Babel Islands, the literary and linguistic islands of Belinzona

After the edition dedicated to the relationship between the arts, Babel it pushes towards solitary lands, remote or near the coast, formed by erosion or arising from volcanoes, real, linguistic, metaphorical: 2023 is the year of Babel Islands.

In the ocean of literature and history, islands have always emerged as both physical and mental territories: paradises in which to take refuge or hells from which one only seeks to escape, places of preservation and hybridization, ideal for building utopias or inviolable prisons, outposts to conquer, dots of resistance that do not let themselves be submerged, sometimes unobtainable like the Rokovoko of Moby Dick "which is not indicated on any map" because "real places never are". But islands are everywhere: islands of joy and torment, of escape and confinement. And if the poet and cleric John Donne reminded us that "no man is an island" it is because each of us tends to become one.

Babel Islands invites writers and writers from the islands, or who thanks to the magmatic force or the slow accumulation of their stories have created entire archipelagos never seen before. And with them those who stubbornly and at any time ferry their words to the ports of our language. In addition to the literary meetings, Babel Islands hosts a film festival, a concert, two DJ sets, an art exhibition, a writing workshop in the adoptive language and various literary translation workshops.

It begins on Thursday 14 with artBabel e cineBabel: the inauguration of the exhibition “L'isola” by Victor Mortarotti e Anush Hamzehian at Spazio 5b in Bellinzona, dedicated to Yonaguni, an island in Japan where no more than a thousand people now live, few of whom still speak dunan, a highly endangered language; and the projection of The enigma of Kaspar Hauser by Werner Herzog at the Cinema Forum.

The inaugural evening is Friday 15 September at the Antico Convento delle Agostiniana di Monte Carasso and will see as guests Thomas Soldini – poet and novelist of the only island without the sea, as he himself defined Switzerland – in dialogue with Ariele Morinini, and the psychedelic-pop trio Mount Mai with their new album Eye Sea Double. To follow a DJ set by Radio gwen.

Between Saturday 16 and Sunday 17, at the Teatro Sociale in Bellinzona will alternate: Werner Herzog, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time and author of books as iconic as his films, in dialogue with the poet Fabio Pusterla starting from The twilight of the world (Feltrinelli, 2021), story of the Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda, who for twenty-nine years, after the end of the Second World War, defended an island in the Philippines, convinced that the conflict was still ongoing; Auður Ava Olafsdóttir (Prix Médicis Étranger, European Strega finalist) with his Icelandic as essential as his island, in dialogue with Stefano Rosatti, who has translated all his novels for Einaudi; Georgi Gospodinov (European Witch 2021, International Booker Prize 2023) with the time islands of her latest novel Chrono-refuge (Voland 2022) together with Włodek Goldkorn.

Haitian novelists and poets Makenzie Orcel e James Christmas who tell us about love at the time of the earthquake, from the brothels of the Grand-Rue of Port-au-Prince to the NGO camps, together with Giuseppe Sofo, who translated them into Italian for the first time for Babel; the linguistic and poetic islands of Leta Semadeni (Swiss Grand Prize for Literature 2023), Ailbhe Ni Ghearbhuigh e Francis Ottonello, between Romansh, Irish and Sardinian; novelist, poet and screenwriter Nuno Costa Santos and his Azores together with Roberto Francavilla; Daniela Almansi e Samantha K. Milton Knowles on their translations of La caccia to the Squarlo by Lewis Carroll e Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren; the rapper Francesco “Kento” Carlo, the psychotherapist and writer Paul Miorandi, the author and theater director Laura Sicignano who to the microphones of Moby Dick – Rete 2 tell us what happens when art meets the islands of in/difference: prisons, asylums, refugee camps.

In addition, two new events: the evening of Saturday 16th in Castelgrande, with Max Lobe, Swiss novelist of Cameroonian origin published in Italy by 66thand2nd, who presents a text written especially for Babel and Vulcano (RSI Rete Due); and closing on Sunday 17 at the Babel tent the project Coming Soon!, a space dedicated to Swiss writers under 30 to present their work in progress, with a round table and readings followed by an aperitif and DJ set by Radio Gwen.

Admission to the festival's events is free, with the exception of the cineBabel review and the meeting with Werner Herzog.