The second half of the project ROOTED RITUALS proposed urban explorations across landscapes and communities through a performative workshop format using action-cards. The third stage, Acque in Dialogo, transformed the city’s waterways into tools for observation and listening. Along the Naviglio Martesana, participants embarked on a silent walk, taking part in collective actions to rediscover water as a vital and symbolic element, observing its dialogue with the urban environment. The experience encouraged reflection on sustainability and daily life, inviting participants to perceive the body in poetic relation with the river and the landscape, turning the flow of water into a gesture of shared attention.

Participants walked along the Naviglio Martesana, exploring the relationship between body, water, and landscape through writing, drawing, and performative actions. In BREATHING TREES, they synchronized their breathing with the trees and their movements. With COLLABORATING WITH NATURE, they integrated their bodies among the spontaneous plants on walls, following their rhythms. In ART IN PASSAGE, they collected gestures of passersby and transformed them into drawings to give to others. During WORDS OF WATER, participants wrote words related to water and hung them on the bridge as a symbolic dialogue. In RELAXING IN THE FLOW , they sat to listen to their bodies and breath, recalling the flow of the river. The final action FLOW FOR YOU concluded the route with a collective circle, in which gestures mimicked the flow of water, evoking the beauty of shared movement and mutual attentiveness between people and environment.

About ROOTED RITUALS

ROOTED RITUALS is a site-specific public art initiative that weaves together participatory performances and food design workshops, fostering meaningful and embodied connections between people and food. The project emerged as one of the winners of the European call Feed Your Future – Engaging Youth for Creative Climate Action, promoted by Rede DLBC Lisboa and coordinated by the Municipality of Milan within the Creative Europe framework. It was realized through the collaboration of JOYY! Food Design, Laboratorio Silenzio, Social Design Lab, and APICAIA – Association for Italy-Asia Cultural and Artistic Exchange. Activities took place in selected neighborhoods of Milan, areas where access to food knowledge and cultural participation is often limited, yet ripe for new narratives and shared spaces.