Transart has spent close to three decades treating South Tyrol as a working surface rather than a backdrop. The 2026 edition, running from 10 to 20 September, keeps that method intact. Performances arrive in a timber factory in Cortaccia, a private art foundation above Bolzano, a municipal theatre, a greenhouse, a former barracks and the Stadio Europa, each venue chosen for what it does to the work and for what the work does to it.
The programme opens with the Haydn Orchestra playing Simon Steen-Andersen alongside Michael Gordon and Bill Morrison, and closes ten days later with Manuel Zwerger. In between: Béla Tarr's seven-hour Sátántangó, Romeo Castellucci summoning a room of masked strangers, Xiu Xiu rebuilding Eraserhead from modular synths and live recording, Matthew Herbert sampling tinned food into dancefloor material, Rocío Márquez taking flamenco through three towns, Japanese taiko in the Vinschgau, Persian dastgāh among the flowers at Floricoltura Schullian, and Florentina Holzinger flying a church bell over a stadium.
What connects them is a shared appetite for consequence. These are artists who ask their audiences to stay in the room, to accept the discomfort of looking and being looked at, and to hear tradition returned in a shape that carries its own weight. Patti Smith arrives on 29 November with Words and Music, a final coda for the year. Tickets, locations and full programme at www.transart.it
Credere alle maschere
Romeo Castellucci · Fondazione Antonio Dalle Nogare
Thu 17.09 (4 Performances: 6PM-7PM-8PM-9PM)
FRI 18.09 (4 Performances: 6PM-7PM-8PM-9PM)
Photography: Lorenza Daverio
For thirty-five wordless minutes, Castellucci hands responsibility back to the person who came to watch. Fifty masks wait at the door of an empty, clinical room. Wearing one means giving up a name and joining a temporary body of identical faces, where the act of looking arrives with its own return address: whoever watches gets watched. A lone chair occupies the centre, silent and loaded, carrying centuries of association between authority, punishment and the image. Around it, an alphabet of pictures and silences assembles itself. The reassuring distance between spectator and scene gives way. First presented at FOG, Triennale Milano, and co-produced with Transart, the work confirms Castellucci's standing as one of the most rigorous figures in European theatre. Four performances across the evening at the Fondazione Antonio Dalle Nogare. Recommended from age 14.
ERASERHEAD XIU XIU
Xiu Xiu + Matthew Herbert · Rothoblaas, Cortaccia
Sat 12.09, 8PM
Photography: Eva Luise Hoppe
Two of the most uncompromising practices in current sound share one evening inside the Rothoblaas plant, in partnership with Museion. Jamie Stewart and Angela Seo return to David Lynch after Plays the Music of Twin Peaks, this time entering Eraserhead itself. Live recording, handmade instruments, modular synths and musique concrète run alongside original film footage, light bursts and analogue texture, building a dense audiovisual body that answers the 1977 debut rather than illustrating it. Matthew Herbert follows with his latest solo album, titled after a brutal statistic: British food banks now outnumber McDonald's branches, from roughly 35 in 2010 to more than 2,800, distributing over three million parcels in 2023. Tins, soap, nappies, rice and shampoo become the raw sample bank for club music with a political spine. Italian premiere. One ticket covers both sets.
Stadion Étude
Florentina Holzinger · Stadio Europa, Bolzano
Sat 19.09, 7PM
Photography: Katia Wik
Florentina Holzinger takes apart the stadium as the cathedral of the present. Stadion Étude, a satellite of SEAWORLD VENICE, her contribution to the Austrian Pavilion, arrives at the Stadio Europa as a site-specific composition for hot-air balloon, Musikkapelle, bells and performers. A large bell hangs beneath the balloon and travels the sky above the pitch. In South Tyrol that sound carries history: church bells marked territorial limits for centuries, set the rhythm of spiritual discipline and defined who belonged where. Below, the communal tradition of the Musikkapelle and the tone of the zither supply the ground, an echo running between old and new. Alpine motifs rooted in regional Volksmusik return in altered form, casting a strange spell over a valley ringed by mountains. Forty minutes.
Contains explicit content.
Age 18 and above.
More infos and tickets here: www.transart.it/it/editions/26