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200918_Mediterranei-Invisibili_∏Stefano-Anzini

A SOUTHERN MODEL CAPABLE OF DRIVING THE COUNTRY FORWARD IS BUILT UPON HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE, WITHOUT INDULGING IN NOSTALGIA FOR THE PAST, BY ADAPTING CENTURIES-OLD WISDOM TO THE PRESENT with Serena Bonura

Serena Bonura works and conducts research in the field of ecology and sustainability applied to education and communication. From her perspective, it is not possible to speak of a “South rising again”, because the South is already wonderful. However, quality of life depends on functioning schools and hospitals, not only on landscapes, the sea, and sunshine. In Sicily, there are still many things that need to be improved.

Serena Bonura during the talk of Invisible Mediterranean(s) – Journey Across the Strait III on 18 September 2020. Photo by Stefano Anzini.

Serena lived in Bologna for a period of time, and this experience changed her way of seeing the world (and the South). For her, ecology and sustainability–particularly in relation to food–are both an economic resource and, at the same time, a way to avoid impoverishing and degrading her homeland.

The “new economy” and “circular economy” – emerging outcomes of a more conscious view of the environment–are already quickly turning into slogans. Yet, in reality, work has barely begun in this direction. It is as if anticipating the concept, without having fully experienced it, has already worn it out and made it feel outdated.
For the South, and for Sicily in particular, this is not just an abstract representation: it is one of the viable paths to building an economy in places where, fundamentally, economic structures are still weak. This means making use of the full range of local resources and activities, especially in connection with the agri-food sector.
In Sicily, a new economy can truly be activated starting from tradition. However, Serena emphasizes that speaking of tradition does not mean returning to outdated or obsolete ways of doing things–or worse, ways of thinking.
Awareness of the present, she explains, comes from a layering of positive experiences and mistakes. Nothing should be forgotten; memory is the best key to change. This is why she speaks of “retro-innovation”: taking with is valuable from the past and reinterpreting it through contemporary tools. It is not a concept limited to food and agriculture; it can be applied to every context, everywhere. However, the Sicilian model of retro-innovation is shaped by the specific geographical, cultural, and historical identity of the South in a way that is unique–neither transferable nor directly replicable elsewhere. Just as unique as the South itself.

Circular economy generates contemporary models of consumption, without diminishing or uncritically glorifying the past. It is also an “economy of relationships”, an expression that is almost a contradiction in terms, because it activates a process that evokes forms of exchange rooted in ancient memory. A sort of modern-day “pre-monetary” system.
To explain better, we work in co-production with aggregated consumers from the other areas of Italy, the Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale, who agree to share the production risks inherent in agriculture (especially climate-related variables), paying farmers in advance. In this way, the producer does not “run alone” with the risk of not making it, thanks to the pre-financing provided by consumers.
It is a model that is also spreading to other European countries. For example, some Sicilian consortia have signed agreements of this kind with French consumer groups.
Here, then, still in an embryonic form, is the answer to the provocation of “Invisible Mediterranean(s)”: restarting Italy and Europe from the South.
Another example: in Catania, a startup called Orange Fiber was founded by Adriana Santanocita and Enrica Rena. By recovering citrus waste, they created an exclusive, high-quality textile. Last year, Orange Fiber began a collaboration with the Swedish brand H&M, which chose the Sicilian company to produce part of its Conscious Exclusive 2019 premium collection.
Also from Catania comes another hight-tech startup, Kanèsis, which developed a system to produce the first eco-sustainable plastic. It is an innovative material derived from industrial plant waste, including hemp, designed by young engineering student Giovanni Milazzo and his team. It is a thermoplastic composite with properties similar to conventional petrochemical plastics, but with improved resistance and lightness. Recently, Kanèsis signed an agreement with Lati, an internationally established firm. Here again, we see Sicily projecting itself toward Europe and beyond. France, Sweden…we set no limits.

It is a very rigorous narrative, and it conveys the idea of a “great South”. But to what extent does the less luminous and less enterprising side suppress and hinder the emergence of this “great South”?
The South is beautiful.
The South is intelligent.
The South is enterprising.
But the reality we experience must contend with serious inefficiencies that not only slow down development, but also deteriorate the quality of life: hospitals and schools that do not function – or function poorly– are defining feature of our island. We often take refuge behind the excuse of lacking infrastructure, almost as a mantra, but the problems lie elsewhere.

