Every Saturday afternoon, the Festival Centre hosts a reading club on the 1971 book We Want Everything, by Italian author Nanni Balestrini. This literary masterpiece recounts the 1969 strike wave and questions the modern obsession with productivity. In four meetings, participants will be guided through the collective reading, and links will be made with some of the festival projects (Amol K Patil, Midori Kurata, Dana Michel, Kepler-542). 

"We work too much and enjoy too little", a worker of Fiat comments. The workers strike that started at Fiat in 1969 and later became known as the Autunno caldo [hot autumn] was not merely about getting more pay or better working conditions but instead questioned a society where work is dominating all aspects of life. This year the reading club will read the 1971 book We Want Everything, by Italian author Nanni Balestrini. 

Read along with us, every Saturday afternoon at the Festival Centre from 16:00 till 18:00, and let’s find out together what the slogan ‘We Want Everything’ of the workers [Operaio] movement could have hinted at, why it is still relevant, and how to give form to this today. In four sessions, we will read selections of We Want Everything. The sessions are not an endeavour of specialists or insiders, everybody brings the knowledge and experience they have to the table and we will work towards a shared, although not necessarily consensual, understanding. It is advised to read chapters of each session beforehand, in order to discuss and reread parts together during the session. We will use the English translation as the source text and English will be the main language of conversation. We are open to reading along and contributing in the original language of the book (Italian) or one of the languages the book is translated in (French, German).