BRINDISI – «We will give Italy access to a city that it has forgotten». Word of Chris Torch, international designer who yesterday morning was presented in the Temple of San Giovanni al Sepolcro as artistic director of the dossier for «Brindisi Italian Capital of Culture».
«The candidacy – said mayor Pino Marchionna during the press conference – allows us to outline a new course of urban and cultural development. There will be three cardinal points of the planning: listening and participation, the port and the sea, the direction of the city towards new forms of economy compared to the traditional industrial legacy. The masterplan that we will develop starts from the recognition of our industrial past and aims to guide the city through a transformation that embraces energy, digital and environmental transitions, following the coordinates of the knowledge economy. Brindisi – continued the mayor – is in a unique position to show how an industrial city of the twentieth century can turn towards a sustainable and innovative future. Our goal is to become a model for the rest of the country by demonstrating how the challenges linked to industrial decline can be transformed into opportunities for cultural, social and economic growth.” The project will be supported by the Nuovo Teatro Verdi foundation and the “Neighborhood Houses”, conceived by the Rossi administration and defined by the mayor as an “outpost of participatory democracy”. Marchionna’s desire is also to «include the large local industries in the scientific partnership of the project, which are a resource in terms of experimentation and development of technologies. We think of culture as a new hypothesis of post-industrial development.” In this regard, Torch was even more clear: «If big companies want to be our partners, we will be happy, but if they want to be an obstacle, we will bypass them. We want Brindisi to be an open-air laboratory for sustainable practices, in which every activity demonstrates our commitment to the protection of natural heritage and the promotion of an ecological future.” The community will be the focus of this project. «We will listen – continued the designer – carefully to the voices of citizens, integrating their ideas and aspirations into a vision of the future aimed at the creation of an inclusive and accessible cultural ecosystem, which makes Brindisi a scale model of a history that transcends borders of the city”.
The challenge «is not limited – explained Torch – to reinventing oneself culturally. It is an opportunity to rethink this city in an innovative way, which is yet to be discovered and a book still to be written, 10-15 years from now. A lot of history has passed through here, the stones preserve its memory, but Brindisi has enormous potential and an open space as large as its port in which positive ideas and values can circulate. The sea is not just a place or a horizon that embraces the city. The sea is a point of view because we have it inside us. We are at a point in history where we need to inspire the future, nourish it. The intersection of technology, environment and community is the design of the future.”
Parliamentarian Mauro D’Attis also spoke on the topic. «This candidacy – states the MP from Brindisi – is the fruit of a vision of development of a city capable of overcoming its industrial tradition, diversifying its strengths. For us who are working incessantly for the strengthening of infrastructure, especially ports, and for relaunching the productivity of the territory, this action by Mayor Marchionna constitutes the flagship of a collective commitment. Businesses will be the protagonists of this new path to be shared with the institutions and from today, with the artistic director for the dossier Chris Torch, we officially start with the operational plan that will lead us to officially formulate the city’s candidacy”.
