Di Giorgio Di Marzo
The idea of writing some special dossiers about Italy was born by considering the way non-Italians, and sometimes alas! even Italians themselves, continue talking about Italy by clichés. Sure, getting to know a nation like Italy, so fragmented and uneven but at the same time so many-sided probably thanks to these differences, is a bold enterprise even for us Italians. But I hope that telling about the different realities of our land could help everybody, and perhaps the Italians in first instance, to see the Bel Paese from a different point of view, as a still alive-and-kicking land and not as a vegetating-and-resting-on-its-laurels place; a land that can show itself in all its kaleidoscopic colours.
I wish to start from the end, which is from the most southern of the Italian regions, Sicily, and in particular from its capital of province – Palermo – city where I was born. I would appreciate if before going on reading this article you had a look to the photographs taken at the beginning of September and accessible from a link to the photo album in the section “portfolio” of our website: we start from the imposing Teatro Massimo, one of the biggest opera theatres of the world, go on with the suggestive Utveggio Castle – seat of CERISDI, Centre for Research and Executive Studies, which has so far formed more than 150 youths from all around the world by means of the Giovanni Bonsignore Scholarship and of the Euro-Mediterranean Master – and the astonishing landscape that can be enjoyed from there. The photo album concludes with wonderful Mondello, the most renowned seaside resort near Palermo, passing through all the photographs of the shows we will talk about in this dossier. The landscapes to narrate would be endless, but as can be seen by these pictures sun is the real leit motif of Palermo: a scorching sun that burns at the white heat for six month a year and that has moulded the slow character of the Palermitans and the colours of that land; as Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa writes in his everlasting fresco of Sicily which is Il Gattopardo – The Leopard: “The sun (…) revealed itself as the authentic sovereign of Sicily: the violent and impudent sun, the even narcotising sun, that annulled the individual wills and kept everything in a servile immobility, lulled in violent dreams, in violence that participated to the arbitrariness of dreams”.
If it is surely true that Palermo was immobile for many years, centuries indeed, dreamy while waiting for something that is hoped never to arrive in order to keep on being enchanted by the sweetness of moaning, it seems that sooner or later something re-awakens inside ourselves and Palermo, now, seems to be fermenting of art and culture, we who are in all respects a genuine museum, sons of almost 3,000 years of dominations and a melting pot of some of the most important civilisations of the past.
And it is of art and culture that I would like to talk about, starting from London and from the cinematographic transposition of The Leopard: I watched the film directed by Luchino Visconti some weeks ago at the Riverside Studios in London. It was a bit surprising to see so many people – English people – filling the hall and laughing at the quips subtitled in English with all the translation limits, and being fascinated by Richard Burton who magisterially gives a countenance to prince Fabrizio, even when silent. I wondered what impression the audience had about us Sicilians, and if they think that we really are as the Prince describes us to the cavalier Chevalley… and here the images of Palermo in the summer 2006 are grafted, like in a cine editing. It is a Palermo rich not only in warmth but colour, the colours of art and culture organised in that marvellous natural stage that is Palermo serenissima.
I had the pleasure to attend Palcoscenico Palermo - Musica e Teatro nelle Ville, sul Mare e sul Monte (Stage Palermo - Music and Theatre in the Villas, on the Sea and on the Mountain) – review strongly wanted by the Mayor of Palermo Diego Cammarata: that is, a summer programme of shows, rich in theatre and music events, a month and a half (47 days, to be precise) of culture and quality entertainment under the stars in some wonderful re-found places. Everything (or nearly everything) in the sign of Palermo, of its most authentic memory and most vivid artists.
From 10th of August to 27th of September Giardino della Zisa (Garden of Zisa), Parco di Villa Pantelleria, the Citta’ dei Ragazzi (City of Youths), Mondello, Sferracavallo and Mount Pellegrino were the setting for a good 90 events: 40 theatre shows (6 of which dedicated to the children), 41 concerts and 9 performances of music and visual arts.
