Monday, 4th May, 2026 from 18 – 22
Teatro Goldoni - Venice
Karma Culture Brothers is pleased to present This is life, a collaborative project with four internationally renowned artists Roberto Cuoghi, Gelitin, Luigi Ontani, and Paola Pivi exploring our relationships with freedom. The event will be held on Monday 4th May, 2026 at the historic Teatro Goldoni in Venice on the occasion of the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. This is the premiere presentation of each video work by the four artists as well as the official music video for This is life.
The event will begin with refreshments in the lobby, followed by a short introductory speech by Pier Paolo Pancotto, who will explain the project. Thereafter, Karma Culture Brothers will perform one song, followed by the debut performance videos and collaborative music video. After the initial presentation, the videos will continue to play in a loop, allowing guests to experience the event at any time throughout the evening.
The project was initiated by Karma to create a unique, unpublished performance specifically conceived to respond to his 2020 song This is life for the official music video. The song is based on the musician’s own shocking experience of meeting a young slave in the house of his Tibetan relatives in India. Despite failing to convince his relatives to end the youth’s servanthood, he attempted to improve the child’s living conditions during his brief visit. Feeling powerless in the face of the injustice against this slave’s freedoms, he composed This is life.
The artists each worked independently of the others, unaware of the others’ ideas, and were able to create with complete freedom of expression towards their performances. The four performances exist simultaneously as individual artworks and as movements within a larger whole. Each are complete and self-contained, yet in conversation with one another through the music video that weaves them together.
Roberto Cuoghi invited young children to play happily in a field with a huge colored crocheted ball functioning as a legal funerary urn at the Idroscalo Park in Milan. The urn evolves from a static container into a versatile toy for everyone. Gelitin’s performance brought them to their native Austrian countryside, where sugar turned to glue, blossoms turned to skin, and bodies turned into living sculptures. Like decorator crabs wearing the landscape—reaching for paidia (free, unruly play), mimicry, and feeling alive. Luigi Ontani donned his own mask artwork, ARTEmadeAsia (2001), transforming him into the Ephesian Artemis inside the Tempio di Diana at Villa Borghese in Rome. And Paola Pivi created a star from black garbage bags on the floor of an empty space, asking a group of girls and women to run in a circle, jumping over the bags in an enduring loop.
Each of the four performances was filmed by the renowned Hugo Glendinning, and the song This is life features additional compositions by Mattheu Grange (harmonica) and Nicolò Arioli (electric guitar).
Pier Paolo Pancotto conceived the idea of presenting This is life (2026) at the Teatro Goldoni in Venice and made it possible to have this historic venue for its debut. Pier Paolo will also write a critical text about this project and will introduce the event in the theater.
Geltin
This Is Life, 2026
Photography by Hugo Glendinning
Courtesy the Artist and Karma Culture Brothers
Paola Pivi
This Is Life, 2026
Photography by Hugo Glendinning
Courtesy the Artist and Karma Culture Brothers
Roberto Cuoghi
This Is Life, 2026
Photography by Hugo Glendinning
Courtesy the Artist and Karma Culture Brothers
Luigi Ontani
This Is Life, 2026
Photography by Hugo Glendinning
Courtesy the Artist and Karma Culture Brothers