On July 3 and 4, La Becque will host the first chapter of an ongoing research project exploring archives as living, embodied, and relational forms of transmission. Developed in collaboration with Italian artist NZIRIA and a group of cultural practitioners from Naples’ queer scene, this inaugural edition departs from the idea that certain histories survive not through institutional preservation but through bodies, voices, music, rituals, and collective practices.

 

Rather than approaching archives as static repositories of the past, the project asks what happens when memory continues to circulate, transform, and generate new forms of life. Rooted in the cultural landscapes of Southern Italy, it draws inspiration from popular traditions, vernacular knowledge, and community-based modes of transmission that have long existed at the margins of official historical narratives.

 

Through a week of collective research at La Becque, participants will share stories, sounds, practices, and personal archives, reflecting on how memories are carried across generations and continually reshaped through encounter. The public programme will emerge from this collective process. Through listening sessions, conversations, and a DJ set, visitors will be invited to experience archives not as objects to be observed, but as living materials in motion — sung, spoken, remembered, transformed, and shared.

 

At a time when archives are increasingly mobilized as cultural and political tools, the project poses a simple yet urgent question: how do communities preserve what matters when their histories are not always recorded, recognized, or protected? And what forms of knowledge continue to survive precisely because they are transmitted from person to person, voice to voice, body to body?

 

The program will be announced soon.

 

La Becque’s public program is supported by the City of La Tour-de-Peilz, Loterie Romande, the Coromandel Foundation, the Philanthropique Famille Sandoz Foundation, and Pensimo Fondsleitung AG.

La Becque is pleased to invite you to a new session of Open Studios on Saturday, July 25, from 12 to 6 pm.

 

Throughout the afternoon, visitors are warmly invited to discover works in progress by our current residents: Alice Bucknell, Clemens Fischer, Drew McDowall, Mahshid Rafiei, Mira M. Yang, Puer Deorum, and Zoé Samudzi.

 

Open Studios offer a unique opportunity to delve into the artists’ ongoing research and engage with their practices.

 

Free entry, bar and food on site.

 

La Becque’s public program is supported by the City of La Tour-de-Peilz, Loterie Romande, the Coromandel Foundation, the Philanthropique Famille Sandoz Foundation, and Pensimo Fondsleitung AG.

La Becque, 2026, photo Matthieu Croizier