Commissioned by Villa Manin for the exhibition Memorie, curated by Andrea Bruciati
2016
In creating this work I tried to bring a new procedural disposition to the staging: together with a class from the elementary school in Buja del Friuli, one of the towns most affected by the 1976 earthquake in the area, I worked to construct a new chapter of the myth of the Orcolat (an ogre who, according to legend, made the earth shake with his footsteps, and is hiding in the San Simeone mountain, waiting to come out). The grandchildren of those who lived through the earthquake experience it themselves in two different ways: at school the earthquake is dealt with as a geological phenomenon, uprooted from its context and private meaning, while at home, through superstition and custom, they are exposed to references to the Orcolat in everyday conversation. After a long phase of gathering documents, objects and transcriptions, we moved on to the visual documentation stage, which was based on a rudimentary group script. Photography served as a tool to document not only the effects of the earthquake, but also how it has affected the outlook of the following generations. The results were a documentary tale in which expectations, the force of nature and human reconstruction are told through spontaneous and evocative actions. The staging of the subject establishes a performing relationship with the photographic medium in a process of self-representation, historic reworking and symbolic construction. Photography becomes a tool for reflection, a medium of kaleidoscopic and social cohesion of collective memory, pushing its limits and freeing up a new, ambiguous nature of its statute. project description and documents (ITA)
20 c-prints, mounted on pvc, framed,
each dyptich 95cm x 70cm + 26cm x 70cm, ed. of 3 plus 2AP, 2016
selected photographs >
INSTALLATION VIEW
Villa Manin, Italy
