Thesis Drafts

Let's imagine finding a place where we can sit around a perpetual fire, welcomed by hay sofas, only with a sky above our head. Or imagine a place where it is possible to lie down on a lawn enriched with sculptures, where you can simply listen to the rustle of the stream. And again, let's imagine a garden where books are hidden among the flowers, accompanied by a slightly diffused music. A radio that bridges this isolated but real landscape with the rest of the world. Streams of images reflected on windows yellowed by time. Colorful posters dancing on the stone walls of the villages. But also Signora Maria preparing tortellinis, surrounded by exotic curious faces. A group of adventurous people who discover stones and plants of the place. A small shelter of branches in the middle of the wood. A river warehouse transformed into a museum. An old theater animated by projections and dancing figures. I am almost certain that Romagna toscana could resemble this not too strange fantasy.

Introduction

Winter on the plains has always been particularly boring, sometimes difficult. Fog coulters all around, and visibility reduced to a minimum. I attended high school Faenza - my hometown - a city of 60,000 inhabitants in the Po Valley, that is the area that represents the highest concentration of inhabitants and economic activities in Italy, what some call "the great agricultural nothing". I still remember that the alarm clock always rang too early, at 6.50 am, because I lived in the countryside and it always took me a little longer than the others. But there was a classmate of mine, Beniamino, who woke up every morning at 5 o'clock, because he lived further away than everyone else, even outside the town from which he used took the bus every day: Tredozio. In the winter his car often arrived with a thick layer of snow, when all around us the fog reigned supreme. This is the first memory I have of Tredozio, even before I went there for the first time. Almost 10 years later, after being living first in Turin and then Rotterdam, I find myself talking and discussing the same village, with its surroundings and neighboring villages, which seemed so far away to me, but with a new gaze and sensitivity, matured after years spent far away, in cities as large and stimulating as they are frenetic and compulsive.

When I've been firstly approached by Lorenzo, in late December 2020, I couldn't even imagine how that meeting would change my life. Lorenzo, while being the guy kindly helping clumsy elders at his phone shop, never breaking down the smile upon his face, he's being involved as vice-major for Tredozio from 2019. Tredozio is a village on the edges of Appennines between Emilia Romagna and Tuscany (Italy) - away from industrial flatlands and congested urban agglomerations, where the hills and the cultivated fields start to leave space in favour of (still) not urbanised lands and resilient eco-systems. I had the feeling that he must learn a lot in the shop, how to listen to any people complain or doubt while trying to help, concretely. Because 5G must work everywhere, and anywhere, and possibly without paying too much. That kind of approach that you would find in some other almost-paper figures making important decisions, for us, citizens of the "Bella Italia", but also citizens of the world (even if what's around borders don't bother us too much). He told me about Tredozio, and the lack of new things happening. The purpose of our meeting was to brainstorm ideas and possibilities for a cultural-rooted programme to start there, certainly not with the explicit claim to change the stillbirth rate, but at least to think new forms for temporary living; where the aspects that make the idea of ​​living "isolated" less appealing than in a can turn into important opportunities for the future.
From that moment, I've been constantly busy thinking about a small-scale approach for publishing, which emerges from the local specificity trying to resonate with the actual ultra-territorial potential. I'll bring some questions which are keeping resonating in my mind, and that I want to unfold in order to find potential answers and concrete strategies.

How the publishing process, (as a means to unfold and re-tell the reality) could create new, cultural roots for social and micro-territorial developments? What kind of infrastructures a residency and collective workshop would need in order to facilitate the sharing of processes and knowledge? And how they could be used to re-think the future we live in? Could a constellation of smaller eco-systems be the way to decentralize political and monetary power, recalibrating our lives based on urgent and real needs? What could we learn from smaller realities such as rural villages in order to build new, modern and almost self-reliant communities? How the circulation of knowledge, processes and results achieved during the residency could be turned into concrete actions which could help both the local community and the artists' development? How the set of traditions and local heritage could be used as a set of tools for better understanding the present?
Then, on a practical layer: How to amplify territorial-based narrations? How to approach local archives? And how to create new, vernacular imaginaries?

Apparently, more than the people leaving for job opportunities, what really impacts is the stillbirth rate. In fact, walking around Tredozio, it is easier to come across groups of over-sixty-year-olds intent on playing Briscola than boys playing in the street. Tredozio, together with Rocca S. Casciano and Portico and San Benedetto - which subsequently joined in our adventure, are defined as "mountain municipalities" and fall within the "D band" on the national scale for the definition of inland areas, which goes from A a F and which make up about 3/5 of the entire national territory.
The inland areas have been identified, since 2012, starting from what is defined as the "pole" municipality, that is, an inhabited center with:

 – a higher education offer (at least a high school or a technical or professional institute);
 – a Dea I level hospital (first aid services and general medicine functions);
 – a Silver railway station (medium-small systems for metropolitan and regional services).

(Source: https://www.ministroperilsud.gov.it/it/approfondimenti/aree-interne/cosa-sono/)

My first response was to start laying the foundations for a project that I didn't know when it would happen, let alone how. At that time I was reading Global Tools, about the rural experience of a group of radical architects who revolutionized the idea of ​​architecture and design in the midst of the economic boom, in contrast with their commercial and consumerist trends. Lorenzo and this reading came together, and a year later, returning from Milan on the occasion of SPRINT - Independent Publishers and Artists' Books Salon, where we set up a space with the first editorial materialisations of Habitat, I think how much water has already passed under our bridges, despite the extreme natural and cultural drought that this area has recently suffered.

1

"Habitat is not just an opportunity to work together with other realities. Habitat tries to find a new way of doing it. Habitat makes the place alive through the practices of all its participants. It is a way to experiment new, hybrid practices and cultural communities, extremely necessary in our contemporaneity. For this reason, it's not just a matter of curating projects in Tredozio, Rocca, Portico and S. Benedetto, but a community of people who know each other, building bridges by sharing a place, imagining new forms of existence for our future. "

(Parasite2.0)

Guidelines

Introduction- overview [500 words];
Chapter 1 [2000 words];
Chapter 2 [2000 words];
Chapter 3 [2000 words];
Conclusion [500 words]
= 7000 + Bibliography + Annotated bibliography (five texts max).
Synopsis of 5 texts that will be central to the thesis.