Magazine

On a full-moon night in Jamaica, Nyabinghi, one of the most ancient Rastafari ceremonial practices, unfolds as a living ritual in which drums, chants, and fire gather bodies into a shared field of clarity. “Tonight we a chant,” a young Rasta tells German Iraki. “We a do the opposite of what the evil man a do. We use the moon for prosperity and to fight evil spells.” Nyabinghi uses rhythm to cleanse; it is a kind of spiritual technology, transforming communal presence into a practice of grounding, healing, and collective awareness.

Beginning with a theatre piece about a man in love with a silicone sex doll, Simon(e) van Saarloos, author of Against Ageism: A Queer Manifesto (SPBH, 2025), explores attachment without reciprocity and the material conditions of care and projection. Turning to animegao kigurumi, and through a dialogue with Oshiruko Chan, a forever seventeen-year-old fictional character with large blue eyes and blonde hair, Simon(e) explores how masks and garments shape behaviour rather than express identity, positioning age as a structuring fiction and the self as an architectural phenomenon.

Masbate, one of the largest islands in the Philippine archipelago, revolves around cattle. Bulls, cows and pasture define its culture; ranches span the land, and labour has shaped a landscape marked by centuries of hoofprints. Lassoing, cattle wrestling and horse breaking are not just survival skills, but the basis of a singular public ritual: Southeast Asia’s largest rodeo.

“Caesar Must Die” is a 2012 movie by Taviani Brothers, inspired by the Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The directors had seen the Rebibbia ensemble at work and were convinced of its cinematic potential but needed a story with universal resonance. Conspiracy, betrayal, guilt, leadership, and the corruption of power—all central themes in Shakespeare’s tragedy—echoed the actors’ own lives and the paths that had led them to prison.

The prison is a crucial passage for those who end up inside it. Fuori, the film by Mario Martone, shot in prison and based on Goliarda Sapienza’s novel The University of Rebibbia, portrays the spaces of Rebibbia as a labyrinth where fragmented space and disoriented senses contribute to “regressing you to childhood,” as Goliarda writes, and which can suddenly become a kind of home, strangely similar to the outside world.

“Camera Oscura” was a photographic project by Tano D’Amico occurred in Rebibbia. One of the few that let the detainee shoot their own photos. It was a way to overturn photography’s usual role from an instrument of control and transform it into a space of shared freedom, and above all, a way to bridge, or at least narrow, the distance from the outside. As some participants wrote years later: “Since we do not wish anyone to have to come and visit us here, we prefer to reach you ourselves through our images.”

How does a wedding happen in prison? Isabella De Silvestro tells the story of Tiziana, a woman who attended two weddings, one as a guest and the other as the bride, during the 1980s, when they were all political prisoners in Rebibbia.

In early ’90s Rebibbia, three lives crossed: Princesa (Fernanda Farias de Albuquerque), a trans woman from Brazil; Giovanni, a Sardinian lifer; and Maurizio, ex-Brigate Rosse. Their secret letters became the novel Princesa, an act of liberation that lingers on her experiences of desire, sex, and self, while suggesting a historical passing from political struggle to identity struggle.

Pope Francis died in prison. He entered Rebibbia, fell into a coma, and died. It gave meaning to his mission. For the first time in history, a pontiff opened a Holy Door inside a penitentiary. Francis himself said that on that occasion, for one day, Rebibbia became a basilica: “I opened the first Holy Door at Christmas in St Peter’s, but I wanted the second Holy Door to be here, in a prison. I wanted each of us here, inside and outside, to have the chance to fling open the doors of our hearts and understand that hope does not disappoint.”

Sergio Lenci was the architect of the New Rebibbia Penitentiary Complex. A visionary modernist, attentive to social issues and to the living conditions of inmates, he became the victim of an attempted assassination by a group of Brigatisti in the 1970s. From that day and for the rest of his life, Sergio devoted himself to understanding the reasons behind the attack. The story of the new Rebibbia begins in this way: in armed struggle, in the internal conflict within the architectural instrument, and in reflection on the idea of forgiveness.

Check this excerpt: Prison is a country most people never come to know. You don’t set out for it; you end up there, often without quite realising how. No one chooses it, but who lives in it? These are the stories of Rebibbia. The stories of 17 people—a small group who resemble, however, the many who inhabit all these countries where you end up without ever wanting to.

Inextricably linked to Jamaican dancehall, Shatta emerged in the 2000s and 2010s in Volga-Plage, a neighbourhood of Fort-de-France. From the capital, it quickly spread across the island, then the archipelago, and more recently—and on a larger scale—to the métropole, the Martinican slang for mainland France.

Bandung’s underground music scene isn’t just about the music—it’s a living, breathing culture built on community, resistance, and shared memory. The ritual of nongkrong is its lifeblood, a sacred space where history is passed down, alliances are forged, and creativity thrives against all odds.

From corpse-painted farmers to sonic cartographies of the countryside, West Java’s black metal scene reimagines agrarian life as radical resistance. Bands like Bvrtan, Pure Wrath, and Sufism parody, honor, and weaponize rural imagery to confront inequality, history, and power.
We have follow the vocal project Ensemble Tikoro, in a trip through Bandung’s countryside.

Réak is a trance ritual which originated in Bandung, a subregional variant of horse trance dances, a group of pan-Indonesian performances known under various names such as jaranan and jathilan.

There is a district on the outskirts of Bandung where traditional arts and heavy metal have collided since the 1990s—giving rise to pioneering bands, an underground zine scene, and DIY festivals that reshaped Indonesia’s music landscape.

In the Umberto I neighbourhood, each small group, each corner, each bar, kiosk, and bench has its soundtrack: from the most traditional and rhythmic merengue, with its accordion and drum rhythms, to the melodic, guitar-driven bachata, to the fast-paced dembow, a frenzied beat popular among the younger crowd, featuring percussive beats and alternating rap vocals.

Emerging from Lagos’s peninsular neighbourhoods, the alté scene is shaping an anarchic and infectious lifestyle that defies the constraints of the Nigerian mainstream and reverberates across global contemporary culture.

It was the classic grammar of celebration: the streets fill with people and empty of rules; the city becomes the set of a post-apocalyptic film, where authority vanishes and anthing, or almost anything, goes.

More than a structured artistic scene, Dimes Square is a real-time mythology; an ecosystem of signals hovering at the boundary between performance and reality. If not explicitly alt-right, it is at the very least slightly reactionary: a glitchy remake of culture where gossip replaces journalism.