Wunderkammer
I.U.R. INFORMA URBIS ROMAE
Psycho-geographic guide to the Underground Rome
CASTELNUOVO FOTOGRAFIA 2020
Rocca Colonna
Città Castelnuovo di Porto (RM)
To understand a phenomenon, it is necessary to observe it from above and from within.
Women, men, children, young and old people from all over the world begin to walk together in one direction.They enter an abandoned building, put up banners and signal a new housing occupation. Tens, hundreds, thousands of families have a place to live, to have to defend and transform; it is a collective and collaborative living, not without effort. There is all of that behind a map.There are people, geographical spaces, physical and urban spaces that meet, influence and modify each other.To build these representations of small pieces of the world, it is necessary to immerse oneself in real life, “camminare domandando”, triggering a relationship with life that permeates them in its entirety.This is why we are not the only authors of these works. They are all those who have traveled these roads, realizing the existing represented.
The maps are defined as psycho-geographical guides based on the definition of the Situationist International of ’58.Psycho-geography studies the correlations between human, political, cultural and environmental values, taking on subversive characteristics towards classical geography and placing the creative re-definition of urban spaces at the center of its aims.This work is a document that takes a frame of an immobile instant that is thus composed as a result of social processes, paths of struggle, choices made and attacks suffered.
The exhibition idea is a Wunderkammer in which to convey maps of Rome that offer different perspectives: from the zenith vision, to the scale of the building and to arrive at eye level in the photos. In the case of the squat in Eurocongress hotel, Valerio Muscella and Paolo Palermo contributed with photos and videos made for their film “4 Stelle hotel”.
