Case study C: Remote Rural Areas PAEesSAGGIO - Azione : The Village of Art & Urban Node

RU.DE.RI Association ( RUral DEsign per la RIgenerazione dei territori (https://www.facebook.com/ruraldesignrigenerazione)

Edited by Valentina Anzoise (founder member of RU.DE.RI association)

RU.DE.RI - Rural Design for Territorial Regeneration - is a cultural association composed of architects, designers, researchers and professionals based all over (and also abroad), whose activities are mainly focused on remote, rural areas of . The association promotes practices and approaches aimed at valorizing rural contexts, placing the activities related to agriculture at the heart of territorial regeneration to broaden the scope of design - mainly based on the urban paradigm synthetized in the famous statement by Gropius "from the spoon to the city" - to embrace instead the concept of landscape, not only in an aesthetic and ecological sense but also in a scientific and productive one, as a result of the co-evolution of environmental systems and human activities. The cornerstones of the paradigm shift proposed by RU.DE.RI move from a new interpretation of the historical role of agriculture that is based, on the one hand, on the awareness of new emerging perceptions of the territory and, on the other hand, on the need for a systemic integration of agricultural productive chains with culture and landscape design. For productive activities here are not meant exclusively agricultural ones but also the network of ecosystem services provided to urban areas by rural areas, as well as the production of narratives which will bring outside of the rural areas the values of what - in a previous project we will explain below - we1 have named the "Rural City", i.e. that systemic continuum embracing natural enclave, cultural landscapes and farming villages as part of a habitat composed of systems with different and complementary qualities. At the center of RU.DE.RI activity there is a re-assessment and re- definition of key concepts such as "territory" and "identity", to re-configure the sense of history and culture as productive open processes, which are actively taking place, and are not fix or prepackaged objects. To learn more from the experience of this association, Mario Festa - architect and member of the Azione Matese workgroup and actual president of RU.DE.RI - has been interviewed by Valentina Anzoise, a founder member of RU.DE.RI, in a sort of peer-interview or appreciative inquiry.

1 Some of the actual members of RU.DE.RI have been also in the founder working group of "Azione Matese", the intervention of territorial regeneration that we will explain in the following pages through the voice of Mario Festa.

VA: Mario, if you had to identify where the vision promoted by RU.DE.RI association comes from or what has first inspired it, what would you say?

MF: I would say that a fundamental step is represented by "PAEseSAGGIO - Azione Matese" (Wise Village Landscape - Matese Action), a cultural and territorial regeneration intervention born because of a series of coincidences: i.e other architects and I, returning in Italy after having worked together for years in Berlin, met again and got fascinated with Italian inland and mountain areas. A key question at the origin of our bet was: how is it possible to "do something good" in those extremely marginal places? We then decided to work on the Apennine massif of Matese, in Region, in a remote area very close to the village where I was born and raised. For a long time we tried to get in contact with local authorities and institutions to expose our project and vision. Most of them refused, because our ideas were "too faraway and visionary" compared to "traditional" development projects they were used to and they expected from us to bring there! Notice also that, at that time, almost none was talking of urban regeneration in Italy. Therefore, given the difficulty of bringing forward the proposals with the municipalities of Matese, at a certain point we had almost decided to give up. But some years before, in 1993, the Matese Regional Park had been established, and in 2002 a symbolic episode happened to us: we were chatting in a restaurant of - one of the village we wanted to work on - when the Commissioner of the Park came in and asked us: "What are you doing here?". We told him what we had in mind to do in these marginal areas, and he said: "This thing is interesting, and it could fall into the PIT (Integrated Territorial Plan) of the Park".

After this meeting, it was he who supported us throughout all the process and created the conditions to establish a memorandum of understanding between 5 municipalities in the North-West area of the Park: Capriati a , , Gallo Matese, and . From that moment we began the program "PAESesAGGIO - Azione Matese"2 funded by the European Union through the Operational Programme 2000-2006 (POR) of Campania Region and it was divided into two main interventions: the Village of Art project and the Urban Node project, for which they were allocated € 500.000 and € 700.000 respectively.

2 The title is given by a wordplay among the words Paesaggio (i.e. Landscape), Paese (i.e. Village) and Saggio (i.e. Wise)

Fig. 1 Map of the five villages involved in Azione Matese

VA: What were these two projects about and how did you undertake the first activities envisaged?