Particularly important, for different reasons, the choice of utilising Giardino della Zisa – lately realised by the municipal administration on the Arabic model, and a fragment of what 9 centuries ago was the immense Norman park of Genoard – and the park of the eighteenth-century Villa Pantelleria, in the area of Piana dei Colli (Plain of the Hills), confiscated from Mafia and revived thanks to theatre.
It is also significant to have involved the neighbouring maritime towns, Mondello and Sferracavallo, crowded as they are in August and September with tourists and holidaymakers eager for occasions of diversion evenings at a good cultural level. And then Mount Pellegrino, a magic place which is seat of the shrine of Saint Rosalia patron of Palermo, which needs to be more and more appreciated; apart from that paradise for the youngest that is the oasis of the Citta’ dei Ragazzi, immersed in the Favorita (Favourite) – the big lung of Palermo.
The reviews, part of the wide programme of Palcoscenico Palermo, were six. The theatre programme – Parco Villa Pantelleria Teatro Festival, from 20th of August to 25th of September – provided in total 33 shows, 27 of which by directors and actors from Palermo, like Pino Caruso, Lugi Maria Burruano, Toni Sperandeo, Lollo Franco, Giacomo Civiletti, Giorgio Li Bassi, Paride Benassai; the protagonist is Palermo, its traditions, its beauties, dramas and utopias. The other 6 performances were of nation-wide theatre, comedy and cabaret, with celebrities such as Lello Arena, Paola Gassman, Max Pisu, Giovanni Cacioppo, Valentina Persia, Antonio & Michele. An apposite programme of 6 pièce, then, was dedicated to children, with fairy tales and activities on the theme of the deterioration of the environment (Citta’ dei Ragazzi, from 23rd August to 27th September).
Music at Giardino della Zisa was articulated in two programmes with our own very good artists: the first one counted 8 jazz concerts (Profumo di Jazz alla Zisa – Scent of Jazz at Zisa – from 18th to 23rd August), spanning from the American gospel tradition to the Twenties Dixieland, to the great classics; to mention, amongst the others, Anna Bonomolo, Diego Spitaleri, Gaetano Riccobono and the homage to Enzo Randisi. The other programme, in 13 concerts (Suoni della Citta’ – Sounds of the city – from 24th August to 6th September), had as a dominant theme styles fusion: world-music, ethno-ambient, afro-techno, Spanish folk, south world sonorities, Mediterranean ethnic; among the many performers were the Folkage, Miriam Palma, the Aes Dana, the Bonanova, Shamal. To be reminded, off-programme and again at Giardino della Zisa, the concert of the volcanic singer-songwriter Aida Satta Flores.
And for the youngsters, Le Terrazze alla Zisa (The Terraces at Zisa – from 29th August to 6th September) presented DJ sets, workshops, live sets, multi-sensory installations and video art, with famous national and international performers; a strong trend in many countries in the world. The programme took place after 11pm, at the end of the concerts part of Suoni della Citta’.
We were not there for the occasion, but it is also worth of mention the 9th edition of Provincia in Festa (Province in Feast), feather in the cap of the President of the Province of Palermo Francesco Musotto, during which many of the 82 communes of the Province of Palermo hosted more than 100 music, theatre and art events in a month; particularly interesting was the exhibition on the Kinetism of the 1950s and 1960s, coming from the Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg, that presented about fifty works of worldwide renowned artists with sculptures, paintings and installations by – amongst the others – Julio Le Parc, Horacio García Rossi, Joel Stein, Boris Stuchebrjukov, Luigi Veronesi, Bruno Munari.
