MARCO   ZANINI 

We live in a city where a theater is born in a former gymnasium (Spazio Yak), where a former bookshop that has been abandoned for years becomes a space for art (Substrato) and also where inside the Mulini di Gurone, which have become a lamination tank, a center for environmental volunteering and sustainable tourism is set up (Casamatta). Leaving Varese we could visit the spaces of the Ex Ansaldo in Milan now Base, or Dynamo in Bologna which from a former car park has become a space for sustainable mobility.

 

Reusing what is there is not a new practice: just think of the Teatro Marcello in Rome which became a residential building by one of the greatest architects of the time: Baldassare Peruzzi.

However, the difficulty in regenerating remains, not only because the costs are higher than those of building new artifacts on green ground - it will seem strange to non-experts but it is so - but also due to the lack of an east-ethics: the grandmother's house is considered a "loser" building that fails (yet) to respond to the requests of the inhabitants of the liquid society.

 

It is therefore indispensable a cultural action that shifts attention to the latent potential of cities: with this work we try to provide a useful tool for everyone that makes clear the abundance of places available to us and shows how our space begins right beyond beyond the walls of our homes. We have tried to bring out those places that seem to us to be available (or that we wish they were) using a digital map: a first step of awareness that we hope will bring different audiences to different areas of the city. The map (also available online herehttp://bit.ly/2NRQwZU) wants to analyze the city in its dense pores and demonstrate that it is available for cultural or aggregation activities. Filmstudio 90, the association proposing the project, has for years been involved in cultural dissemination, in the promotion of cinema and over the years has attempted, with screenings and events, to leave its spaces to allow different places to welcome an audience that did not have them never intercepted.

 

The map was elaborated thanks to various databases and field explorations. The indicated places are divided into categories (in some cases very strict for some places) and some of them are explored in depth by some cards. Given that the city is an organism in the making - let's think of the recent changes to Dacia and the construction sites present in the city - it is a tool to grow with various reports and suggestions, which it is hoped can be continuously implemented thanks also to the funding of those who will decide to adopt it because it is considered useful for its business.

And what more than a map can help us orient ourselves in these cavities of the contemporary city that could respond to new needs?

 

As Michele D'Alena and Ida Curti write:

“While individual and collective freedoms are in a complete identity crisis, these projects can have political value if we manage to glimpse - still latent and karstic - a single and powerful counter-hegemonic movement capable of giving voice to what would otherwise remain imperceptible. They can offer new alphabets to tell a new world. “

 

Marco Zanini, VA'rese -micro valorisation of the everyday-

 

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