MISSION STATEMENT

SOPRA SOTTO is a residency, living laboratory, and ongoing experiment. A shared field of contemplation that brings together interdisciplinary artists, thinkers, writers, creators, visionaries, educators, activists, and change makers within an open, flexible framework meant for questioning, creative exchange, and collaborative exploration.

 

We currently live inside systems that are unraveling and being exposed. Structures built on extraction, hierarchy, separation, and domination are increasingly visible as exclusionary. This moment calls for other ways of being, living, working, and relating. Letting go of systems that never truly served us, and moving toward ways rooted in connection, regeneration, land, community and accountability. The challenge of navigating between global awareness and local action in our perpetually digitally connected world is approached with humility and curiosity.

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SOPRA SOTTO is a container where communal living becomes method, creativity becomes connection, and dialogue becomes research. The residency structure is decentralized, with residents shaping the format and content through a co-created program. This forms a fluid frame that remains in motion and is open to change. The approach is process-based and does not focus on tangible outcomes or results. 

 

Learning is collective, unfolding through embodied experience, play and presence. Nature is a teacher rather than a resource, where intuitive knowledge is valued alongside rational understanding. Creativity, rest, community, and care become forms of resistance, and relationship-building an ongoing practice of defiance.

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​Art and creative expression are understood as practices of critical inquiry, shared (un)learning and dialogue. Creativity is seen a language and lens rather than a commodity. Art is approached not decoration, aesthetic, trend, or entertainment, but a tool for inciting subtle societal shifts. It has the power to question and challenge the status quo, while also envisioning and creating new worlds alongside it.

 

Radical imagination opens space for other ways of thinking and being, and alternative futures. Not only resisting dominant and harmful systems, but building other realities in parallel as the old ones crumble. The residents, as culture shapers and changemakers, carry these experiences back into their fields, allowing transformation to flow outward through ripple effect and shape culture and collective consciousness.​

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VALUES
Interconnectedness. Reciprocity. Symbiosis. Embodiment. Presence. Slowness. Care. Alignment with cyclical and seasonal rhythms. Local rootedness. Collective responsibility. Intersectionality. Diversity of perspectives. Intersectional learning. Direct communication. Emotional honesty. Transparency. Humility. Curiosity. Experimentation. Non-linear thinking. Respect for complexity, paradox, and the unknown. Balance between intuition and intellect.

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RESOURCES AND INSPIRATION

• Joana Macy

• Audre Lorde

• bell hooks

• Silvia Federici

• Vandana Shiva

• Antonio Gramsci

• Bruno Latour

• Bayo Akomolafe

• David Graeber

• Frantz Fanon

• Angela Davis

• Paolo Freire

• Starhawk

• Donna Haraway

• Rebecca Solnit

• Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels

• Rosa Luxemburg

• Bessel van der Kolk

• Gabor Maté

• Thomas Hübl

• Rupert Sheldrake

• Simone de Beauvoir

• Ursula K. le Guinn