• Abstract and Figures
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The shed light Angel Moya Garcia Utopia, forcing, abandonment. Ambiguity, anomaly, absence. How are the physical, social, and cultural characteristics of a place defined? What are the possibilities that can contribute to its development? To what extent can man force a landscape without risking defacing it? Are there any unusual interventions capable of determining and changing the fate of the place itself? The dialogue between natural landscape and anthropization, the set of transformation and alteration interventions that man carries out on the territory to adapt it to his own interests and needs, does not always become reconcilable. Often the effects are ecologically harmful in terms of irreversible modification of the environment as in the cases of deforestation, of certain agricultural or industrial plants and the unbridled construction of housing units. However, there are ethical and virtuous examples in which human intervention takes on new connotations as a function of development models regarding renewable energy, ecological transport, management of natural resources or production and eco-sustainable construction. In this perspective, Silvia Camporesi's research on the limits of photography led her to study, investigate and elaborate three radical and very specific interventions on the environment with the ultimate aim of shedding light on as many completely different contexts, but united by the particularities with which they were created, transformed or abandoned. It is not the subject of this analysis to evaluate the environmental impact or the ethics of each individual intervention, but to highlight the wonder, amazement, or legend that their unusual features have caused over time. From this perspective, the various phenomenal and cultural aspects of the landscape emerge, its fragility, its continuous change and, in particular, the stratification of a landscape that embodies the connection of man with nature, the urgency of to remember its necessary integration and interest in pausing to reflect on the relationship between man and the context he inhabits.The Isle of Roses, the Mirror of Viganella and the town of Fabbriche di Careggine constitute three extremely unusual cases of approach to the landscape. Three real places whose stories and vicissitudes are so incredible that they seem totally invented. While the first case is originated from scratch from a utopian vision, the second exploits natural resources in a singular way to contribute to the well-being of a given community and, finally, the third remains impregnated and hidden by an enigmatic aura which, in fact , periodically postpones its definitive oblivion. The Isle of Roses was a 400 m² artificial platform that stood in the Adriatic Sea. Built by the Bolognese engineer Giorgio Rosa, on 1 May 1968 it proclaimed the status of an independent state and although it gave itself an official language (Esperanto), a government, a currency and a postal issue, it was never formally recognized by any country in the world as an independent nation. Occupied by the Italian police forces on June 26, 1968 and subject to a naval blockade, the Isle of Roses was demolished in February 1969. The episode was slowly forgotten, considered for decades only as an attempt to "urbanize" the sea to obtain advantages of a commercial nature. Only since the first decade of 2000 it Z2O Sara Zanin Gallery | via della Vetrina 21, 00186 Roma | T. +39 06 70452261 | www.z2ogalleria.it | [email protected] Opening hours: Monday-Saturday 1 – 7 pm has been the subject of documentary research and rediscoveries centred on the utopian aspect of its genesis. Referring to the photos of the time, the artist built a model of the structure, setting it and photographing it as if it were real. The photographed document represents the postmark of a postage stamp with the image of the island, made on its creation. From 11 November to 2 February of each year, for 83 days, the town of Viganella, a town of 200 inhabitants in the Antrona Valley (VCO Province), is in total absence of sun due to the mountain in front. For this reason, in 2006 the then mayor Franco Midali and the architect Giacomo Bonzani built a large mirror of 40 square meters nearby the village capable of reflecting sunlight in the direction of the valley, even in the dark months. The mirror is able to direct the sun's rays in real time towards predetermined places, for example the pedestrian part of the main square and illuminates the village during the winter, for 6 hours a day. The return of natural light is still celebrated today, on February 2 of each year, with a big party. The artist photographed the sun reflected in the walls, in the doors of the small town and in the crucifix of the church and, with the use of a drone, she resumed the movement of the mirror facing the town. The town of Fabbriche di Careggine, a ghost town in the province of Lucca, in the municipality of Vagli Sotto, was abandoned in 1947 and then submerged by the waters of the artificial lake of Vagli formed following the construction of a hydroelectric dam. Lake Vagli, the largest hydroelectric basin in Tuscany, has been emptied for maintenance on four occasions, the last one in 1994. Since then, the town of Fabbriche di Careggine has never seen the light again, while the news of a new emptying comes out every year, increasing the curiosity of tourists and onlookers and postponing its disappearance from the geographical maps. Silvia Camporesi, unable to photograph it, rebuilt it, house by house, on a scale of 1:25, based on the plan created when the lake was last emptied. The town was then filmed and photographed in three phases: underwater, surfacing and finally emerging. Among the works on display there is also the reproduction of a curious document in which in 2015 the mayor of Vagli Sotto declares himself available to accept projects - never arrived - to create a transparent envelope that allows to see the submerged town. In all three cases we witness a forcing of the landscape, an accelerated manipulation that inevitably altered the conditions of departure and those of arrival. An alteration of the landscape that intersects and stratifies itself with the possibilities of manipulation of photography and that leads the artist to question the infallibility of this medium to faithfully reproduce reality, highlighting ambiguity and thinning the border between reality and fiction, between feasibility and chimera, between truth and deception. The presence of small, almost imperceptible details that underline the anomalies, the conscious mise-en-scène able to circumvent any limit and the investigation of the plausible link and intersect this cycle with the artist's entire production. Photographs, videos and archive materials that originate a utopian, suspended and crystallized atmosphere that follows the intentions of some of the previous photographic cycles such as "Atlas Italie", a survey conducted in all Italian regions, of abandoned places and countries or " The cities of thought ”in which the artist had photographed a hypothetical abandoned town, originally designed by Giorgio de Chirico. However, here we see a Z2O Sara Zanin Gallery | via della Vetrina 21, 00186 Roma | T. +39 06 70452261 | www.z2ogalleria.it | [email protected] Opening hours: Monday-Saturday 1 – 7 pm further maturity in increasing the sculptural aspect at the base of the shots and above all in creating a narrative that overcomes the dichotomy between the documentary aspect and the invented one to add layers, visions, components, and documents in able to keep the attention threshold active on what she is telling us and above all on what we want to believe. Z2O Sara Zanin Gallery | via della Vetrina 21, 00186 Roma | T. +39 06 70452261 | www.z2ogalleria.it | [email protected] Opening hours: Monday-Saturday 1 – 7 pm .

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