La ragazza mela
The choice to work specifically with the “Apple Girl” story can be traced to the choice to examine fruit,
and in this specific case, the apple – which crops up again and again in Western symbology, from the Greek myth of the golden apple that led to the Trojan War, all the way to the Biblical apple of original sin. In the case of the “Apple girl”, a fairy tale collected by Italo Calvino, however, the apple is part of a folk tradition
in which fruit symbolizes a natural, biological dimension. What struck me about this story is the continuum between the natural world and the human one, as Calvino himself emphasizes, the infinite possibilities of mutation, the unifying element in everything: men, beasts, plants, things.
In the video kings and queens in the Apple Girl story, transcribed by Calvino, have been replaced by representatives of the contemporary bourgeois world. The fairy tale re-enactment tells us about a women - who can not have children until she is reconciled with her natural side giving births to an apple – and about a man competing with nature, obsessed by the desire to recreate what exist better then nature it-self.These two worlds get in contact and the “piece of fruit” born by the woman exceeds the results of male ambitions. For the collector and his wife the apple becomes a “ natural echo”, that awakes impulses repressed by
their social class behaviour.
and in this specific case, the apple – which crops up again and again in Western symbology, from the Greek myth of the golden apple that led to the Trojan War, all the way to the Biblical apple of original sin. In the case of the “Apple girl”, a fairy tale collected by Italo Calvino, however, the apple is part of a folk tradition
in which fruit symbolizes a natural, biological dimension. What struck me about this story is the continuum between the natural world and the human one, as Calvino himself emphasizes, the infinite possibilities of mutation, the unifying element in everything: men, beasts, plants, things.
In the video kings and queens in the Apple Girl story, transcribed by Calvino, have been replaced by representatives of the contemporary bourgeois world. The fairy tale re-enactment tells us about a women - who can not have children until she is reconciled with her natural side giving births to an apple – and about a man competing with nature, obsessed by the desire to recreate what exist better then nature it-self.These two worlds get in contact and the “piece of fruit” born by the woman exceeds the results of male ambitions. For the collector and his wife the apple becomes a “ natural echo”, that awakes impulses repressed by
their social class behaviour.
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