Cuore di Pietra, public art [community work 2007-2008]
Cuore di Pietra is a project curated by Mili Romano. It proposes to accompany the urban renewal of the center of Pianoro Nuovo, a town at 20Km from Bologna, in Italy. The initial idea was born while attending the demolition in February 2004 of one of the IACP buildings on via Matteotti that, after World War II and along with the church and elementary school, were among the first buildings in the town. This demolition was the beginning of the PRU (Piano di Riqualificazione Urbana, or Plan of Urban Renewal) intended to radically change the town center.
The need, then, to document the changes and that which is erased and progressively disappears in the urban structure and habits of everyday life has brought me to my first contacts with the inhabitants, mostly elderly, of those houses, who watched with anguish the flooding-in of that traumatic change in their existence. This documentary need also brought me to the ironic-poetical elaboration in photographic form of a sort of “resistance” of the heart of stone of the buildings, made by the progression of generations and the many stories of human life transmitted to us by the walls of the houses.
But, changing the “nostalgic” memory of the place that every demolition inevitably brings with it, I have thought to make it so that this image circulates among the people of the town, seeking to transform it into a sort of catalyst of stories that join the present from the past, in an “energetic memory” projected towards the future, a memory capable of conferring identity. In the reconstructed urban area one would wish that, through artistic and architectural projects, the symbols and voices of that which went before could remain.
Far from wishing to be only a decorative instrument, one of “embellishment” that is often “invisible” as so many “monuments” become when one walks through the city, the artistic work here insinuates itself among the people as a ludic-critical practice: surprising, suggestive, open,
and, in the time and practice of daily relationships, it also proposes to be a dynamic investigatory socio-anthropological instrument for a more profound knowledge of the area and its problems as well as a shared practice, a further stimulant of a reinforcement of the identity of the place and a sense of “mobile belonging” through “recognized” artistic projects and, when possible, the fruit of collective participation.
“Cuore di Pietra” began in March 2005 with the affixing of 50 “Cuore di Pietra” posters in the usually designated spaces for public advertising in Pianoro Nuovo, Pianoro Vecchio, Pian di Macina, and Rastignano. I left other posters for a few days on the doorsteps of the apartments of the surrounding houses, also destined for demolition, with a written message that explained the purposes of the project (creation through the art of a history and a collective project that aims to come into being over time, from the destruction of the houses to the construction of the new town center) and invited the inhabitants, if they wished to participate, to display the posters outside of their windows on the following day, April 25th, along with, as is still done, the paper banner upon with is written “W la Resistenza.”
Thus simply began “Cuore di Pietra,” which since the fall of 2005 has begun to collaborate with elementary and middle schools and has continued to forge relationships with the inhabitants of the town. It has thus become a work in progress that presumably through 2011, when the reconstruction should be completed, foresees “strategies” of various artistic interventions (both temporary and permanent), according to the involved artists and curators as well as members of the community.
My collaboration with Cuore di Pietra consisted in an intervent with several pupils attending elementary and secondary school to create a symphony of metropolitan sounds (November 2007 – febbraio 2008)
www.cuoredipietra.it/
The need, then, to document the changes and that which is erased and progressively disappears in the urban structure and habits of everyday life has brought me to my first contacts with the inhabitants, mostly elderly, of those houses, who watched with anguish the flooding-in of that traumatic change in their existence. This documentary need also brought me to the ironic-poetical elaboration in photographic form of a sort of “resistance” of the heart of stone of the buildings, made by the progression of generations and the many stories of human life transmitted to us by the walls of the houses.
But, changing the “nostalgic” memory of the place that every demolition inevitably brings with it, I have thought to make it so that this image circulates among the people of the town, seeking to transform it into a sort of catalyst of stories that join the present from the past, in an “energetic memory” projected towards the future, a memory capable of conferring identity. In the reconstructed urban area one would wish that, through artistic and architectural projects, the symbols and voices of that which went before could remain.
Far from wishing to be only a decorative instrument, one of “embellishment” that is often “invisible” as so many “monuments” become when one walks through the city, the artistic work here insinuates itself among the people as a ludic-critical practice: surprising, suggestive, open,
and, in the time and practice of daily relationships, it also proposes to be a dynamic investigatory socio-anthropological instrument for a more profound knowledge of the area and its problems as well as a shared practice, a further stimulant of a reinforcement of the identity of the place and a sense of “mobile belonging” through “recognized” artistic projects and, when possible, the fruit of collective participation.
“Cuore di Pietra” began in March 2005 with the affixing of 50 “Cuore di Pietra” posters in the usually designated spaces for public advertising in Pianoro Nuovo, Pianoro Vecchio, Pian di Macina, and Rastignano. I left other posters for a few days on the doorsteps of the apartments of the surrounding houses, also destined for demolition, with a written message that explained the purposes of the project (creation through the art of a history and a collective project that aims to come into being over time, from the destruction of the houses to the construction of the new town center) and invited the inhabitants, if they wished to participate, to display the posters outside of their windows on the following day, April 25th, along with, as is still done, the paper banner upon with is written “W la Resistenza.”
Thus simply began “Cuore di Pietra,” which since the fall of 2005 has begun to collaborate with elementary and middle schools and has continued to forge relationships with the inhabitants of the town. It has thus become a work in progress that presumably through 2011, when the reconstruction should be completed, foresees “strategies” of various artistic interventions (both temporary and permanent), according to the involved artists and curators as well as members of the community.
My collaboration with Cuore di Pietra consisted in an intervent with several pupils attending elementary and secondary school to create a symphony of metropolitan sounds (November 2007 – febbraio 2008)
www.cuoredipietra.it/