New stage for the Pesaro 2024 project ‘The skin underneath. Decolonizing Villa Marina‘.
After the ‘Bagni di Sole’ installation on one of the facades of Villa Marina – a symbolic place of the city – and the beginning of the process of rediscovering this “uncomfortable heritage” that links Pesaro to the history of colonialism and global racism, from 17 June to 12 August the project continues with a series of urban billboards entitled ‘7 Interferences’ located in as many streets: Simoncelli, Albertini, del Lavoro on the roundabout side, Paganini, Togliatti, Velino. Through images and wordsTommaso Fiscaletti and Nicola Perugini generate a new possible reading of the signs left by the abandonment of the imposing building. In this amalgam that crosses the fabric of the city on large billboards, the deterioration of the Villa Marina colony becomes – instead of a melancholic and nostalgic element of the “colony that once was” – a force that generates the disintegration of the idea of colonialism. Undo. Interfering in memory by connecting “things that have never yet been put together and that don’t seem willing to be.”
The curator underlines Tommaso Fiscaletti: this second act of ‘La Pelle Sotto’ represents in some way a summary of the dialogue between me and Nicola, the fusion of the tools that each of us uses in our work, our attempt to bring out memories and meanings that see Villa Marina as part of a current and urgent topic. The selected photographs are taken from a larger series that I have created over the last three and a half years, which we disseminate here in the urban context. It is important for us that the project is developing using public installations, for the city and its inhabitants: in this case by entering the space of the advertising posters we mix with the more immediate messages that they bring, creating an interference in the daily use of passers-by. This interference, in our creative process, has become the space in which images and words alter each other, creating friction between awareness and evocation. The architectural structure of the colony and the signs it carries with it are the emblem and create a sort of language to decipher, of which, in these posters, we imagine possible implications. I believe that it is imagination, precisely, that opens up new opportunities for reflection.
The other curator continues Nicola Perugini: with this new stage of the project we try to take a step forward after having reawakened the memory of the visitors and the city. After having rediscovered the link between the colony of Villa Marina, overseas colonialism and the global history of racial domination, the project seeks to work through the text and images of the colony’s ruin to ‘undo’ our colonial amnesia. There is no transformation of collective memory without the creation of interruptions, of glimpses that break the linearity of memory which for so many decades has removed the desire for fascist colonial domination and then found it again in the daily racial discrimination we witness in our country. Then the ruins of Villa Marina, which for so long we covered with fluttering sheets that made us scream at the sense of degradation that the ghost of the colony generated, acquires a productive force. Tommaso’s photographs generate links with the lion of the Libyan desert, Omar El Mokhtar; they generate the subversion of concepts dear to colonialism; they generate affection towards the oppressed of contemporary colonialism, towards Rafah, our twin city in the Gaza Strip. From the ruins of Villa Marina the flowers of the decolonization of memory are born.
7 Interferences
June 17-August 12, 2024
locations
Via Simoncelli CN – Mare Non – Nostrum – 6
Via Albertini Sx1 CN – Lido Omar – 3
Via del Lavoro side of the CN roundabout – History of Racism – 2
Via Paganini Diba CS – Unmaking the Empire – 1
Via Togliatti CS – Colonial Amnesia – 5
Via Velino CS – Rafah – 4
The skin underneath. Decolonizing Villa Marina
A city heritage protected by the Ministry of Culture, the Villa Marina Colony is ‘marked’ by a complex memory. Inaugurated in 1928, the imposing architectural structure on the seashore was born during the fascist period with a double function: to host children from disadvantaged classes and to strengthen the ‘health of the bodies’ through heliotherapy and marine stays, in order to build an ‘Italic lineage’ capable of colonizing other populations on the African continent. ‘La pelle sotto’ is a project of participatory research and artistic interventions that intends to ‘decolonise’ the Colonia Villa Marina by critically resurfacing this cumbersome memory that links Pesaro to the world history of racial domination. But also rethinking the transformation of the Colony into a democratic institution which, in the decades following national liberation, hosted entire generations of children and students in a new context, without, however, ever questioning in depth the link between Villa Marina and the issue overseas colonial, one of Italy’s great removes. Through artistic events and moments of public discussion, the project builds the foundations for imagining a ‘decolonized colony’: the ‘Bagni di sole’ installation on one of the building’s facades and a photographic exhibition spread across the urban poster circuit will help to rediscover with the view fragments of Villa Marina, after its abandonment for over two decades. With the collection of testimonies, images and objects of memory, an archive will be created to be returned to the citizens, while a series of interventions will open up the multiple meanings of the colony and its uses in the future. ‘The skin underneath. Decolonizing Villa Marina’ is curated by Nicola Perugini and Tommaso Fiscaletti with the support of the Macula – Cultura Fotografica association. The project is possible thanks to the support and collaboration of INPS and the Commissioner’s Management of the Severance Fund for Poste Italiane workers.
