Day: July 11, 2025

It’s been a decade since I last visited Cammino e Vivo Capovolto, the setting which for many years formed the home for Mistero Hifeng’s mesh sculptures and the Ocho Tango dance venue. In fact, not long after my last visit, both locations relocated to a new region – and for reasons unplanned, I stopped visiting.

I mention this as an entry in the Destination Guide caught my eye recently called Another Song of Freedom – and it just so happens to be set within the region to which Mistero and Ocho Tango relocated back in 2015.

While Ocho Tango appears long gone, Mistero’s gallery / store remains in the sky (with a couple of teleports reaching up to it from the ground level), allowing the ground level of the region to present a conjoined, flooded environment of two halves, the water (and railway tracks) serving to bring them together.

To the south, the region offers a setting for Mistero’s work. With minimal landscaping, a few props (notably wrought iron gateways) it sits as a gallery space in which Mistero has placed various works to form a series of artistic vignettes.

To the north sits Another Song of Freedom. At first glance there is little to tell the exhibition space and Another Song … apart; both have the same waters flowing through them, both sit under the same sky, both utilising Mistero’s sculptures, both comprise a series of scattered vignettes. Only the fact that Another Song … has more in the way of supporting props perhaps sets them apart to the casual eye.

However, there is very much a difference between the two. Designed by Veronica Elara, Another Song … carries within it a central theme, which Elara describes thus:

The land is a surreal transposition of some of the most important biomes of our planet Earth, focusing attention on the evolutionary path of the human being that has often led to sad scenarios of pain and war. Another Song of Freedom wants to be a sincere wish and a voice of hope that can remind us human beings how wonderful the world we live in is and an invitation to respect it and take care of it, with all our deepest roots and traditions.

– Another Song of Freedom Destination Guide entry

The first part of this theme – humanity’s evolutionary path and our penchant for war and destruction – is framed directly at the Landing Point. Two sculptures (by ValiantCo) mark the ascent of man from hominid to human as they march forwards, apparently towards the towers and skyscrapers of New York, a place where the Statue of Liberty lies broken, a mushroom cloud rises into the air and a lonely globe turns above more roiling clouds, a symbol of humanity’s global dominance – and the danger of our destructive tendencies to bring it largely to an end.

Serving as a gateway, this tableau then leads people into the rest of the setting, and its multiple vignettes.

From the polar wilderness to the colours of Polynesia and Africa, and encompassing echoes of our long history here on Earth and our ability to create wonders such as the pyramids, each vignette has something to say about the beauty of the world in which we live, and in our kinder, gentler nature – our creation of music and dance and entertainment; our ability to tend the land and its creatures and produce for ourselves and others; our capability for compassion and understanding.

What is to be made of all this is up to the individual visiting, and I’m not going to put words into anyone’s mouth here.  I’ll simply leave you with a further comment from Elara, and allow you to see where Another Song … might lead you.

 The land is full of different scenarios to take photographs, spend peaceful moments in the company of nature in a climate of serenity and social reflection.

– Another Song of Freedom Destination Guide entry

SLurl Details

• Another Song of Freedom (Retrospect, rated Moderate)