How do you say something sensible about an event that sense does not? Think about something that goes beyond understanding? When I was involved in this project seemed an impossible undertaking, to address a lot of pain, a city destroyed, so many deaths, it seemed far-fetched and a bit 'insane. What can an artist facing a similar tragedy in the face of urgent needs of both?
In the middle of a big city has run created a closed and mysterious, impenetrable, which no longer apply the laws that govern the rest of the world. The initial shock quickly turned into a desire to cross the border in need of knowledge, preparation, and then exceeded, projection into the future.
And 'This is the key to the epicenter project, not just the tragedy, the rebuilding of the historic center material, but the symbolic reconstruction of the city image, the activation of a positive movement of ideas. When balances are destroyed, then of course you think that you lost, but a similar event also opens spaces for new scenarios and unexpected ideas. So now the empty space of the historic city can and should be redesigned as was never possible before. The problem of old towns, besieged by modernity unpredictable when they were built, it is common to many cities not only Italian. Even before the earthquake the city of Aquila lived an unresolved conflict between a development disorder, the senseless exploitation of resources and space, and historical legacy of excellence that deserves profound reorganization measures, protection and restoration.
But now the disaster has stopped the flow of life. A condition of closing and tragic at the same time an opening, now forced to rethink things, meeting people, the movement of emotions, to recreate the route, to redefine the connections, rebuild hope, with the same determination with which earthquake-resistant walls are erected.
Here art has a meaning, a decisive role in defining the collective image of a place and experience. In an extreme situation such as this opens up an unexpected space for contemporary art: I gradually discovered a willingness to listen, a sincere desire of comparison, the transmission of ideas, a willingness to understand that I had almost forgotten. Besides the practical, material needs, even art found an original space, as a function linked to the imagination, the desire for truth, mastery, generosity of those who can not help but do the best. In situations like this you lose a lot, but is also found the value of the symbolic dimension of existence, we discover a closeness, a desire for what is human becomes part therapy, reconstruction of personal and collective.
An artist does not know anything, can not provide any salvation, it has the advantage of knowing just do not know and the courage or the recklessness required for non-stop at the fear we try always, without thinking about the dangers of running, chasing the limits his capacity for hope and desire. This requires the work of an artist, there 'need courage to cross the border, we need patience to alleviate suffering, qualities that in tough times reveal their full value of living matter, communicable, capable to revive a wounded body, to put back into the blood.
Rethinking the city is already architecture, is already rebuilding, so a council of ideas is a precious moment. To the artists was not only asked to donate a work, but to express an idea. All those who participated in this first phase of the project were invited to think about the city, its people, to operate in that space, being part of a process of resuscitation, the projection in a possible future.
It was not easy, everyone has tried at first to my own dismay and bewilderment, but then they all participated with a similar motivation, as if the fate of a city and its inhabitants were a metaphor for the precarious fate of their own people of this world, as if the opportunities and challenges that a situation like this requires battles were missed when throwing unconditionally. In a time when everything in art is evaluated by the price, the artists have proved capable of distinguishing, to give and defend a value.
To recapture the city, rebuild the fabric of shared images that literally built the new size of the city, including art, architecture change of sign, no longer belong to another time of design, expression, calculation, but may arise from the time of hearing, by a group of experiences and points of view different from the mix of things apparently far.
The meeting with the architecture is good art, requires the simplicity of a precise meaning, a direction, a sort of containment of what is by definition uncontrollable, overflows from all sides and in danger of losing. And the architecture is good to deal with the other side of creativity, one that does not wait for a request to get going, but which is itself a question, but need not function. Art is everywhere now, is' a key to the contemporary, a way of seeing a huge flow of ideas bouncing all over the planet, causing meetings of experiences and cultures, produces truth not mutually exclusive, rather that you seek, look for the comparison, while being enriched partial truths. No one today can think of rebuilding the complexity of a living organism as a city, it can analyze the processes, reduce distortions, improve the potential, but then the whole will always be the result of a lot of contradictions, a thousand details, thousands of partial truth .
Now the vacuum of the Eagle is another world, a human space without men, who are now outside the interior spaces, where nature has been indifferent to resume his work as a return to the origin, contrary to the streets and squares have become internal the only viable space, a huge theater, a setting of memory that has uncovered a buried city for centuries, with no cars, advertising, noise and bustle. Imagine a different story from what appears to be a challenge to the order of the world, today this city can become an immense workshop, a whole town can be transported, translated into a new era, a new way of thinking and live or otherwise can be finally abandoned.
The artists are given the rare opportunity to have a direction where to point to his sensitivity, to use their talents in connection with a network of ideas, no longer only isolated cases in a sea of conformity, but a partial and required a whole to rebuild.
If it was not necessary to go through a tragedy so painful it would be hoped that as a moment of reflection for the whole art scene, and perhaps the country for Italy in general. Pause for a moment the spell, look at the facts, look around, listen to others, to find a common sense, the value of experience, gave a gesture of humanity, the beauty of free idea.
And 'This is the epicenter of a good earthquake, the landslide of ideas that does not separate but together, not empty words, but willingness to review all rewrite everything, clean everything, do it all, beautiful and better than before, because we are not less and we can do.