In the midst of the chaotic flows of Milan Art Week and Design Week 2025, there has been a place where, instead of seeing or necessarily doing something, one could simply enter and stay – to do nothing.
First inaccuracy is actually saying that Another Week, the installation by Matilde Cassani Studio, “has been”; in fact, it’s still there, transforming a deeply felt space within the large Base Milano cluster, beyond the many events on which the city seems to surf endlessly.

“Milan is a totally private city, where everything is closed, and at the same time it's a continuous succession of ‘weeks,’” Cassani told Domus. “Another Week wants to be a week of suspension, a week earned by doing nothing, where nothing happens either – a moment of nothingness”. 

It’s a space with a strong character but very low imposition: “a space more connected to well-being, a concept that has evolved over time; first it has been a gym, then a yoga space, and in the end it has become very similar to a swimming pool, topped with a peach-sun that rises and falls – a sort of scenic trick, like in classical theatre”.

A space open to multiple vocations, as we saw through With All My Strength, a performance that is part of a larger research by artist Martina Rota. It activated the installation, turning it into a powerful tool to discuss the meaning of bodies, the value of their image, and the processes through which that value is built and sustained.

“The presence of these bodies is what the installation needs – as it’s just a container for new rituals to unfold”, said Cassani.

Indeed, on the light blue floor of the non-pool pool, the practices of three bodybuilders unfolded: Massimo Palmieri, Massimiliano Palmese, and Arold Triberti, who worked with Rota on the complex themes of contemporary masculinity, the obsessions tied to strength and vulnerability, through the posing, the core element to their competitions.

Everything that aims to be fixed and solid is destabilized and shown in its fragility. Gestures and especially objects appear in the space, for which there will be no singular interpretation, as Rota explained.

The performers repeat phrases – anonymous introspective confessions – while swaying on rolling wooden stars: “It’s a podium, clearly a mobile one – unlike the traditional podium that installs and creates a monument meant to stay, to be continuously erected. Here, the monument is questioned; individual and collective inner monuments are deconstructed through the repetition of these ‘mantras’”.

Then come water-filled transparent cushions, taking on different meanings for the performers, even creating a slight unease in the spectators as they start to be moved around the scene. “They’re a universe unto themselves,” Rota told us. “I work a lot with water in my research, and I’m always interested in having an element that I can only control up to a point. Here, the pillow serves that ‘under control’ function – but there’s also high risk it breaks during the performance”.

Matilde Cassani

At a certain point, the builders start speaking through one another’s bodies, shielding themselves with their hands, in places where pain is believed to hide. “We try to bring something out with our voice – something we’ve never told anyone – asking a question not with words, but through sound. I project my voice onto you, either to move you in a positive sense, or to express something”– a polarity that continuously shifts, depending in real time on the performers’ decision.

It was one of them, Triberti, to let us inside the emotional machinery of the performance: “I felt in control of what I was doing. It’s like the context disappeared. She (Rota, ed.) told us to focus on a person, or move our eyes. I was afraid I couldn’t withstand the gazes, but (once on ‘stage’) the more eyes I caught, the more energy I gave back to that same audience.”

The space created through practice – through the interaction of installation and performance – became a safe space where questions could be released without necessarily implying definite answers: a space that opened up to the possibility of the unfinished. And this is but the starting ground from which Another Week has begun its permanent life inside Base Milano.

“People think the installation was made for this performance as it worked so well with it, but actually we designed it as a space that keeps changing – so it gets filled, emptied, dirtied, cleaned: it’s a space that is available.”

And it will remain that way: its function as a place for study will be reactivated, but the posture will change – not tables anymore, perhaps lounge chairs, a continuously open platform and an evolving interpretation. The vision is to create, within Milan’s endless stream of “Weeks”, a space that is a place, not a location.