Interview with Collettivo Cannibale: EXTREME CONDITION FEST VOL. 1 feature

A chat with Collettivo Cannibale, which organizes concerts and initiatives under the banner of the barred note.

Collettivo Cannibale has been active in the crust, grindcore, sludge and generally into the extreme music scene for some time now, they also organize many movie showing and solidarity and mutual aid’s initiatives. Well-established in Bologna – in Bolognina’s area, to be precise – They have promoted countless events in different places, often touching other cities such as Imola and Modena. In the latter, the first Extreme Condition Festival will take place on 27 and 28 September 2024, in the historic occupied social center La Scintilla. In the following interview we’ll discover more about the collective and this new festival!

• Radio Punk: Hello, welcome to our ‘zine! Let’s start from the end, introduce us to the first edition of Extreme Condition Fest and tell us what we can’t miss during this two-day event.

Collettivo Cannibale: Hello Radio Punk! “Thanks for the opportunity to be featured. Throughout the year, our collective tries to connect, with our limited possibilities, with the different DIY, subcultural and countercultural realities of our area and to those who are involved in the different fronts of the social and political struggle of our time and local context. The way we have chosen is the one that belongs most to us as a collective, that is, in the most extreme, noisy and visually repulsive or disturbing way, like a truck on the wrong side of the gentrification highway. This first edition of the Extreme Condition Fest is nothing more than an attempt to represent and share what we are and what we hold dear.

While the music is certainly the main vehicle we rely on (and it goes without saying how important it is not to miss a single barred note or shouted word from any of the bands taking part), what is equally important to not miss is the multitude of stuff you will find within the fest.

On Saturday the 28th, a collective talk will start at 13.00. There will be the participation of some collectives that are active in the struggle against some of the worst cages that we see in this dark present: from prisons to detention centers for repatriation for immigrants, to those for non-human animals, struggles that are linked in a historical context in which the cage is an emblem of our society, starting with the mental cages that we too often allow ourselves to impose and in which we allow ourselves to be locked up, suffering alienation in a daily life in which it is less and less possible to be sentient, non-autonomous beings, bolts in the gears of ‘the capital’. We want this festival of ours to be not only a musical/subcultural event for its own sake, but possibly also a moment of encounter and confrontation, to recognise affinities and perhaps unite intentions and forces.

In the distro area, which we hope will be full of stalls, there will be the chance to get in touch with some of the many participants to the DIY and self-production scene, a theme dear to us and indispensable for an affirmation of ourselves outside the logic of the market.

The all-day/night DJ set in the garden will feature friends and comrades from Rome’s cultural underworld (Lady Crime and T8tino), the Bad Taste collective represented by Bitti and his vinyls, and selecter/DJ Zen Zero, a member and integral part of Collettivo Cannibale.

On Friday, we are happy to recommend the presentations of two interesting contemporary projects: the new fantasy-dystopian novel ‘Turno di Notte’ by Scaglie di Rumore (who will also talk to us about the independent publishing house Agenzia Z and some other related projects) and the deathzine ‘Unholy’, one of the best current examples of dedication to the rottenest meanders of extreme music. Last but not least, the advice is to experience La Scintilla: get to know it, recognise it, discover it, rediscover it, take care of it together and connect with the place that not only hosts this first edition of the festival, but that since 1986 has an history of radical self-organization that we hope will continue for a long time to come.

• Radio Punk: This is the first edition of E.C. Fest, but you already have a long list of concerts and initiatives behind you, including the last edition of the historic September To Dismember. Tell us a bit about yourselves and your history!

Collettivo Cannibale: Although some of us had already taken part in the organization of other DIY festivals (without sponsors, without institutional recognition, without beggin’ for permission…), as a collective the last edition of September to Dismember was our first ‘big’ experience in that sense, with all that this implies in order to be called a festival and not just a ‘long concert’. It is no secret that from the very beginning of our adventure as Collettivo Cannibale there was a great desire to revive a certain type of ‘scene’ that, two years ago, in our area seemed to be gradually dying out. Thanks to the drive of young comrades and the participation of friends who were already navigating the underground circuit of Bologna, the creation of September to Dismember was at the same time a challenge, a tribute and, above all, a satisfaction. It could be said that it was like calling for a continuity with a past that is dear to us, which should be continued, but not necessarily idealized and retraced. 

The tribe of our collective was born almost two years ago in the context of the Bologna scene, in the backyard of an occupied social center, with the desire to create – or re-create –  an ‘extreme’ nucleus that would expose to living flesh all that we do not want to be claimed, rendered harmless and cleansed from the hands of this truly cannibalistic society: extreme non-music (from grindcore to sludge, from crust to harsh noise and in general the less commercial derivatives of punk and metal and what we affectionately call ‘noise’), cinema in its aesthetic metastasis (from B-movie splatter to the mad experiments of the early 20th century, from the masterpieces of Fulci and Bava to the sewers of the worst exploitation films). Here is a quote: “extreme conditions demand extreme responses”. In a world that is increasingly falling in the deepest shit, it is necessary, almost a duty, that forms of expression such as ours support and are in complicity with the opposition to the present that is being sold to us violently and expensively as ‘normality’. This is why most of what we do has as its ultimate goal solidarity with the political and social struggle in an anarchist and revolutionary direction, to which we give our support through performances, forms of communication that take place on and under the stages and in the spaces that we manage to take over and infest, and, as you do, through the printed page.