Considering that the aim of our agency is the promotion of young artists, let’s start with those met in Palermo and with whom we had the pleasure of talking after their performances. The first one, in chronological order, is Cinzia Conte, director of the dancing school Next One - Danceart in Palermo. Her idea consists in introducing into contemporary dance other forms of art, especially painting and sculpture, developing simple themes about the person and its natural signs, digging into the nature of gesture and movement. This is the idea of the show – part of Le Terrazze alla Zisa – called Energia Alternativa (Alternative Energy), that is the energy coming from movement; the choreography wants to represent man as he is, as he lives, and put it on stage utilising different facets of contemporary dance such as audience contact, thus communicating in a more direct and almost primitive way. The performance is composed of three choreographies: Animali (Animals), that recalls the contact with earth and the rediscovery of man and his own nature; Soggetti in Moto (Subjects in Motion), where painting joins in and plays with the human shape; while the third part, Iniziativa (Initiative), points out that sensorial courses are someway swifter in women than in men. Also to Cinzia we have asked what art is: “Art is communication, any type, the important thing is that a wave of energy came, whatever the way of developing art itself”. And I must admit that this energy has been transmitted and received by the heterogeneous audience, pleased by an evening of dance despite the fact that, as Cinzia herself says, in Southern Italy dance is not as appreciated as it should deserve. On this subject is important Cinzia’s advice to approach contemporary dance for ourselves in the first place, as to a sport that everybody – with the correct precautions – can practise not only to became professional dancers. Dance is then for people of any age, as it is a very good activity both physically and psychologically.
Another performance to point out, again at Terrazze alla Zisa, is 3.2.1.aaa. Two Italian girls, Alice e Francesca, have entertained the children involving them in the construction of a series of small paper montgolfiers, while they were engaged in the creation of two bigger fire balloons that would have turned, few hours later, a public of adults into children. Paper, glue, colour pens, a bit of mastery and technique, and a lot of fantasy: here are the ingredients. The preparation has required a few hours and during the evening, as can be seen from the photos, has involved the adults too. And in the end, after having set fire to the wood, placed the first colourful fire balloon on the pyre to fill it up with hot air, here is the miracle: the fire balloon slowly takes off, to the sound of music and the oooohhhhh of wonder of the audience. Surely the poetry will not last long, but what matters? Even because another fire balloon is ready to take off, loaded with cards on which the public have written their thoughts… and the wonder continues…
3.2.1.aaa is developed by a group, a mutable-variable collective, composed of a basic nucleus of four people, among whom Alice and Francesca, plus other collaborators and volunteering participating people: the audience, indeed, have to be active part of the show. As Alice told us, what we have seen is part of a series of experiments called Aeroazioni (Air-actions), that is not simple shows but actions; the fire balloon is a symbolic object, a metaphor, an idea that takes off thanks to the warmth of fire. And the fire itself is a metaphor that not only heats the air but also the environment and represents human energies, apart from being bearer of rituality. Fire allows to free creativity: the fire balloon is also metaphor of a flying head, which fills up with hot air and empties of all the weights. A head that, by playing, flies and look at the world in a different way, interacts with air and allows us to see new perspectives and to land on imaginary places. And the fire balloon also represents the life of these Italian girls living in Marseille and touring in Europe with their fire-balloon laboratory which has landed, with its load of dreams and fantasy, exactly in that Arabian Nights-like city which is Palermo.
Another youngster to mention is Othello, in the world Salvatore Petrotta Reyes, DJ and rapper from Palermo, keen on hip hop and producer, with whom we have talked about the problems of music in Palermo. Othello cites The Leopard saying that the problem of people from Palermo is that of feeling perfect and realised; about the difficulty of making music in Palermo, it often is the ground under the feet missing, that is a lack of support from Sicilians, because who has some ideas often goes abroad. What is lacking in Sicily, even now, are infrastructures, networks among the artists, the creatives, those who want to communicate something on a side and the public on the other, public which is wrongly said to be non-receptive. Therefore, Othello yoyoed between Milan and Palermo, also to look for people with whom to interact and travel, thanks to what he can now boast a fan such as Caparezza (a well known Italian rapper). His aim his to develop in Palermo a multimedia entity – a production and graphics studio, a press office – a laboratory that could help youngsters in making music. This studio already exists, but still has to develop, especially on the Internet. Othello is also known as Eddi Palermo and other akas as any self-respecting rapper, and is considered among the most important Italian rappers by XL, the magazine published by the newspaper La Repubblica. According to him, art is the balanced result of a total imbalance, based on emotional Pindaric flights that drive us to living very strong emotions and react as volcanoes, only to ask ourselves soon afterwards “why can’t I do it anymore?”; but if you try to rationalise you are already losing contact with creativity. The only way to rationalise and still being an artist is by refining the techniques; for a rapper it means to be able to make prosody: if you have something to say and you know to technically say it, sooner or later it will come out.