MF: Concerning the Village of Art project, before funds finally arrived, the founder working group - comprised of 5 architects coming from different parts of Italy - had already begun to work concretely on the development of its broader vision. It was 2003-2004, and the main reference for us were previous experiments of Italian artistic installations realized in inland, desolate, areas. Nonetheless, compared to those experiences, we were interested especially in involving the population. Art was a pretext for promoting "short circuits". In this in-between period we realized some events, with some funds allocated by the Matese municipalities, to start addressing some issues that were close to our long-run aims and vision: the relationship with nature, emigration, etc. Officially, the Village of Art started in 2005-2006. When we got the funds we could developed various participatory art workshops - two in each villages, involving hundreds of people - that led to the creation of some collective works: the Migrant Rafts, the Nests, the Million Dollar Donkey Hotel, etc. The idea was artists to realize works with the locals, just like in a laboratory, with the aim of creating the conditions for an exchange but also for these communities to perceive their own places differently.

Fig. 2, 3 & 4: Construction of the Migrant Rafts on the Matese Lake, by Giuliano Mauri and the people of the 5 villages involved in the project

Fig. 5 & 6 Construction of the Million Dollar Donkey Hotel by the artists of Feld72 and the community of Prata Sannita

Urban Node was the second project to be funded, and we realized it only in the municipality of Gallo Matese. In this case we had a physical space on which to intervene: Gallo Matese's new town hall that had never been finished. We decided, instead of building something new, to work on something already existing. At that time it was only a skeleton of reinforced concrete, so we thought how we could complete this building - which was really an abomination in the village landscape! - but at the same time we worked - together with the whole community of Gallo Matese - on what content to put there, how to use it once finished.

Fig. 7, 8 and 9: The unfinished town hall of Gallo Matese and its regeneration plan developed and realized within the Urban Node project

And then the idea came: developing an archive of the material and immaterial culture of the territory, which could make it possible to think about a new kind of urbanity by bringing together local people still living in the village with their emigrants abroad. The irony is that - to realized this project - we worked together with the University of and that of Zurich! In 2006-2007 we had the inauguration of the "new" building, as well as of the municipal offices, a library, an internet lab, a multipurpose room for exhibitions, seminars, etc. and a guesthouse.

Fig. 10 Gallesi in the World, demonstration in the streets of Gallo Matese, by Stalker and the community of Gallo.

VA: Who was involved in the two projects and how they related and got in contact with the places and the communities?

MF: In the Village of Art project - besides the 5 of us constituting the founder working group - we managed to involve around 20 artists, coming from all over Italy, Europe and beyond... we had also group from the United States! While in the Urban Node project - since we had to work only in one village - we were a little less: the founder group made of 5 people and other 15 people (among them artists, architects, etc.).

All the people invited to contribute to the project were paid for everything they needed to stay and work on site, and the communities also contributed a lot opening their houses, offering meals and support of different kind. Each artist, on average, has been on the Matese from 15 days to one month. Some, coming from afar, settled there for the whole summer for 2 years in a row. Others, in charge of the coordination and usually living in other places, spent all their holidays (summer or not) to work there. But above all, every artists came in advance to visit the villages before doing their workshops to present their ideas and works to the community. In the meantime, we also organized other collateral small events like the "Cinema-bus" (funded by the Italian Ministry of Culture) in the 5 villages. In in addition to the events - since the artists' residence on site were long enough - there were many other occasions for daily and informal exchanges, memory sharing and story telling. And then the full involvement of the communities occurred during the art workshops: the Village of Art works of art were actually made by the artists and local people of all ages. Even children participated in them.

The same occurred for the restoration of the town hall building of Gallo Matese hosting the Urban Node project: old bricklayers came to help, we also used donkeys to transport materials and tools, and a lot of furniture were given by the community, but also the Park Authority, municipalities and small businesses have provided manpower and equipment. In this latter case, the involvement of the population was much broader, since it reached also the communities of emigrants of Gallo Matese abroad (most of them are in Canada and USA now, and occasionally they also return to their village of origin). We shot also a film with the emigrant communities abroad, because the patron saint's festival that takes place annually in Gallo Matese, takes place - on the same day - also in New York, so some researchers went also to NY to collected interviews. This film showed also the possibility to contribute to the project with foreign investment: for instance, a director native of Gallo Matese, who was living in the United States at the time, intended to finance the production and distribution of the film, but then he died and none continued with this idea. During all these years, the project has also contributed to create a small local economy, and we established a sort of "local currency" to facilitate exchanges between the people who came from outside and the locals.

VA: From your description everything seems to have gone and developed very well...