Beyond individual choices, as a collective we choose to don’t collaborate with venues, booking agencies, associations and organizations that are born for profit or conform to the dictates of the music/culture business, but within and with organizations that are collectively managed, politically charged and/or not for profit. Extreme Condition Fest was born out of this kind of awareness. We are Collettivo Cannibale and this is OUR festival, created from nothing with the hope that this will be just a claw in the flesh of a future full of noise, especially when the future is being taken away from us and screaming is the least we can do.

Everything was necessary to get to where we are now. In this sense: we acknowledge with gratitude that without previous DIY festivals as September to Dismember, Anti-MTV DAY, Rovina Hardcore, Carovan Chaos, Bologna Brucia, Frigo-Fest and all the experiences of festivals and self-organised counter-festivals that preceded us in our territory, the historical memory of our tribe would probably be poorer today and we would not be what we are today. But the future is yet to be written, everything is yet to happen. We, like you, are trying to do our part. It is now up to those reading these words to ask themselves if and how they can do their part, by participating in a countercultural history and relentless search for an alternative to the decaying capitalist ‘realism’ that we want to continue for as long as it will be needed.

(The countercultural history and search for an alternative, not capitalism, of course eheh).

• Radio Punk: An obvious characteristic of yours is a strong attachment to self-managed situations and places. What struggles and political ideas do you support as a collective?

Collettivo Cannibale: As we wrote before, almost everything we do is in the direction of supporting the struggle against this deadly societal setting and supporting the alternatives to it that we manage/can manage to create. Not only through benefits shows, but for example also self-financing the activities we carry out in this regard, representing an alternative to “normalization”, choosing to do our stuff in certain politically charged contexts and not in others. The list could go on. Our collective is made of many different identities, but what we have in common is a rejection of the logic of the capitalist market and how it normalize itself within both: music and our own lives. It follows that our common positioning and direction has to be anarchist, anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist in its nature, in opposition to an increasingly repressive, suffocating and often depressing present.

• Radio Punk: Besides the musical-political side, you also emphasize many other aspects: visual arts, stands, self-productions and more. What is the origin of this choice? How much do you bring your individual passions into your collective?

When we think about an event or an initiative, we always pay special attention to those who, like us, in various ways, orbit around the concept of self-production and DIY. From cinema to fine arts to comix, to other stuff. People in the Italian and international underground, who are part of that vast universe that includes the various forms of extra-musical expression that are part of the macro-universe of self-production, of which we are happy to be a part.

• Radio Punk: Make us laugh, tell us the most grotesque thing that happened at one of your concerts!

Collettivo Cannibale: You should make us laugh! Let’s see what happens at this year’s festival!

Reality is that we could tell too many grotesque episodes and there would not be enough space in this format. Visit us at the festival entrance or at our stand. We will certainly have been drinking for a while. There will be no shortage of anecdotes.

• Radio Punk: How does one of your initiatives/concerts come about? Do you chug a load of Peronis until someone else comes up with an enlightening idea, are you contacted and try to give space to all suggestions or do you decide by cooptation?

Collettivo Cannibale: Given our affinity with practices of self-organization and our subjective experiences in the various autonomous places in which we’ve had grown up as persons, it is natural for us to confront ourselves in horizontal assemblies, where each of us proposes ideas and/or reports requests from the many bands or individuals who contact us, or where we report information and/or needs from the contexts of struggle in our territory, from which we create, for example, a benefit concert for political prisoners. We try to be available to the collectives and the bands that are looking for a space or a date and that contact us to organize concerts and initiatives. Of course, Peroni and any other brand of cheap alcohol is never missing in any of the steps described above. We are what we are. If you want to contact us and propose any kind of event, concert or collaboration, you can do so by talking to us in person or through our Facebook and Instagram pages (yes, in this respect we have surrendered to ‘normality’ for the sake of convenience, but we would like to remind you that the underground lives and spreads mainly outside the now normalised forms and media. If you’d like to talk to us face to face, sampling our undead breath, we’d be delighted), or via our email, which is: collettivocannibale@mortemale.org

• Radio Punk: Which band do you dream of calling and which one would you like to call but it would be impossible?

Collettivo Cannibale: The bands we dream of collaborating with are so many, with some we already have contacts. The past year we tried to call Axegrinder, a band we would have loved to bring to Italy, as we hope to do someday with Swordwielder or Dopethrone, as examples. But there are so many examples. A band we would have loved to have included in our festival was the German band Instinct Of Survival, but for their personal reasons beyond our control we have had to accept that this will now be impossible.

• Radio Punk: Thank you, we leave you one last free space to give you the chance to add what you want to communicate to those who will read!

Collettivo Cannibale: Thank you Radio Punk! What you have asked us has already drained us and perhaps made more sense to us than to those who will read. It’s hard to think of what to add in an interview, but we look forward to doing so in real life, at the festival and at all our future events, together with you and those who want to be there.

In conclusion, we would like to remind you that what we are doing is nothing that makes us special compared to other subjects, individuals and collectives. The beauty of DIY is that it is up to those doing it and those who wish to participate to decide whether and how to practice it. The invitation to readers is to remember that you can do it too. If you feel like a participant and not just a user and payer, if you like the idea of creating something that unites like-minded people as much as possible and shows that we don’t really need the dictates of a society in which we can’t be ourself, if you believe or want to believe in the possibility of grass roots organization: do your part, do it your way! Life is ours. Your life is yours. Take it back! Live, fight, destroy, build, hate, love!