The prime mover of everything is the love of Othello for God: his new album is called Solo Amore (Love Only), but it has a side project called Attraverso L’Odio (Through Hate), while the previous album was Cerco Pace (I Look for Peace) and it has been acknowledged as the first Christian rap Made in Italy. As himself says, there is no bigotry in that, it is just his way to interpret life: after having followed different and not always straight paths, Othello has realised that each of us has a duty in life, and it is important to find out what it is. Someone has the task to move few grains of sand, whilst someone else has to move mountains. If we try to move the sand when it is not our real goal, we will find it difficult; but when we will found our way God will give us the means also to move the mountains as if they were grains of sand. Apart from whether sharing his views or not, it is surely pleasant to find artists like Othello in the diverse music environment, “made in Palermo”.
The creator of the evenings Le Terrazze alla Zisa is Francesco Calabria, who operates in the organisation of events focused on the valorisation of spaces and the relation between the spaces themselves and the environment, the city. That of Zisa – a neighbourhood of Palermo – was a difficult project because the aim was to avoid to steal space, as the youths of the neighbourhood consider the villa as their own property: therefore, the attitude of Francesco has been to understand the neighbourhood reality and most of all what the youths were expecting, and that has led to the success of the programme. The involvement of the youngsters of the area represents the most important experience: giving liveliness and appreciated entertainment to the area was one of the main aims of the project. It is fundamental the symbiosis between space and neighbourhood and the way it can lead to a valorisation of both of them, as well as it has been important the involvement of children by means of workshops. Le Terrazze is a touring project: back in 2005, with Le Terrazze alla Kalsa, the approach was the same: complaints from the residents at first, total involvement and success in the end; and the intention is to move to different neighbourhoods and revive spaces that are generally speaking not very open-minded, which is the main objective of the association Zone al Limite (Zones to the Limit), and that obviously also allows to launch the artistic ferment of Palermo.
Another project Francesco Calabria is following is the valorisation of the local artistic resources: artists often need the support of the administration also in the predisposition of sites where to perform, of the right tools and communication; and this is starting to bear fruit in Palermo, where people from the city itself often forget how rich in art their city is.
Parco di Villa Pantelleria, within the programme Teatro Festival, has featured Il Cantico dei Cantici (The Song of Songs) by King Solomon, directed by Antonio Raffaele Addamo, actor and director from the Aeolian Islands but settled in Palermo, whom we have interviewed. On what concerns the theatre activity in Palermo, Addamo says that only the big productions in the Sicilian permanent theatres work easily, while privately-run productions find hard to male their works circulate.
Addamo started in the avant-garde, with physical theatre, and only later started working on the spoken word; and when he can work autonomously, he always try to combine theatre with dance, rituality and all that is part of his background. To him, is very important to work on the soul: it should be given to the audience not only a well-packed show, but also an emotion.
His show is a fusion of voice, music and video on the lyrics of The Song of the Songs translated by Guido Ceronetti, one of the greatest contemporary authors and poets in Italy. The Song has been adapted by the Catholicism and comprised in the Bible softened in the more erotic part, still present in Ceronetti’s version. It is set in the first part in a fairy Middle East, with references to the Arabic elements of the Sicilian culture. The dreamy landscape of palms and oasis turns in the second part of the show in the nowadays Middle East, with the lyrics of love juxtaposed to the harsh images of the Lebanon-Israel conflict. The show has given birth to an interlacement of ancient voices, Arabic sonorities and topical videos creating intense suggestions welcomed by the public.
