TENSIONI – La Fabbrica dello Zucchero

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"Tensioni" is a multidisciplinary festival launched in 2019 within the Fabbrica dello Zucchero’s calendar of activities. It is a cultural centre housed in a former sugar factory in the city of Rovigo, and was restructured as part of a larger suburban regeneration project.

The theme of the first edition of Tensioni was "Geography of Relationships". Our response to the client's request to design the posters was to plan a three-day workshop, which took place at La Fabbrica dello Zucchero, in order to investigate how relationships are represented.

The Tensioni graphics, acting as a guide for the whole series of posters, feature a metaphorical elastic that connects a T to an I. It is a visual container that can collect different interpretations of the theme. Three of them have been elaborated: "Geomorphic", "A beautiful place" and "Tensions of light".

"Geomorphic" represents a dialogue amongst the art that was featured at the festival, using fluid and geometric shapes to draw the "boundaries" of each poster. Each poster is at the same time something to explore, and a partial component of a larger cartography that reveals its own meanings when seen as a mutual relationship of several posters side by side.

"A beautiful place" tells a story about the history of the spaces of the festival, exploring some visual and sound artefacts from the 80s, when the location had been abandoned. This theme is also explored in a video.

"Light Tensions" reflects on the interaction between the spectator and the festival performances, translated into graphics inspired by the natural light sources that are a defining characteristic of the venue, which strongly identifies with its windows and the flow of natural light. The poster visuals were produced by a generative reworking of the light inputs.

Geomorphic

A beautiful place

Light Tensions

Regardless of the specific characteristics of each sub-theme, the series of 50 posters, "Tensions.
A geography of relationships", tackles the challenge of creating a system of polyphonic content by identifying a continuity within the breadth and variety of the festival's art forms and the relationships that are built because of it.