world premiere

At Rewire 2024, Atelier Impopulaire and Blacks’ Myths present the world premiere of 12 Gates, a new act of the opera in three parts titled Before We Love. Atelier Impopulaire is the collaboration of artist and cultural activist Pia Bolognesi and filmmaker and dramatist Giulio Bursi. Since 2012 they have worked together on projects involving moving-image, writing, installation, and sculpture. Together they research visual languages by deconstructing and reinterpreting how representations function in contemporary culture. At Rewire they present a collaboration with New York City–based duo Blacks’ Myths – featuring Luke Stewart on bass and Trae Crudup on drums. Blacks’ Myths unique sound is one of avant-garde intensity, poetic lyricism, and cataclysmic noise. Commissioned especially for Rewire 2024 by Rewire and Nest, Before We Love, Act 2: 12 Gates is a large-scale multi-screen installation that integrates rare archival material with new footage inspired by the story and the legacy of UMBRA Poets Workshop (1961–1963). It adds a second chapter to a trilogy of works by Atelier Impopulaire that delves into the birth of underground artistic movements and civil rights activism in the Italian, African-American, and Latino communities of 1960s New York. The installation, assembled at Nest’s new temporary space in Laak, will be transformed twice per day into a polyphonic, multi-layered sound environment by Blacks’ Myths, whose sound itself evokes the plurality of voices and the complexity of the political dynamics that shaped UMBRA – who laid the framework for the Black Arts Movement, changed the course of US poetry, and prompted the birth of free jazz.