On the occasion of the evening at Parco di Villa Pantelleria we also had the pleasure to meet and interview Lollo Franco, artistic director of the first edition of Parco di Villa Pantelleria Teatro Festival, and also artistic director since 10 years of the Compagnia Teatrale Pagliarelli operating both inside and outside the homonymous prison in Palermo. One of the productions realised during these years is Ultima Violenza (Last Violence) by Giuseppe Fava, murdered in Catania by Mafia, drama set in a courtroom and performed by the prisoners playing the role of GIS – Special Forces of the Carabinieri – lawyers and magistrates. But it is also important to develop the activity in the outside world, with prisoners that if rehearsing in the jail can afterwards perform outside. And this is the miracle of Villa Pantelleria, in the theatre of which – apart from Lollo Franco and other professionals – former prisoners work as actors, machinists, artisans, thus returned to the civil society. Parco di Villa Pantelleria, a gem in Piana dei Colli and named humanity heritage by the UNESCO, is a park confiscated to Mafia. The villa was built around 1730 on the existing structure of a beam, and is now administrated by the Commune of Palermo that in its turn has trusteed Lollo Franco for six years. What used to be the Royal Court is now a al-fresco theatre, while at the back a new theatre with a capacity of 2,500 will be built in 2007. The park will soon be open to the youths and will host the legality Library of Legality. To the question about what art is, Lollo Franco replies that art is life; the favourite sin by devil is art and art is part of vanity, but there are two kinds of art and therefore of vanity: the art of appearance and the art of being, and Lollo Franco wants to make the art of being. As regards the way to make art in Palermo, Parco di Villa Pantelleria is an example: painters and sculptors exhibit at the park, and soon there will be courses in theatre direction and paper-pulp masks making, in order to make it a park of art and culture. In the area, with a capacity of 300, there is the so called muro firriato – a dry wall looking like an amphitheatre – where a stage will be positioned that anybody, from 4pm to 8pm, can use for free to present a magazine, a project, an idea: a kind of Speaker’s Corner in Palermo!
As the Mayor Cammarata says, summer in Palermo is sun, sea, nightlife in the streets crowded until late. Among Arabic, Norman and Baroque architectures, the city in summer turns magic and reveals its ancient origins. But Palermo, though deeply committed in the restoration and recovery of its most important sites, does not live of its ancient memory only, but confronts itself with the newest thoughts and international art expressions. In this perspective finds a location the opening of the new Museo d’Arte Moderna (Museum of Modern Art) in the monumental complex of Sant’Anna la Misericordia, in the neighbourhood of Lattarini, future seat of the Civica Galleria d’Arte Moderna (Civic Gallery of Modern Art). Part of the celebrations for the 350th anniversary of the birth of Giacomo Serpotta and organised by two of the most illustrious Italian critics, Demetrio Paparoni and Gianni Mercurio, Eretica is an exhibition in the programme of Kals’Art – the annual review directed by Davide Rampello – and represents one of the most outstanding events in Italy in the last years.
The body and transcendence are subjects not new to the last century’s art, and have acquired particular importance since the Seventies. With regard to the theme of the bionic body (trend established in the Nineties with the denomination of post human), the newest researches enlighten a growing interest for transcendence, with themes such as religious interaction, rebellion to dogmas, mercy, sanctity. Eretica analyses how this trend is accentuating and incorporating the most significant experiences of the artists that have participated to these considerations. On the other side, centred as it is on the concept of sacred and spirituality, the exhibition also faces subjects such as the contraposition of good and evil, sanctity, the relationship among eroticism, sex and death.
Why is this exhibition so important? As stated by Antonella Purpura, director of the Civica Galleria d’Arte Moderna, not always art defines the language of its era. When this happens, then it is called contemporary art. The term does not define ephemeral trends, but the tension of the transformations influencing the whole society. Art in these days hovers between the tension of novelty and the impossibility of being really innovative. This is because the revolutions of the last century were the result of processes started at the end of the Nineteenth century and at the beginning of the Twentieth. Art could not help with being affected by a socio-politic condition child of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, of the new migration flaws, of the religion conflicts; and, as Eretica demonstrates, art seeks answers into transcendence too. Art, faithful to the spirit of the historic avant-gardes, espouse heresy in language and contents.
