8 sunrises 2026: video art looks at the Moon in Noto With The Time Of The Moon

The Moon becomes a symbol of transformation, listening and new possibilities in the fourth edition of 8 albe, the contemporary art festival organized by Dimora delle Balze, in Noto. Until August 27, 2026, the program curated by Lucia Pietroiusti, with the assistance of Danai Giannoglou, brings sixteen international artists to Sicily for a cycle of five evenings dedicated to video art and the relationship between contemporary crisis, spirituality and perception. The title of this edition, The Time Of The Moon, invites us to look beyond the logic of acceleration to rediscover a cyclical, shared and profoundly human time.

The Time Of The Moon: the theme of the fourth edition of 8 sunrises

The selected works react with their creativity to a present marked by political insecurities, environmental transformations and ever more rapid changes. In this scenario, the search for 'beyond', the sublime and the transcendent becomes an urgent strategy. The gaze turns to the Moon, a star that more than any other embodies this tension and this desire. Lunar time escapes the logic of acceleration and solution, suggesting ways of accepting and embodying change in its infinite and inevitable nature that concerns all things, nature and us.

“This edition of 8 sunrises,” says curator Lucia Pietroiusti, “proposes a change of perspective: prioritizing perception over control, the dimension of community over individuality, rediscovering and reconnecting with ancestral knowledge systems that continue to be active in the present.”

Videoart, Spirituality and Climate Change

The video art cycle is divided into five meetings in which art returns to measure itself with a present undergoing profound transformations. If the previous edition, Tramonti: cosmogonies and the End of Worlds, reflected on how new lives and knowledge could be born from moments of collapse, The Time Of The Moon investigates a renewed search for intensity, sublime and new possibilities for connection. Faced with political instability and climate crisis, the individual and collective response is to turn our gaze to what exceeds daily experience: spirits, landscapes, ancestors, rituals, prayers and ecstatic visions become tools for imagining new forms of relationship with the world. It is in this context that the Moon re-emerges as a physical, metaphysical and symbolic force, suggesting a cyclical and non-linear vision of time. Looking at it does not mean fleeing reality, but recovering energy to build new forms of listening and connection.

Sixteen international artists in dialogue with the present

The program brings together the works of Nicole L'Huillier, Patricia Dominguez, Collective Los Ingravidos, Jeremy Shaw, Himali Singh Soin, Cao Shu, Metahaven, Hylozoic/Desires, Sammy Lee, Tabita Rezaire, Fredj Moussa, Floris Schönfeld, Monica Ursina Jäger and Ique Langa, as well as other protagonists of the international contemporary video art scene. “This year, the program brings together a selection of films that activate altered perceptual registers as tools for interpreting the present time,” underlines Lucia Pietroiusti. “The works relate ecological collapse and spiritual intensity as intertwined conditions of inhabiting a world that transforms more rapidly than language can describe. The spiritual dimension emerges as a direct, embodied experience - in bodies, movements, transformations, landscapes and collective gestures, rather than as an ideological construction.”

The works on display: from deep time to ancestral rituals

Among the works presented, LIQUID TIME - An Earthly Archive of Weathering Thoughts (2022) by Monica Ursina Jäger stands out, an artistic reflection on sedimentation, erosion, geology and deep time. Through documentation, animation and narration, the film follows the journey of a grain of sand from the mountain to the riverbeds, to the depths of the Earth, intertwining real and imaginary spaces. In Tonalli, on the other hand, the collective Los Ingrávidas is inspired by the ancient Nahuatl concept of life force to build a hypnotic cinematic collage where fire, flowers and moons evoke the gods of creation and fertility through images in continuous movement.

Dimora delle Balze continues its research on video art

With this new edition, Dimora delle Balze confirms its commitment to the promotion of video art as a language capable of reading the present. After exploring the concepts of kinship and coexistence between different species in 2023, the relationship with water in 2024 and rebirth through the ends in 2025, the project continues its research today questioning the multiple manifestations of spirituality, from myth to prayer to ecstasy.