Dark MatterS is the festival organised by Lavanderia a Vapore that takes place during the winter season to celebrate darkness as a space-time in which to learn to see the present and the future through different lenses.
The title alludes to the importance of darkness in revolutionising the lenses through which we filter and describe the world, intertwining issues of blindness and blackness, thus mobilising communities and artists who are often marginalised and invisible due to issues of race or access. These reversals are not only thematised but translated into operational choices: the project is developed in collaboration with Black History Month Torino and the Italian Union of Blind and Visually Impaired People, with performances, workshops and moments of reflection.
The dramaturgy of the 2026 edition, in particular, articulates the general framework of the festival - the intersection between blindness and blackness - with the dimension of night and the wild, interpreting darkness as a zone of sleep and dreams, a realm even more subversive than the scientific and exacting orientation of the Western approach.