It is a pleasure that this exhibition was conceived and presented in Palermo, city of many souls and cradle of ancient civilities, confluence point between Orient and West, between the North and South of the world.
For the occasion a catalogue has been printed, published by Skira, with the title Eretica - L’Arte Contemporanea dalla Trascendenza al Profano (Eretica - Contemporary Art from Trascendence to Prophanity), comprehending, apart from many reproductions of the works of the exhibition, an anthology of texts by Rogers Callois, George Bataille, Julien Ries, Gore Vidal, Faye Waddleton, Jean Baudrillard, Arthur C. Danto, Pierre Riches, Arturo Schwarz, Michel Maffesoli.
Theatre again, but independent: it is Tancredi and Clorinda at the Teatro Garibaldi, directed by Rosario Tedesco and based on La Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered). Rosario – born in Palermo, has studied in Turin with Ronconi and works with Latella – has worked on the variation of the characters: there are indeed three couples of Tancredis and Clorindas, in three different situations, and the author himself played by Rosario intervenes and modifies the scenes. He takes inspiration exactly from this conflictual relationship between the author and his works: like Tasso himself, who devoted his entire life to La Gerusalemme Liberata modifying it all the time. In fact the actors – Rosario, Silvia Ajelli, Caterina Deregibus, Giuseppe Lanino, Patrizia Veneziano Broccia, Enrico Roccaforte and Emilio Vacca – have continuously changed and improved their interpretation, performance after performance. What went on stage is a meaningless fight, a fight between the two-six characters and between the characters and the author, a fight made of darkness and light, noises and silences, but most of all made of incommunicability, in the suggestiveness of the Teatro Garibaldi which looks as jumped off an epic duel. The audience in Milan, Naples and Montenegro will have the opportunity to watch the performance in November 2007.
We have talked about the Teatro Garibaldi with its director Matteo Bovera, born in Sant’Agata di Militello in the province of Palermo who, after working for twenty years in northern Italy as theatre events organiser and with Carmelo Bene and Leo De Bernardinis, has decided to return to his native place and had the idea to bring back to its ancient splendour the Teatro Garibaldi, inaugurated by Giuseppe Garibaldi indeed, the Hero of Two Worlds, soon after the Unification of Italy; closed down in 1967 after one hundred years of activity and for thirty years progressively corroded by negligence and deprived of its furniture and materials, was reduced to a naked skeleton, a kind of lifeless fossil, with its boxes without parapets, with the memories of the antique decorations glimpsed among the inscriptions of the dates of the Hero’s battles.
In 1995, when the city had a start in the turning of its cultural policy, the recovery of the theatre was not in the plans of the administration, but Matteo asked and obtained by the commune its management even though, he says, he was considered half crazy. The theatre has never been completely refurbished, but adapted to its utilisation: and it is probably thanks to this peculiarity that in 1996 Carlo Cecchi fell in love with the theatre and a new collaboration started with Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In 2000 the Garibaldi Theatre joined the Union of European Theatres created by Strehler, and also participated to the Festival of European Theatres; but the last five years, according to Matteo Bovera, were really hard because the TV lorded it and there were heavy cuts in the funds reserved to culture that led to five years of Middle Age especially for Palermo, culturally re-born only a short time before. Even in the harsh times, avoided by means of co-production rather than direct production, the Garibaldi Theatre has maintained its European vocation; in this sense there are ties with directors, like Antonio Latella, and actors, but not a proper company which is considered some way fossilising. It has to be mentioned the project Shakespeare Salvato dai Ragazzini (Shakespeare saved by the Children) began some years ago with 8-year-old children staging Mid-Summer Night’s Dream; making children act also means making them become spectators, and in fact the 14 kids acting at the Garibaldi’s eventually go and watch all of the shows, even the most difficult or those played in foreign languages.
