Connections #6 - Cagliari City Portrait by Dario Coletti

iNervi pavilion, Cagliari (Italy).
© Andrea Mele.

A multidisciplinary project created by photography fans and professionals which focuses on the urban pattern and the natural space of Cagliari proposing a series of «photographic maps of the moving city»

If I had to rename this experience I would add the subtitle Workshop on reading the territory between natural space and urban pattern and maybe even this would not explain quite enough the potentiality of the events that took place in Cagliari between October and December 2014. The workshop was in fact planned in full harmony with the philosophy of the activity of the organization Malik - I libri aiutano a leggere il mondo (Books help to read the world), where the concept of reading takes full meaning when it identifies as texts to read all human expressions: conscious and unconscious expressions, reasoned and improvised expressions. In the same sense, also nature's work becomes a book to be read.
Our objective was to read a specific and varied urban pattern inserted in a wonderfully complex natural structure such as the one from Sant'Elia to via Roma in Cagliari. It was crucial to establish the relationship between the educational process and the professional development of the documentation. During the planning stage, the first problem was how to arrive to a final product created by non professionals that would have sold and captured attention. The elements that allowed us to reach high results was the choice of the journey, the different personalities working on it and a fully definite direction perfectly aware of the entire process.

This structured and professional project, from its brainstorm to the actual deployment phase, has gone through different stages; planning, analysis of the territory, communication of methods and skills in the documentary field, the actual shooting and filming, the first check, the insertion of the photographer/urbanist and the artisan/designer, the analysis of the work done, the final check, the graphic planning of collected data, the planning of the exhibition and its realisation. In summary, we witnessed a process that materialised through the balance of its phases: plan, execution, check. The next phase, still fugitive, is a further optimisation of the project in order to propose this module in other contexts and turn this initiative in an easily exportable package. This is what was referred to when talking about the final product. If well executed the exhibition and its success will open new perspectives and collaboration with local bodies, educational institutions and the University of Cagliari.

[ Dario Coletti ]

iNervi pavilion, Cagliari (Italy).
© Andrea Mele.

i© Andrea Mele.

i «The line of the horizon does not exist, it is only a line drawn by a child that plays, and the sea is only light that can be touched.»
© Claudio Rosa.

i© Claudio Rosa.

iSalt pans, Cagliari (Italy).
© Francesca Corriga.

iView of the city from Monte Urpino, Cagliari (Italy).
© Francesca Corriga.

iFrom the top to the bottom: Nervi pavilion, Cycling route and Sant'Elia Stadium, Cagliari (Italy), 2014.
© Fabrizio Dessì.
vCAGLIARI CITY PORTRAIT
photographic maps of moving cities

Cagliari City Portrait is a project conceived by the cultural association Malik with the support and active collaboration of the association ICS (Engineers, Culture and Sport), the MediaLab of Cagliari's lyric body, ISFCI (the institute of photography and integrated communication of Rome, department of photojournalism), the collective Identity Urbanism (Rome – London - Tunis) and the design studio RotaLab (Rome). This project involved both a group of professionals from different backgrounds and geographic origins and a group of young local people with a passion for photography and their land. This project was part of the bigger reading promotion project I libri aiutano a leggere il mondo (Books help to read the world), and it has been the confrontational ground between different disciplines with one objective; reading the city and giving life to a narrative articulated in spaces and by the time of sedimentation of the urban pattern.

Dario Coletti, curator of the exhibition Cagliari City Portrait and coordinator of its related workshops, tells FPmag about the birth, aims and objectives of the project promoted during the exhibition.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PROJECT
by Carla Rak

«As a portion of space assuming significance, the city with its forms does not objectively impose itself on its inhabitant, but it is instead part of an interpretation process, a reciprocal process between observer and thing observed. Urban maps are often very far away from the individual perception of spaces. In order to be a faithful representation of reality, each map needs to be integrated with the experiences that we live on Earth, those experiences that give quality to a particular portion of space. The observation consists in moving closer and away from what composes the urban landscape, zooming in and out of the object of vision, composing and decomposing over and over again the point of view, in order to disclose clues, signs and symbols while searching for the hidden truths behind the sensitive surface.
Starting from this inspirational idea inserted in the context of researching the cognitive maps of cultural and social spaces, the objective of the project was to re-read, re-interpret and re-write some urban spaces that are not valued enough by transforming them in places of discovery and materialisation of ideas and expectations of the new generations. The hypothesis was to create a document useful to the analysis of the urban spaces, something able to show the link between young people, social context and the city, something that could be used as a reference for the future design and planning of the urban spaces.
While trying to make realistic maps, setting them in time and space through photography, the analysis and elaboration of the materials also had the aim to demonstrate the necessity of using different cultural tools, languages and codes in urban and social research. The entire architecture of the project and the resulting route taken was mainly based on the crucial role of photography as a document and investigation tool and on the possible use and re-use of the produced material».

iA moment from the opening ceremony of the exhibition Cagliari City Portrait, on the 12^th of December 2014 at Aula Officina, Cagliari University of Architecture and Engineering.
≡THE EXHIBITION

Cagliari City Portrait
curated by Dario Coletti and Claudio Rosa (set-up), under the general coordination of Laura Pisu
12 – 23 December 2014

Aula Officina - Cagliari University of Architecture and Engineering
via Santa Croce, 59 - Cagliari
www.ilibriaiutanoaleggereilmondo.it .it

The exhibition is based on two concepts taken from the world of contemporary communication, net and cloud, and its entire planning and design has reflected these two elements. The map of Cagliari is located at the centre of the exhibitive space, it is the point of origin of the colourful threads and helps the direct communication between the places and their pictures which have been taken from historical archives or alternatively by the participants. The pictures have different dimensions, origins and technical quality and they have all been set up in the shape of a cloud while the threads act as a net representing the dense connection between urban space and natural space. A very fluid scheme where different time and spaces represented at the same time create a set-up and generate an estranged and surreal feeling. Here photography, together with the urban thought, goes back to its true nature of time machine.

The set-up of the exhibition Cagliari City Portrait at Aula Officina, Cagliari University of Architecture and Engineering.

The authors at the exhibition - Francesca Corriga, Fabrizio Dessì, Andrea Fenu, Silvia Giardino, Barbara Locci, Laura Manchinu, Paolo Marchi, Andrea Mele, Mauro Murgia, Claudio Rosa, Stefania Scano, Simona Trudu.

FPmag 003

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