libro d' artista "Qualcosa da dire"

This is an “artist book” composed of photographs, notes, sketches and other documents made by a group of inhabitants of District 1 of Florence. I have asked the itizens of this district what they would have liked to receive from their city or what they could do to improve their relationship with their city. As a result a series of projects was started, which emphasize on the search of new ways of communication but which remain firmly connected to the city and its community. District 1 epresents the quality drawing-room of the city. Situated within the city walls, it is
visited by millions of tourists during the whole year. And this has profoundly modified the aspect of this ancient dwelling-place. The resident population has sensibly diminished in the
last 20 years because of the increase of the rents and the difficulty of reaching areas with
traffic restrictions or closed to all vehicles. In the projects we see the urgent call to return to
communal ancestral values which join what has been divided for years and adapt it to
modern times. The relationship between public and private appears in Giuliana’s project to
open to the public a series of private gardens and courts and offer hospitality and artistic
entertainment. More picturesque and dreamy is the photographical project of Renzo, who
gives symbolical visions of the city and its spaces. Rendering the beauty there where it
exists but seems to be lost is the project of Guia, who, with an actual performance, will wrap
up all the garbage-boxes of the area. An audio-track, by which will be described a lapse of
24 hours with the sounds that are present and those that are missing in the city, is the
proposal of Marzio and Claudia, who want to play with the accidental incidence of noises.
Cristina has the intention to create a spontaneous interaction between passers-by and the
inhabitants of an apartment house and to produce a video recorded at the height of the
ground in order to give a completely different view of a city of art. Nadia puts stress on the
value of participation and on a case of relationship with the institutions that is felt very
strongly in our district: we are talking about Sant’Orsola, a political and bureaucratic
problem that no city council has yet resolved. I myself tell the history of Sant’Orsola
through the story of Anna, who has lived there up to when she was 12 years old, and try to
reconstruct the situation of those who lived there with the help of documents and researches
in the archives.
The book represents a mobile instrument of analysis of space and community. It has the
purpose to stimulate debate and express stories and accounts of events; it serves to denounce
but also to supply us with new significances. What is included in it is just a first step of a
process I intend to develop. Other projects have already joined those incorporated in it,
showing the interest of people in their own urban space and the search of new
anthropological meanings inside the community. Starting from the base, from the values
expressed by the citizens themselves, the project tries to rebuild the city following these
“natural” and cultural ways, which are originated from real needs, and represents the
renewal of a social tissue otherwise old and worn. In the expression of this truth lies, in my
opinion, the force and uniqueness of the contents of our operation.