“Santarcangelo dei Tetri is a theatre festival that takes place every summer in Santarcangelo di Romagna, a beautiful medieval borgo, which is only a few km from the Riviera Romagnola on the Adriatic Sea. This area is characterized by wide natural resources, important historic sites, monuments, food and wine culture. The Festival has been established in 1971. as a cultural propostion to valorise the town of Santarcangelo di Romagna. While tourism on the Riviera was already extensively developed, the backcountry, including Santarcangelo, felt cut off and suffered from a cultural and econimic point of view. The festival has been conceived and created thanks to the joined acion of Romeo Donati, mayor of the town from 1970 to 1979, Flavio Niciolini an important screenwriter born in Santarcangelo, and Piero Patino, the festival´s director.

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According to Patino, a festival represents the best social and political tool to communicate and educate people through folkoristic performanes and prose. His main aim was to develop a popular theatre which deals with social and contemporary issues, seen as opposite to a theatre addressed to a selected audience. According to Patino theatre should be done "for" and especially "among" people...the whole town was seen as a theatre (from which the expression "citadella del teatro") The Festival of Sanarcangelo dei Teatri has always played a central role of reference for the avant-garde theater. The Festival over the past years has managed to keep intact its orginal characteristics, identity and authenticity that make it so unique.” (Cappo 2012.)

On the fruitful ground of this festival during the 48th edition from 06.-15.07.2018. through the collaboration of MACAO and Commonafare the Cryptorituals and Santacoin were to be presented.

When I first heard about Cryptorituals, thanks to Maja from CMS (Center for peace studies in Croatia), I felt a cute little orgasm tingling through my spine, bones, muscles and nerves…goosebumps… Grassroots and rosebuds flourished in me and the pollen and dust from spaces beyond had touched me. Sparkes pierced my skin as emblems of suns. Is it possible that somebody is already doing something I am dreaming of? What kind of crazy arhaic revival is this “Cryptorituals” thing?

My curiosity was awarded, I won the Commonfare Storytelling contest, my travel expenses, accommodation, food expences and "pocket money" were all generously paid by Commonfare so I could witness and participate in the Rituals. A dream came true.

As I finally arived to the Infopoint of the Santarcangelo festival I could see the meeting of MACAO and Commonfare people.

Without any words or phone calls, through eye contact I met with my hosts. I was shy but the group immediately accepted me. I sat in the circle. They were kind and gentle to me. The first thing I got from observing...these guys are far out, but also well organized, the communication flow is great...people bring out issues to discussion and discuss them, sometimes “harsh” but from my point of view, without taking the critique personally and always straight to the point. They are committed to the Common Goal, a group of individuals merged into a functional holistic organism. After the MACAO people went to work in the office, 12 days of sleep deprivation collided with a caffeine overdose of triplle Caffe Shackeretto, I looked like a curious journalist on electroshock treatment as I got an in medias res briefing…in the words of my host and one of the organizers, the main idea behind the Cryptorituals was: “Reclaiming and brining to everyday life, to the people and community, the discussion and reconsideration of how we can conceptualize and then use in practice finance and money for the community for the people and not for the profit of banks and huge capitalist ventures…”. I had to recognize how much work and effort has been put into this project. The simplicity of reception, the seemingly easy flow I witnessed is a product of hard work and well thought precise action. The last day I finally grasped part of the concept. Two fairies,lotus eaters on the mics opening the Rituals, chanting in whisper the tide of a healing sea of calmness. The northern one with an endless gaze, blue eyes in which the internal monolog dissolves into dialog with the surrounding. Pure resonance of being as I try to catch the words. What do the fairies whisper “I am finance”? As you hear them, so gentle and subtle as the flow of secret streem’s, my eyes without knowing, grasped the messages written on the installation, that to me represented a parody of walls. A parody of separation. Wooden frames on a public square with transparent surface colored with messages: “self love for collective wealth”, “reclaim basic income”, “finance is everywhere”, “risky business”, “equality is good enough” and the leitmotif of the Rituals: “take care”. The messages not being a parody but a recipe from the boiling pot of a sweaty shaman...a coping strategy. The "Artisans", how the performing artists were named, were all working with the body. The relationship to the body being the central focus of the rituals. On the Cryptorituals you could get a haircut, manicure, tattoo, shiatsu massage, foot massage, palm reading…the underlaying concept being a performative hack (and for the sake of the hack I will not explain it). My engagement in the Rituals started by letting myself into the arms of shiatsu treater Murati. I had really bad back problems, almost without touching my back gradually she relived the pain. My whole body has been stretched, and the touch of the back of my head sent all of the pain down and under my spine. I found myself in a trancelike embryonic state in the middle of a public square, feeling safe because of the community. Reminesences arose like the pinch of Prousts Madllein…the back part of my head being touched for the last time I can remember, in my childhood by my parents, before all the shit started to pile up in my life. The ambivalence of private and public, of intimate and bare…people lying naked under sheets on a public square as children, parents, old and young pass by. A breast falling out as a mother feeds her child…some punks and “normal” people all together in a harmonic beautiful flux passing by saying to you…”no problem mate”. Finally I saw people reclaiming their public space, not institutions, not representations and abstractions but living organic beings with all their differences enriching each other. I also got a nice haircut, so now I don’t have to worry about my muslim extremist look.

Paying the massage was really easy I just used my "Talisman". If somebody is reading about this for the first time, let me simplify the technicalities, at least, how I understood them…At the infopoint you exchange your cash for the festival. 1 euro is 1 santacoin, the euros are immediately transferred to your commonfare wallet. The link to your wallet you have on a piece of recycled plastic with a QR code, called Talisman. You simply read it with your mobile phone and you can see how much you have left, those who are offering a service you want to pay (like the Artisans) have their own interface, they read the code, put their price and you just confirm the payment in real time anywhere anytime…0-24 no provisions from banks, no need for an ineffective fiscal cash machine, no need to count pieces of paper. Simple, effective, fast…and the people accepted the idea well, they got used to it fast, because they recognized how effective it is. Talking to those in charge of the technical aspects of the rituals I realized they created their own simple system which is much more effective, faster-real time method then the standard Proof of work and proof of stake methods which are just making stuff more complicated and energy consuming then it should be. So I bow my hat to A. a true crypto warriorES. Later during the night we went to a circus in the woods with performances and concerts. The music and people were great, it had this tribal feel I didn’t feel for a long time. Respect to all the people involved and thank you for your hospitality and kindness…

The only bug I saw was the fact I could not login to santacoin wallet with my commonfaire account but they were already fixing this at the time…