By Elena Corradi
« Still there are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars. »
Ursula K. Le Guin
The city of Palermo has undergone a brutal, fast process of urban expansion since its historical center has been hardly affected by second world war’s bombings first and, a few years later, by the well known Belice’s earthquake. These major events led to a housing crisis that prompted politicians and entrepreneurs to start large construction sites from which they could make large incomes in a short time: suddenly, space was needed. The land on which Palermo was founded is surrounded by mountains on one side and the sea on the other. Protected and fertile, this land has been rich in gardens and citrus groves for centuries thanks to the interventions of the Arabs who knew how to plan advanced water management systems. When building sites began to appear following approved master plans overnight, the landscape of the so-called ‘Conca d’oro’ was radically transformed.
I really became interested in this evocative myth of a lost paradise when I found out that a shopping centre built in 2011 brought itself the name of ‘Conca d’oro’. An interesting point to underline is that this shopping centre was built next to the ZEN district, in the Northern suburbs of Palermo, where thousands of people massively moved from the city centre between the 60s and 70s, in the frame of the housing crisis mentioned before. As a visual artist, I felt questioned by the feeling of confusion that hovers over the meaning of this name and by the extreme diversity of the images that this name recalls. So, How can a shopping centre evoke citrus groves that no longer exist? What is the ‘Conca d’oro’ for young people who have not been able to know what was there before? And for those who were there before, what does ‘Conca d’oro’ mean today? But also: how to narrate this complex territory, both physical and imaginary, without appropriating a story that belongs to someone else?
With the support of Fondazione Studio Rizoma, and thanks to the precious collaboration of a local association, I was able to invite a group of young people from the ZEN district to explore their neighborhood together through the practice of sound walking. Sound seemed to me an interesting tool for the attempt of activating an other narration of this very particular place, far from the degrading images spread by the media. Inspired by the feminist practice of radical cartography – or counter-mapping – and by the urban explorations led by the Italian collective Stalker, those sound walks wish to encourage an approach to space that includes the experience of those who inhabit it, use it and cross it daily.
During three weeks the kids and I met regularly. Our very first working session focussed on the creation of a map to follow, tracing the main trajectory of the sound walks. They freely suggested all the places that they considered as relevant for many reasons: among them, the ‘Conca d’oro’ shopping centre was the core of our exploration. « It is our place », a young girl once said, « the one where we hang out with friends, we celebrate our birthdays or we simply go shopping. It is the coast of our island ». Then we started to go out and visit each one of these places that the kids described through their personal use or, in the case of abandoned places, through the stories they had heard or, finally, imagining a desirable future for them. The participatory approach of the project resulted in an active and shared use of microphones so that everyone could record sounds, voices and interviews. A lot of things also happened while we were moving from a place to another (according to Hamish Fulton, the act of walking itself may be considered as part of the artwork). At the end of each session I had to deal with several hours of recordings from different microphones and only then I could eventually discover all the stories and micro-events that I could not fully catch while we were outside. Each time I had a deeper access to the kids’ perspective through their own voices. And their voices are as precious as habitually unheard.
The mainstream narration of ZEN district comes, as I said before, from the media and the institutions. In other words, it comes from a symbolic centre and it is more a narrating « on » rather than « from » the margins of the city. What we tried to do through this process is to invert the point of view and to question the pretended neutrality of any form of narration. The result is the audio documentary « A Possible Landscape », a multi vocal narration that aims to deliver a subjective experience situated in space and aims to question this centre-marginal dichotomy, with a particular attention to the memory of places as well as their possible future. The relationships between landscape, language and memory are liquid. The same word may convey different images through time and it is in this very mutation process that we can imagine things differently.
Elena Corradi is a visual artist born in Italy and based in Marseille. Trained in anthropology and photography, in her works she investigates the complex relationships between places and memory, developing a documentary style that leaves room for subjective narration. The combinations of images, videos and archive materials are often used by the artist to bring out multiple points of view, minor facts, or to propose tools for critical rereading of historical events or social phenomena. Her most recent projects take place in border areas, whether between two countries or between urban fabrics and spaces considered peripheral. Recently graduated from the National School of Photography in Arles, her works have been exhibited in group shows in France and Italy. In 2023 she was selected in the Nouveau Grand Tour residency program, with the support of the Institut Français d’Italia and Palazzo Butera in Palermo. She is currently working on a collective project for the creation of social and nomadic ovens.