From the flames (sometimes) books are born: Content Removed. Fire in the Square

Of Alice Sartori Ongaro

Chiara Trivelli, Content removed. The fire in the squareViaindustriae Publishing, 2023

In Venice on 30 July 2017 there is the usual suffocating midsummer heat. The afternoon is silent and the signs are hot. Paolo takes me by the hand and says: – do you want to go to Lorenzago di Cadore this evening? There is a very beautiful thing, things like this are not often seen. We should go there. It’s like a party, but it’s much more —. It is a public and community art project by Chiara Trivelli, visual artist and independent researcher. Project designed for and with the inhabitants of Lorenzago. Walking towards the station we cross the Campo di Santi Giovanni e Paolo. In the background of the hospital you can glimpse the peaks of the Dolomites. In the middle of the field we meet Chiaretta. – Where are you going-? We ask you. — I’m going to the beach, it’s too hot, she tells us. —Come with us to Lorenzago, we’ll return in the evening or perhaps, if they host us, even tomorrow morning. “But I have nothing with me.” We took Chiaretta by the arm, with her swimsuit and beach towel inside our backpack, and drove towards Cadore.

Since 2012, every July 30th Chiara Trivelli has orchestrated a collective action in which the people of Lorenzo and local associations actively take part: Content Removed. During the evening, the electric lighting in the streets of the Quadrato district was cut off and 18 fires, 125 candles and 15 torches were lit. The town choir sings, the children play in the street, the CAI and the Volunteer Fire Brigade Association organize food and wine banquets in the alleys, the Alpini sing and be Alpini, they have fun and have fun. The event commemorates a fire that destroyed the entire Quadrato neighborhood in 1855. No one died that night, but the area was destroyed and the event remained an event with traumatic consequences in the history of Lorenzago. The causes of the fire have never been clarified, and 150 years later the inhabitants of the town continue to speculate on its dynamics.

[Chiara Trivelli_Contenuto Rimosso, still da video, 2017]

After 11 years of work, care and attention to the project, which becomes the most awaited party in all of Lorenzago, comes to light Content Removed. The fire in the square (Viaindustriae, 2023). The extraordinary nature of this book is due to several reasons. The first: Content Removed it is a fundamental case-study in the development of public and participatory art in Italy (and beyond). The second: the publication was strongly supported by the 30 Luglio Committee (formed specifically for the project) which appears as the main promoter of the publication, as well as by the artist. The book is the emblem that beautiful things are done together, from start to finish. The third: there are two main sections. The first is a rich section of contributions from important voices on the international scene: a conversation with the artist Antoni Muntadas, an international reference for public art, an essay by the art critic Alessandra Pioselli who recognized Content Removed as a case-study and a contribution by the geographer Viviana Ferrario, leading scholar of the Rifabbrico in Cadore case. The preface by the Mayor of Lorenzago Marco d’Ambros and a text by the artist restore the complexity and authenticity of an artistic work which over the years has become a new local tradition, the main festival of the town. An important section, the second: “For a community book”. Interviews and photographic portraits of some of the (many) protagonists appear. From the Alpini, to the musicians, to the volunteers of the Pro Loco, the Fire Brigade, the Blood Donors Association, and other inhabitants.

[Chiara Trivelli_Contenuto Rimosso, 2016]

Chiara Trivelli is always attentive, and always looks towards the Other. At the end of every interview she conducts, she never forgets to ask if the interviewee also has questions for her. The preciousness of a project like this is that it stitches together a direct and profound humanity, which starts, primarily, by the artist. As Trivelli explains, one of the main efforts of the book and the project is a constant work of translation between an art system that moves in neo-liberal dynamics and a territory that expresses itself with delicate and important needs with a spirit of cooperation. But there is an important point. The episode is emblematic of the paradoxical process of urban reconstruction which is at the same time also a process of collective removal: the Rifabbrico in Cadore. The Lorenzago Square represents one of the best preserved examples. The fire of 1855 and the subsequent refactoring marked a turning point. When we talk about ‘Refabbrico’ we are referring to a process of profound territorial transformation that affected some valleys of the eastern Alps in the second half of the nineteenth century. The wooden houses of the ancient villages were rebuilt in masonry on the basis of new urban plans. The rapid transformation and the force of the imposition, which did not consider the effects of the radical changes on the society and the forestry-pastoral culture of the territory, caused a trauma for its inhabitants. The book also investigates this urban, social and political theme in a precise and transversal manner.

[Chiara Trivelli_Contenuto Rimosso, still da video, 2016]

As art historian Claire Bishop explains in Artificial Hells (Verso, 2012), since the beginning of participatory practices in contemporary art, the artist is conceived less as an individual producer of objects and more as a producer of situations; the work of art seen less as a finished, transportable and commodifiable product, is reconceived as an ongoing or long-term project; while the audience, previously conceived as observers, is now repositioned as co-producers or participants. This is also the case with Content Removedwhich is, in its complexity, also political action. Since 2012, thanks to the dedication and vision of Chiara Trivelli, the re-enactment of that traumatic event has transformed into a moment of rebirth for the country, an opportunity to reconstruct one’s memory. After the fire, in Lorenzago the pastoral heritage was managed as a common good, where the basic socio-economic nuclei, the local families, were called “fires”. The fire system for collective use, designed by Trivelli, making symbolic reference to the past, it took on a cathartic value and was transformed into a new collective ritual aimed at consolidating the identity of the community. Fire, the central element, becomes the focal point of what the artist defines as “an experiment in psychoanalysis applied to the environment”. By using fire, the fear that it generates is sublimated, transforming it into a powerful symbol of union within a collective ritual, and thus creating a counter-image of the original trauma.

[Chiara Trivelli_Contenuto Rimosso, flyer da una foto di Giuseppina Pinazza, 2019]

Paolo, Chiaretta and I spend the whole night in Lorenzago, the town is an explosion of uncontainable vitality. We meet new, hard-working and welcoming people. We meet friends from the past, who also came from different parts of the region. Chiara takes care of everything, and also of those who, like us, come from further away. So we wake up in Cadore, among the red primroses, and get back in the car. We return to Venice together with Chiara. On the way, sleepy and inebriated by the heat and the night, we talk about what happened. Content Removed it has remained one of the most astute, intelligent and generous participatory projects I have seen in the context of contemporary artistic practices; because there was the right space and time, together with the attention of an artist who made the relationship between others and the reconstruction of collective memory a strong point. Six years later, we see the birth of the book by Content Removed it is at the same time a testimony and a necessary joy, because Paolo was right, such beautiful things are not easily seen.

[Chiara Trivelli_Contenuto Rimosso, still da video, 2018]

A final note. In these days the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, opens with the title “Stranieri Ovunque”. Extraneousness – as marginality and being outside the known (geographical, social, political, emotional and identity) – is called into question and celebrated as a universal condition. Write about Content Removed in these days full of reflections that look at Latin American, African, Pacific and so-called Global South geographies, they also reminded me of something. Which is often something close to us that suffers tremendously from strangeness. I think of the mountainous, isolated and depopulated areas of Cadore. And I think about how art can be found, in its most sincere form, even (and above all) outside exhibition frames, where people live, rediscover themselves and celebrate around new fires.