I Fumi della Fornace

The festival 'I fumi della fornace' originates from a rumor that attributed the eccentricity and artistic talents of the boys and girls of Valle Cascia, a small hamlet in the province of Macerata, to the fumes produced by the former Smorlesi furnace. This tale of distortion evolved into a foundational myth, a second baptism directed against any certain nature. The entire place is enveloped by this baptismal movement that has never reconciled with itself: a celebration like a perpetual new beginning. Thus, from a seemingly catastrophic place, Valle Cascia transforms into a laboratory of imaginative rebuilding: an attempt to reconstitute the world, becoming a formula that is both lasting and soluble.   The festival is an opportunity for a poetic rediscovery of the area, aimed at reactivating and raising awareness of those forgotten places - which here are transformed into open-air laboratories. Every intervention on the territory cultivates and reverses the original etymology: the park of secular oaks, the brick kiln, and the old disused sources are all brought to a second life. The fumes - resulting from the firing of bricks which once produced surplus value - have today become fabulous fumes from which we want to start to overturn the geography of the community.