MF: Yes, this project has had a certain visibility abroad: we started everything intuitively, and at the beginning we simply knew just what we DID NOT want to do. Abroad it was very much appreciated: we had guests from the Bauhaus, from the Viennese secession, and various cities and universities wanted to do twinnings, collaborations, ... it seems so long ago, but for the time what we did was really a cutting-edge experience for Italy. In 2007 they chose our project among the best cultural projects of Europe, and it was a prize given in Switzerland! It was the only Italian project at the time that was able to confront to European projects related to new forms of tourism, culture and possible development of this kind of areas. We were invited to conferences, and the project grew tremendously, surprising even ourselves. But some things didn't work for the best, or at least how they could have worked. Why? I've often wondered.

VA: So, what was that did not work well and why, in your opinion?

MF: Everything looked promising: Iain Chambers3 had made contacts in England, the Harrison Studio (USA) wanted to realize on the Matese the School of the Apennines Landscape, and they would have paid all on their own! Those of the Viennese Secession wanted to sign a partnership ... But all of them demanded an institutional interlocutor, and we weren't able to involve the regional administration, because the Region didn't care at all what we were doing!

3 Professor of Cultural and Postcolonial Studies at the Oriental University in Naples https://www.dur.ac.uk/ias/fellows/0910fellows/chambers/ One mayor told us to suspend the event, just for a year. But we already knew that this suspension would have decreed the death of our projects; moreover, the Commissioner of the Park, our main ally, was transferred to another place. The reason of this lack of interest is that we were "external" and could not serve as a vehicle for electoral support. This logic also expresses the "downside" of local governments. But, on the other hand, we reached a very positive impact on the larger community and in the relationships we managed to built there: we had become part of the place, friends ... When we first arrived in these villages there were no places where to sleep and when we left there were restaurants, B&B, etc. Even common people had received an input to react from the processes activated by Azione Matese. Of course some interventions such as the Migrant Rafts have degraded over time, but for instance the building regenerated during Urban Node became the new town hall and the Million Dollar Donkey Hotel is still functioning...

VA: How would you describe the communities you have been working on Matese?

MF: First of all, one must distinguish between the villages in the most marginal areas (i.e. Gallo Matese and Letino) and those in the piedmont area. Before the '50s Gallo Matese was a "big" municipality, i.e. 4000 inhabitants, now they are only 600. In the '50s - during the Italian economic boom - a lot of energy was needed and it was made a dam, to build which many fields were dispossessed (that is why many have emigrated or have moved to piedmont towns). In these villages, even if it might seem almost paradoxical, there are people who may have been in New York or Toronto but have never been to Rome, or who may speak English but not Italian. Today there are more people from Gallo Matese in New York than in Gallo! And they also have various origins: Gallo Matese is of Bulgarian origin, because in the Middle Age the Bulgarian community was granted of some territories, while Letino is of Greek origin. Emigration has enabled these remote villages to open up to the world, therefore even if they continue to have some closures/resistances, if you manage to involve them, these are communities that when they open can give really a lot. Today, the population in these municipalities is aging and the birth rate is very low. Though up in the mountains there is still some farming, but most of the inhabitants of these villages work out of these areas and daily commute. Even in the villages of the piedmont area, there has been a strong emigration during the '50s and '70s, but not as disastrous as in the mountain villages. Today almost none is working in agriculture and most of the working population is employed in public and private services. Recently the piedmont area has become a destination for migrants from other countries and it has been set up also an immigration center.

VA: Looking back and forward to the experience of Azione Matese what are your remarks in undertaking regeneration and local development project in remote rural areas, in terms of objectives, ways to structure the process, forms of organizations needed, etc.? MF: I would simply say that the requests and expectations that there were on this, as on other projects, remained - inevitably - unanswered: i.e. contrasting depopulation, unemployment, etc. We could not resolve them, we knew it and we never promised it. What we could do, and was worth doing, was to activate processes to make these areas attractive for people living there and also for those from outside to go live, even temporarily, there. Over the years I have met several people who would prefer to live in places like this, where you can recreate a sense of community but you can also stay in touch with the entire world thanks to technological achievements. A new community can overlay to the community which has dispersed and disintegrated: people who choose to go and build their life and career there, relying on the sustainable use and management of the resources locally available there. That's what we are currently working on as RU.DE.RI association: beside a certain vision about what regeneration process should be about, and which I illustrated before, we are working with local authorities, but also entrepreneurs, professionals etc. to promote a shift also on the productive opportunities of these areas. That's why we are organizing events and workshops together with communities, artists, etc. to discuss, show, also hands-on, how rural and mountain areas could benefit from a systemic approach to resources management which sees the integration of agricultural productive chains, culture and landscape. This is not only possible and remarkable, but it can also be rewarding and contributing to a continuative territorial maintenance and regeneration from the bottom-up.