Off any programme, and just to conclude rendering the idea of the international air breathed in Palermo too, I would like to talk about The Ship of Fools that with its load of savvy lunacy, captained by the leader August Dirks, docked at Palermo in September with the foolish show The World Upside Down.
The Ship of Fools is a timeless image of mankind adrift, immortalised by artists such as Hiëronymus Bosch and Albrecht Dürer. This millennium-old carnivalesque tradition has been embodied now for twelve years by Azart, a 90 foot long ocean-going vessel which has visited about one hundred cities in seventeen countries. The ship Azart is a bizarre monument in praise of folly, which suddenly appears at the horizon, soon to leave a void on the quay side. It is a legend that started at the jubilee celebration in 1994 of the publication of the world’s first bestseller, the divina satira called Das Narrenschiff – The Ship of Fools – written by Sebastian Brant in 1494 in Basel/Strasbourg.
Azart is a laboratory of theatre, a laboratory of experiences, a theatr in constant search for its own peculiar dimension. Why the name Azart? In 1989 the ship was bought and baptised precisely AZART, that is, ART from A to Z.
It is a home made theatre, free from rules, styles and formulas, in which the collective creation is an investigation of the fantasies and dreams of a Babylon. It is a visual theatre in which the design of costumes and props is always subject to the search for new vistas in the art of representation, using the recycling of waste, a variety of styles and a mixture of eras as the means to the making of every scene a constant surprise. It is serendipity, a comic theatre designed to entertain and to make laugh and a philosophic theatre in its satirical comment of society. And it surely is a music theatre, with its original touch and the folly of incidental and atmospheric sound effects. Azart is a collective of twelve artists coming from all of the five continents, amongst whom there is Antonio D’Antoni from Palermo, who transform their world-travel into a life-travel and a festive pageant. They explore the boundaries of life as art and art as a lifestyle. Embarked on an artistic pilgrimage they search for new dimensions in global communication and for new horizons of cultural interchange. The entire world is a stage. And as the comic-leader August has said, Sicily is their ideal stage because – and said by the comic-leader is flattering! – is a land of fools! They already went to Palermo ten years ago, but as they had got lost navigating around the world, returned in September 2006 only with a vessel loaded with foolishness staging, amongst the other things, the lunacy of Palermo depicted by the book Nuovo Repertorio dei Pazzi della Citta’ di Palermo (New Repertoire of the Fools of the City of Palermo) by Roberto Alajmo: a woman buys a potion to fly just to reach her sons emigrated to Australia; but the flight will turn into a tragedy because the potion will be replaced, by his husband who thought she was unfaithful, with the water of the dentures and the poor mother will crash to the ground… And as our jester August says – that always wears pointed ears and belled hat to remind us that the actual fools are ourselves with our designer clothes – the audience of Palermo has changed during the past ten years: the first time there was a public mainly of youths, now there have been families with children; maybe the same youngsters of ten years ago? And all the foolishnesses of this mad crew is accompanied by the soundtrack by I Fratelli di Strada (The Brothers of Roads), with Antonio D’Antoni on the guitar. Antonio, born in Palermo but grown in Ragusa, had travelled much throughout Europe with a music show comprehending theatre and puppets, to dock in the end at Barcelona where he met the fools. Antonio tells us about his incredible experience, both professional and personal, that is living and working on a ship all together, travelling around the world, obviously making the cleaning rota, eating together. And our Antonio, in this international environment speaking English and Spanish, adds a bit of “salt”, his being Sicilian and therefore his language, to this already tasty course. See you soon…
And before concluding I would like to mention the ties, maybe thin but still existing, between Sicily and England: I wish to remind that the sixth edition of the international conference Travel Writing Borders & Crossing, held in Palermo from 7th to 12th of September, presented two journey diaries written by two English soldiers, Charles Boothby and George Rawlinson, arrived to Palermo on the English ships of Nelson among King Ferdinand III of Bourbon’s suite, escaping from Naples under the advance of Giuseppe Bonaparte who for two years – from 1806 to 1808 – governed the Reign of Naples in the name of his brother Napoleon. Boothby colourfully describes a “romantic” Messina full of “beauties of Nature”, whose blue and calm sea is defined as a “river-like sea”. However, behind so many natural beauties is hiding the misery of a city still in ruins after the earthquake in 1783 that had provoked a tsunami and the death of 40,000 inhabitants; “Its beauty is over and today its streets are full of destroyed buildings”, Boothby writes revising the stereotype of the glorious past and degraded present that had acquired so much popularity after the publication in 1776 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon.
