Thursdays at Hortus Conclusus are back

There are places that, without raising their voice, end up becoming appointments. Not only physical spaces, but small collective habits: we go back because we feel good, because we listen to something that stays, because for one evening the city seems to allow itself the rare luxury of conversation. That’s what has been happening for three years in the O.A.M.I. garden in Livorno, in Borgo San Jacopo, where the cycle of meetings conceived and organized by the psychoanalyst Pier Giorgio Curti has grown season after season, until it has become a small festival capable of bringing together ideas, culture and the pleasure of being together. It’s called Hortus Conclusus 2026 – Polyphonies of the meeting. Contemporary intersections the new edition of the summer calendar that will start on June 25th and will keep us company until July 23rd, every Thursday, always at 9:30 pm: a title that recalls the ancient idea of the enclosed, protected, intimate garden, but anything but separated from the world. On the contrary: precisely in this secluded, intimate and welcoming space, some of the most alive questions of our time will enter. What does it mean to meet today? What remains of the relationship in the age of digital connections? What space do lament, fragility, art, poetry, critical thinking have, while everything seems to push us towards performance, speed, immediate solutions? Hortus Conclusus was born from the intuition of slowing down as a civil need, and not only as an individual strategy to resist the tyranny of a frenetic world. A form of care and attention that has allowed to gradually record a growing participation, in front of a curious, transversal audience, which does not seek the glossy conference, but a place where ideas can circulate naturally, without losing depth: “This festival has progressively assumed a function that goes beyond that of a simple welcoming place and has become a permanent laboratory of citizenship, relationship and shared culture – explains Pier Giorgio Curti – and it is not casual that all this happens in the garden of the O.A.M.I. Disability Center. We are profoundly convinced that culture should be considered a common good and a fundamental right, accessible to all and capable of producing individual and collective well-being. This garden thus becomes a powerful symbol: a space traditionally perceived as destined for care is transformed into a space of cultural production open to the city, where people with disabilities are not simply recipients of care interventions, but fully participate in the construction of the symbolic fabric of the community. In this sense – Curti continues – the festival represents a concrete experience of cultural welfare, a perspective that recognizes culture as an essential function in promoting health, relational well-being, social participation and quality of life, placing itself within a vision of disability that goes beyond the logic of separation and passive assistance, to promote instead a culture of encounter and mutual participation.”

The series confirms its multidisciplinary vocation this year as well. Psychoanalysis, philosophy, art, poetry, technology, the feminine, artificial intelligence, and new humanisms are not treated as separate compartments, but as polyphonies, different threads of the same fabric. Because the encounter, if authentic, is never a straight line. It’s an interweaving. Sometimes a question. Sometimes a stumbling block. Sometimes a different way of looking at what we thought we already knew.

It starts on Thursday, June 25th at 9:30 pm with Elegy for lament. Against the tyranny of problem solving. The protagonist of the evening will be Pier Giorgio Curti himself, author of the book that gives the title to the evening, with the participation of the teacher Elisabetta Porta and the actress Lara Gallo. The theme is both serious and liberating: in a society that wants to turn every pain into a procedure, every difficulty into an objective to solve, every wound into management, lament can return to be a form of truth. Not victimhood but language of limits, expression of what does not immediately allow itself to be domesticated. A reflection that crosses psychoanalysis, philosophy and daily life, with the contribution of the theatrical voice to give body and intensity to the word.

Thursday, July 2nd will address one of the great questions of our time with the philosopher Paolo Ercolani: Real relationships or virtual connections? The human in the face of artificial intelligence, a reflection on the transformations that digital technologies are introducing into the ways of inhabiting the world and building relationships.

Thursday, July 9th will be the turn of the psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carla Boccia with a meeting entitled Women on the brink of infinity. Poetry, illness and psychiatry.

Thursday, July 16th, the festival will host the artist Franca Pisani and the restorer Ilaria Filippelli in The voice of women in art, a meeting dedicated to feminine creativity as a space of expression, transformation, and testimony.

Finally, on Thursday, July 23rd, the cycle will conclude with What feminine for a new humanism?, a reflection that looks to the future and the new cultural, social, and symbolic configurations that are emerging in our age together with Claudia Pavoletti and Darya Majidi. All appointments will be held in the O.A.M.I. garden, at Borgo San Jacopo 134/A, in Livorno, starting at 9:30 pm. Admission is free until seats are exhausted. Booking is recommended by calling 0586 813861 or writing to livorno@oami.it.

Hortus Conclusus 2026 – Polyphonies of the encounter. Contemporary intersections is realized with the support and collaboration of O.A.M.I., CESVOT, Municipality of Livorno, Castagneto Banca 1910, and Itinera. O.A.M.I. (Assistance to Sick and Disabled) has been active in the Livorno area for decades and offers support to disadvantaged people and their families. The services offered, under the umbrella of the Local Health Authority, are the Family home and the Day center for socialization for mentally disabled adults. It is directed by Dr. Pier Giorgio Curti.