Darkness isn’t absence,
it’s a fertile space of possibility.
Hello Darkness
is neither a welcome nor a farewell
It’s a statement.
In this space, we slow down when everything pushes us to speed up.
Let’s turn down the volume, turn off the spotlight, choose inappropriate locations. Let’s linger where the norm demands we go further. Let’s allow doubt, contradiction, and ambiguity to become resources, not obstacles.
Public Program
/ Hello Darkness
Talks, performances, assemblies, installations, participatory practices, and listening moments.
A program that explores the contradictions of the present, not seeking simplified solutions, but opening up spaces of possibility.
It’s a space for listening to hidden knowledge and marginal insights.
A field of tensions where art and culture become tools for overturning established hierarchies and imagining other ways of inhabiting the world.
It is the third stage of a journey dedicated to relationships, after The Convivial Laboratory (2024) and Making Kin (2025).
FULL CALENDAR
→ FEBRUARY 11th | Living where everything endures. Inhabiting the uninhabitable.
In conversation with Donato Giovannelli and Valeria Verdolini
→ February 13th | They Shoot Horses. Dance and Rituals of Resistance: An 8-Hour Disco Dance Marathon by Phil Collins
→ March 12th | Collective Bodies. Forms of Collectivity with Flavia Carlini and Dan Hancox
→ March 13th | Di/STRAUSS TECHNIQUE. Interactive performance by Ivo Dimchev
→ MAY 7th | DARKNESS SPEAKS. The Language of New Worlds with Igiaba Scego and Vera Gheno
→ MAY 8th | R.OSA. Performance by Silvia Gribaudi with Claudia Marsicano
→ MAY 22nd-24th | 10 YEARS OF BASE
Living Where Everything Resists. A Conversation with Donato Giovannelli and Valeria Verdolini
they shoot horses: a disco dance marathon by Phil Collins
Collective Bodies. Forms of Collectivity
Di/STRAUSS Technique by Ivo Dimchev
Why
Hello, Darkness
In the depths, where light cannot reach, there exist life forms that have developed other perceptions, subtle alliances, and intermittent bioluminescence.
Similarly, in the unstable present we are living through — marked by ecological, emotional, social, and political crises — darkness can become a space of possibility, not an end.
Crossing the darkness means recognizing depth as a political and generative space. It is from the threshold between the surface and the abyss that we can rethink cultural models, forms of relationship, and the possibilities of coexistence.
Resourses
/ Hello Darkness
In this section, you’ll find ideas, reflections, articles, voices, and questions to help you explore and navigate the darkness of Hello, Darkness together.
We welcome contributions from creatives, studios, and guests who join us in this space, listening to submerged knowledge.
On Magic, The Obscene, Bodily Fluids and Witches
We Will Design /
2026 productions
Hello Darkness
Milan Design Week 2026 @ BASE
We Will Design is one of the major productions of Hello Darkness 2026
and the platform with which BASE Milano, during Design Week, gives space to the new generation of design.
Each year, BASE becomes an open laboratory of prototypes, visions, and radical practices,
where institutions, emerging designers, international schools, and universities meet.
Here, new and urgent voices emerge, using design to interrogate the present
and imagine more equitable, accessible, and informed futures.