NOTO.- Cosmogonies and Ends of Worlds is the title of the third edition of 8 Albe, a contemporary art program promoted by Dimora delle Balze, taking place in Noto from July 31 to August 28, 2025. Curated by Lucia Pietroiusti, Curator and Head of Ecologies at Serpentine Galleries in London, the edition features four evenings of video art presented through a deliberately repetitive sequence of titles: How We Ended, How We Began, How We Ended, How We Began.
Twenty-five video artworks by sixteen international artists guide viewers through a time of profound transformation. From mythic origins to melancholic laments, from ancient spiritual traditions to cosmic fables, the works in Tramonti: Cosmogonies and Ends of Worlds imagine the emergence of lives and knowledge through endings and new beginnings. Rather than offering utopian or apocalyptic visions, these video works carve out a space for the tender creation of worlds, as we engage in the work of letting go.
The third edition of 8 Albe launches on July 31 in Noto. Curated by Lucia Pietroiusti—Curator and Head of Ecologies at the Serpentine Galleries in London—the 2025 edition is titled Tramonti: Cosmogonies and Ends of Worlds. It is a cycle of video art where artistic expression guides us through a landscape of transformation. From mythical origins to melancholic elegies, from ancient and spiritual traditions to cosmic tales, the artworks imagine how new lives and forms of knowing can emerge from endings. These are not visions of utopia or catastrophe, but rather spaces of possibility—worlds tenderly formed as we learn the art of release. Because Tramonti is not a farewell, but a passage.
The twenty-five video works selected by the curator structure four evenings—July 31, August 7, August 21, and August 28—whose titles How We Ended, How We Began, How We Ended, How We Began provocatively begin with the end. The program unfolds as a cycle, inviting reflection on time not as a linear trajectory, but as a metabolic process of continuous transformation. These works offer a profound gaze upon a world in flux—composed of forms, lives, spaces, and knowledge destined, by their very nature, to be ephemeral. From the ruins of past civilizations to the silence left by knowledge erased by colonialism or catastrophe, the works evoke what remains and what is inevitably lost—suggesting that every ending may, in truth, be a reawakening.
The languages of Alice Bucknell, Yin-Ju Chen, Marcus Coates, Kyriaki Goni, Camille Henrot, Karrabing Film Collective, Asim Khan, Ailton Krenak, Lina Lapelytė, Peter Nadin, Eva Papamargariti, Agnieszka Polska, Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen, Cauleen Smith, Aimée Toledano, and Natsuko Uchino speak of a shared urgency. These are artists concerned with ecological issues, whose practices enter into dialogue with the sciences and philosophies that help us understand the contemporary world—and the need to rethink civilization itself in a way that includes nature and its wild, untamed dimension, which we stubbornly continue to exclude from ourselves.
At the heart of this edition lies an urgent question: How can we imagine the end of our world while we still inhabit it? The certainties that have upheld it now appear less stable. Environmental and social crises urge us to engage with radical possibilities of change. These processes and transformations—from climate emergency to cultural conflict—are already underway, communicated daily in data, images, and stories, yet our awareness and perception often remain inert.
Lucia Pietroiusti states:
"We learn of the rise and fall of magnificent civilizations, or the remnants of colonial incursion; much is conveyed by the silence of those world-making forms of knowledge that were erased by time, power, or catastrophe. Yet when living within a world, its end may fall beyond the reach of our imagination. It may be impossible to envision that our world could end entirely. It feels almost insurmountable: to imagine ourselves—us, here, in this quiet moment—as belonging to such a world."
Some of the works provide the conceptual scaffolding to consider our capacity to envision alternative ways of living on Earth, revealing how Indigenous cosmologies and philosophical or scientific traditions share profound truths about the nature of being. Some offer speculative, imaginary origins of humanity—as a symbiosis between humans and flowers. Others explore apocalyptic futures,or revolve around the need to mediate between dominant notions of civilization as the only viable form of life, and the idea that life itself is inherently wild. They challenge us to consider how the forest might exist within us—in our homes, our gardens—so that we might generate a new paradigm in which nature is re-centered in the design of our cities and our futures.
8 Albe at Dimora delle Balze evolves from a deliberate vision of the estate's proprietors, who promote the program:
"In 2023, the first edition of 8 Albe explored kinship and coexistence among different species. In 2024, we turned to the theme of water and the ocean. With this edition, 8 Albe continues its radical and interdisciplinary investigation into the realms of Nature, its fundamental elements, and the time that sustains and shapes them—against the systems that oppose them, which humanity persists in advancing. We believe that the gaze of art remains the most effective tool today to express what science struggles to communicate. With this edition, we stand at the borders of what we call the civilized world—and we invite everyone to cross that threshold and render it permeable, both physically and philosophically.”
Dimora delle Balze is a 19th-century estate located in Noto, Eastern Sicily, on the Iblean plateau, nestled in a 27-hectare valley just a few kilometers from Palazzolo Acreide, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2002. The site is steeped in history: an ancient gate leads to a garden where remnants of old architecture coexist with classical columns, restored and supporting a pergola that opens onto the valley and the Manghisi river. The unmistakably Mediterranean landscape—of lemon groves, jasmine, Modica stone, cantilevered terraces, and a carob-lined avenue—is today shaped by the vision and deep-rooted Sicilian heritage of the Lops family, who have undertaken a remarkable project of restoration. Over the years, they have revitalized and returned to splendor vast tracts of once-abandoned land. Their ethos is clear: to shape a revolutionary future through conscious choices that contribute to the well-being of the planet.
