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-local 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 - who subsequently joined in our adventure, are defined as "mountain municipalities" and fall within the new parameters of the Ministry in Internal Areas, as territories with a distance by public transport more than 30 minutes from a hospital or railway, or from secondary schools. The Internal Areas in Italy include over 4,000 municipalities, with 13 million inhabitants, at risk of depopulation (especially for young people), and where the quality of the educational offer is often compromised. Their surface covers 60% of the Italian territory and hosts over 20% of the population.
(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 a word that comes from ancient times: in Latin it means "to live" - literally "he lives". In the current connotations, Habitat means:
1. In biology, the set of environmental conditions in which a specific species of animal or plant lives, or even a single stage of the biological cycle of a species; in botany, the area in which a plant finds favorable environmental conditions for its development. 2. In ecology, environment, general conditions of an urban settlement, and the complex of structures, natural and artificial, that characterize it.
By extension, the Habitat to which I refer is the result of the stratification of numerous and specific social, economic, cultural and natural factors that have defined a precise, personal identity and therefore always different and not repeatable in the case of villages and their community. These territories, authentic and imbued with local values, constitute a rare and fragile primary resource for polycentric, coordinated and sustainable development. The habitat of Italian villages is often severely tested by their marginality and disadvantaged in terms of accessibility to services and infrastructures. In this variegated and heterogeneous landscape, an immense heritage with a strong resilience capacity has developed over time, which requires far-sighted interventions and actions in order to be promoted, enhanced and extended, in order to trace new paths and cultural horizons - without affect their balance.
Habitat is a format conceived to respond to the theme of the re-vitalization of Italian villages, their territory and cultural heritage; which, using and at the same time intertwining with the specific pre-existing context, helps to define and imagine new horizons. A place-based strategy that recognizes the importance of places and the need for careful knowledge built from below, as an essential basis for the activation of oriented interventions which, using the territory as a place of inspiration and action, are able to collect and reworking its precious micro-territorial heritage. The aim of the project is in fact to initiate a dialogue between the cultural, architectural and naturalistic heritage of the place with contemporary research and production, proposing actions and projects that aim at the re-activation of spaces and the promotion of participatory practices in relation to the context.
(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.