Lungomare

• Angelika Burtscher
• Manuela Demattio
• Roberto Gigliotti

In collaboration with:
Publisher Studienverlag (Innsbruck, Vienna, Bolzano)

• Alessandro Banda
• Francesco Careri
• Carl Fingerhuth
• Andreas Flora
• Alberto Iacovoni
• IMPEXunlimited
• Francesco Jodice
• Martin Mutschlechner
• PEANUTZ Architekten
• Carlotta Polo
• Arno Ritter
• Joseph Rykwert
• Saul Saguatti
• Ferdinand Schmatz
• Boris Sieverts
• Benjamin Tomasi
• Heimo Zobering

Alessandro Banda

One or two years before he died (we all know how) Pier Paolo Pasolini took part in a television programme. It is well known that Pasolini hated television, yet for one of the many contradictions that characterized his insuppressibility, he nevertheless participated. The transmission in question was called -and I … What was it about? A celebrated personality of literature, politics, or show business was asked to state their preferences in the field of the arts, and more precisely, to report a work that was particularly dear to them: a loved painting, fresco, or monument. Pasolini, who was no amateur in this area, having been the student of a master like Roberto Longhi, chose not a picture or a so-called “work of art”, but a city: in fact the shape of a city. The shape of Orte, given that in 1973 or 1974 that small town known mainly as a rail hub was beginning to have its integrity threatened. On the small screen you could see the poet indicating the cobblestones of a small alley in Orte, or a chipped piece of yellowish wall, and with a sigh saying: “this is also part of the form of Orte, and I would like it to be saved.”

Read more: Forma Urbis

Francesco Careri
on the first missed meetings

None of us had ever had direct contact and so the process we went through was important for our common growth. We started from scratch. The first transurbanza took place in Rome in 1995. We passed in front of the entrance to the Quintiliani field but we didn’t enter. It was late afternoon, we were tired and looking for a place to camp for the night. We stopped on a football pitch that Albanians had created for their children. I remember that we talked to a beautiful tall man with long hair, deep blue eyes, and an air of wisdom. He was like Melquiades, the gypsy from One Hundred Years of Solitude by García Márquez, who brought news of the outside world to Macondo, and who, at the beginning of the book amazed the village by showing them ice. Melquiades and the other Albanians had taken an old farmhouse and transformed it into a home for a number of families, with a welcoming, warm and cosy atmosphere. At our request to sleep on the football pitch they responded that they were happy to have guests, that we could put up our tents and nobody would mind.

Read more: Selbstgespräch über Stalker und “die Nomaden”

Carl Fingerhuth

The era of the Modern has been an exploration into the depths of human mental potential. It has been an age dominated by the investigation, understanding, and description of the physical world. In particular, space has been one of the central areas of research, as much astronomy and physics as architecture and urbanism. In the transition from the mythic structure to the mental structure of consciousness, characteristic of the Modern, the three-dimensional form of space has been recognized and analysed. Artists have created views of perspective, fixing the position of the observer and making the vanishing point dependent on this position. The buildings and cities have been built based on projects where the ideal form has been generated by human thought.

Read more: Erzählungen von der Stadt jenseits der Moderne

Francesco Jodice
Photography and collective imagination

On November 22, 1963 the Texan entrepreneur Abraham Zapruder, a Russian Jew born in the city of Kovel in the Ukraine and emigrating to Brooklyn when still a child, filmed more or less accidentally with his Bell & Howell 8mm camera, the murder of J.F. Kennnedy in Dallas. By breaking up the short film into individual stills, the Garrison District Attorney disclosed the pack of lies concealed by the Warren Commission, and revealed the involvement of the secret services, military, and members of parliament in the conspiracy, changing forever the perception that Americans had of their history.

Read more: Die unerträgliche Existenz der Städte: Fotografie und kollektive Imagination

An interview with Arno Ritter
by Angelika Burtscher

“I think the city is also defined by the architecture and buildings that serve as a background and designed space, making possible urban life. In fact, an important element that characterizes the urban dimension is the space between the buildings – the streets, squares and public and private spaces. When we think of a city, we don’t remember individual buildings, but the spaces between them (interstices), their atmosphere, which also refers to other atmospheres, in part imprinted in the unconscious. You could also speak of the “genius loci,” the aura or fabric of a city, almost indefinable, or of an urban grammar. A city, whether large or small, cannot invent or produce the urban dimension, even less represent it, because the city is invisible. ”

Read more: Urbane Grammatik

A conversation with Joseph Rykwert
by Roberto Gigliotti

“From my perspective, tourism is a fundamentally destructive civil and corporate function. Especially because tourism is seasonal, and the city is filled during the tourist season and then emptied again. You could say the same thing about University; students are there during the semesters. This is the case in all university towns: Cambridge, Oxford, Cambridge Massachusetts, New Haven, Alcalà or Padua. However, around the university a life develops that is not seasonal. As is, for example, the entire university infrastructure and faculty permanently integrated into the city.”

Read more: Ausschweifungen

Ferdinand Schmatz

Work of chance or of plan, of the senses or of the mind. What is the city for us?

In the middle of me lies a forest, it spreads itself out, the boughs branch out, step out of my body, push into the asphalt, fissures are created and grass begins to sprout in them. I wished to grow together with the city to which I wanted to travel, so I unbound myself and bound myself in it. Even my head opened up and provided a free landscape. What it displayed were hills. Valleys, caves, niches, as well as rows of trees, avenues, the highest level of order. I picked one out and believed I was in district of the suburbs – or was it the district of the mind. How can I get out of there? There were twists, I sprang over them and ran dead straight away. I wanted to enter a centre, to reach the core – and found myself at the threshold of a gate.

Read more: Traum Stadt Wir

Ferdinand Schmatz / Heimo Zobernig

Read more: Wörter brauchen keine Seiten / Le parole non hanno bisogno di pagineWörter brauchen keine Seiten / Le parole non hanno bisogno di pagine

With Boris Sieverts through southern Luxembourg

We go on and reach the railway tracks of the Luxembourg-Belgium rail line. Opposite us, we see a huge industrial plateau, cleaned up and seeded with grass. It was the largest industrial area of France. There, in Longwy in the eighties major industrial disputes took place. Today this large area is both extremely bizarre and to some extent beautiful. On the plateau, huge lawns lie next to commercial zones. Together with Luxembourg and the Belgian side, this represents the “Pol européen de développement.” There are three versions, how big business is dealt with: The French let it disappear without a trace, the Belgians let it fall fallow, as it is here, and the Luxembourger – who are doing well economically – plan and convert the land. Luxembourgers are quick and implement their plans; they are capable of transforming industrial society into a service society

Read more: Sinfonien einer Landschaft

an intervention by Benjamin Tomasi
curated by Angelika Burtscher

The inhabitants of Naples often talk with nostalgia about the Parco delle Rimembranza, what is now the Parco Virgiliano, and which, until the mid-nineties, was open for loving couples and their cars. The place is said to have been romantic. It was a sportsground, a location for walks, a place for public concerts and at the same time a place for love.

Read more: Napoli Parking

Benjamin Tomasi: Napoli Parking

TRAUM STADT WIR on issuu.com
Design: Lupo & Burtscher

Autonomous Province of Bozen/Bolzano-South Tyrol, Culture Departments
Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio
City of Bolzano, Cultures Department
Autonomous Region Trentino-Alto Adige
Supporter 2008:
Parkhotel Laurin, EOS -Solution for Business, Heinrich Gasser