Masbedo
Resto
2022
Color
PG
N/A
00:09:32
“Only the sea went on murmuring to him the usual story, down there between the Faraglioni—for the sea has no country, either, and belongs to whoever will pause to listen to it, here or there, wherever the sun dies or is born; and at Aci Trezza it has even a way of its own of murmuring, which one can recognize immediately, as it gurgles in and out among the rocks, where it breaks, and seems like the voice of a friend.”
Giovanni Verga, The House by the Medlar-Tree
The sea belongs to all those who know how to wait in silence for a sign: it is precisely for this reason, for its universal accessibility, that the sea belongs to no one. It is free, impulsive, a stranger to us all. This work is based on a concept of great significance: art as an act of aid and acceptance. The language of imagery that is suggested without violence, with modesty and respect in the face of something that is agonizingly recurrent in the daily news. There is the desire to take prayer to the sea, a little “andante” sonata composed by Gianandrea Fioroni in the eighteenth century. To have it sail the sea of Sicily aboard a boat, on a large screen installed in its bows. Like sailors scanning the horizon in search of the next landing place, we see the majestic details of the organ emerge during the performance in the churches of Santa Maria della Passione and Santa Maria Annunciata in Chiesa Rossa, in Milan.
At a moment in history in which the pandemic dictates its rules, we have chosen to defy every prohibition with poetry, to generate this ritual of welcome.
From Lombardy to Sicily to map out a dream, a journey, to produce a wake that divides and unites like the Sea of Sicily does the Eastern from the Western Mediterranean. Sicily is also the realm of ambivalence, where thought has no difficulty in embracing its exact opposite, where reality reveals itself with mutable faces, violent and unpredictable ones. And so, the sea is not just a place of peace, but also one of fear; not just open arms in which to throw yourself with optimism, but also a presence from which to flee in dread.
From Lombardy to Sicily to map out a dream, a journey, to produce a wake that divides and unites like the Sea of Sicily does the Eastern from the Western Mediterranean. Sicily is also the realm of ambivalence, where thought has no difficulty in embracing its exact opposite, where reality reveals itself with mutable faces, violent and unpredictable ones. And so, the sea is not just a place of peace, but also one of fear; not just open arms in which to throw yourself with optimism, but also a presence from which to flee in dread.
The title of the work stems from the name of the boat chosen to realize this project: Resto, “I remain,” a verb, a decision firmly taken, a political act.
