, the second phase of the residency, taking place July 13–18, 2025

SOTTOSPECIE È UN PROGETTO REALIZZATO CON IL SOSTEGNO DI