Analogous considerations are found in the description of Taormina, where Boothby stops on the way to Augusta – important English naval base from where nelson had left years before for the Egypt campaign and where Boothby would be named captain of the Sicilian army. Taormina is depicted with unmistakable gothic traits: “Covered by clouds and resting on an imposing mountain between two enormous rock peaks, on the highest of which there is a gloomy and decayed castle”.
In such a catalogue of gothic beauties could not be missing the Etna, traditionally obliged destination of the traveller; Boothby describes it utilising strong chromatic contrasts: “the black and naked rock in neat contrast with the splendour of the grass”. The volcano, site of the sublime par excellence, provokes those “strong” and “inspired” emotions that Longino – whose cult comes as far as to the nineteenth century – considers sources of the “Great Writing”. Strong of this tradition Boothby states that the volcano is “rich in terrible sublimity and frightful beauty”, and still “one of the most wonderful object of nature” – and the term “stupendous” has first importance in the vocabulary of Sublime. Surely there is also backbiting on our women that, said by Rawlinson “sully themselves with frivolity that destroys the amiability of the feminine character, and it is useless to look in them for that innate timidity, that seducing diffidence that adorns the daughters of Great Britain”. It has to be said that such judgements and generalisations were already in vogue at the time of the Grand Tour, when Italy used to be meant not only as a site of classicism, but also as an occasion for sexual liberty.
The idea of talking about these two journey diaries – I thank for the material provided Il Giornale di Sicilia and Simonetta Trovato – was born for the whish of giving an idea of the way Sicily, traditionally, has been a land of contrasts to the eyes of visitors too. But after having read the article, on the Financial Times of London, by a certain Simon Kuper about Palermo, I really think that these diaries, that take into account all of the aspects of a country, both positive and negative – even though through the eyes of the colonisers – should be read first of all in their land of origin. If beauty is in the observer’s eye, Simon Kuper would need a transplant of retina.
I started this dossier with the words of prince Fabrizio from The Leopard, and I conclude with him again: “Sicilians will never want to improve for the simple reason that they believe to be perfect; their vanity is stronger than their misery; any intrusion by strangers both for origin and, if Sicilians, for independence of spirit, shakes their raving of achieved perfection, risks to disturb their satisfied wait for nothing…”. Thus Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote and, until few years ago, I would have undersigned these words: who knows, perhaps even languid Palermo has finally decided to awake from its torpor and, like an albatross, spread its wings to fly above the indigo Mediterranean in search for a new future…
These are the artists whose works are exhibited at Eretica:
Marina Abramovic, Araki, Antony, Vanessa Beecroft, John Bock, Maurizio Cattelan, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Ken Currie, Chuck Close, Mona Hatoum, James Hopkins, Thomas Hirschhorn, Mike Kelley, Tracy Emin, Regina José Galindo, Gerard Garouste, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Damien Hirst, Michael Joo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Paul McCarthy, Ottonella Mocellin e Nicola Pellegrini, Jenny Saville, Vik Muniz, Jonathan Meese, Ron Mueck, Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Luigi Ontani, Tony Oursler, Marc Quinn, Antonio Riello, Bernardi Roig, Thomas Ruff, David Salle, Tom Sachs, Andreas Serrano, Cindy Sherman, Starn Twins, Sugimoto, Atelier Van Lieshout, Sam Taylor-Wood, Thomas Struth, Mark Wallinger, Joel-Peter Witkin, Hiro Yamagata.
Copyright 2006 GIORGIOSTUDIO – All rights reserved |