The issue of infrastructure is one of the most painful and recurring themes in the current debate on the South, even more so in the Strait area. Your position may sound counter-current.
It is true that there is a lack of connections, including important ones– I do not intend to deny the obvious. But this is not a recent discovery; it is a problem that dates back to the post-war period, the 1960s, and even earlier. And it has never truly been resolved, except in small stretches. Much of the territory is at serious hydrogeological risk, and when building large-scale infrastructure – such as a motorway section or a viaduct– any uncertainty or design indeterminacy must be eliminated beforehand. In Sicily, there are many “ruins”: remnants of reckless infrastructural dreams, abandoned due to procurement issues, geological risks, conflicts between responsible authorities, or lack of funding.
The railway doubling project between Giampilieri and Fiumefreddo di Sicilia – currently in the news–would run through an area known to be prone to landslides, and of the planned 42 kilometers, 38 would be in tunnels.
Up to now, train stations have actually served nearby communities; after the works, they will be moved outside urban centers, making it necessary to create additional connection networks and invent new models. In Sicily, the key is proximity, not mega-infrastructure. Not least, organized crime infiltration has historically taken root in large public works. Here again, memory is essential because it reveals mistakes–preferably ones not to be repeated. To better understand the infrastructure issue in the South, we can use a parallel: we continue to talk about illness, whereas we should reverse the perspective and begin to consider health as the model.

200919_Mediterranei-Invisibili_∏Stefano-Anzini__

THE DESIRE FOR CULTURE, NOT JUST SEA AND NOT JUST TOURISM. THE LOCAL POPULATION AS THE KEY TO REVITALIZING THE TERRITORY. EVERYTHING THE SOUTH CAN OFFER with Caterina Limardo

Caterina Limardo is one of the driving forces behind Zabut International Animated Short-film Festival, an international animated short film festival that, over the course of just a few editions, has become an important point of reference for professionals, enthustiasts, and general audiences alike. Caterina speaks about a Sicily where beauty reveals itself through film culture, people’s participation, and the places themselves.

Caterina Limardo during the talk of Invisible Mediterranean(s)-Journey Across the Strait III on 18 September 2020. Photo by Stefano Anzini

The South and beauty: a widely pairing, just like the South and the sea, or the South and food. Therefore, by syllogism, the beauty of Southern Italy could become the driving force behind its revival.
It sounds simple, but labels can be dangerous.
And they are dangerous for the local population. Sea, food, landscape… the charm of this “touristic beauty” certainly does not lose its visual appeal when visitors fade away and the beach season ends, but what disappears is the energy and intensity of the people who truly bring these places to life.
Those of us who live in the South in November just as we do in August often feel trapped in a cul-de-sac: we consume all our possibilities at the entrance of summer, only to find ourselves, season after season, facing the same wall. We turn back and begin again. Even beneath the sun and in front of the magnificent Sicilian sea, one can experience alienation. In the South, the same opportunities for life that exist in Milan or any other Italian city can–and must–emerge.
The opportunities are there; it is a matter of searching for them with care and determination. They are not always immediately visible. And yes…it is harder work.
The Zabut project is a work in progress born from the shared interests and passion of a group of friends. But it is much more than that. It is connected to the desire to be present as individuals and as people deeply tied to their places, with the dual ambition of personal growth and the growth of the territory itself. Because if a place, a town, becomes beautiful for those who live there all year round, it will become even more attractive to tourists. This is kind of a beauty that does not live off scenic landscapes, architecture, or monuments alone, but off personal commitment, culture, and innovation in content.

Zabut was founded in 2016 in the historic center of Savoca, one of “The Most Beautiful Villages in Italy”. In 2019, the festival moved to the municipality of Santa Teresa di Riva, which was held the “Blue Flag” designation since 2017. Above all, Zabut is an event that, during the days of the festival, creates a connection between a place and a community, between people and locations, becoming a space for cultural participation with a fascinating and welcoming atmosphere.
On the Ionian coast, we are constantly searching for new inspiration, and Zabut is the result of our desire to create and take action.
Today, the project is ready for a further leap in quality that would allow it to stand alongside the most important international festivals, although the difficulties caused by the pandemic throughout 2020 have made this path more complicated.
In that unusual August marked by a temporary respite from coronavirus, yet also by an anxious uncertainty about the future, 150 people attended the screenings each evening of the festival. This number cannot compare with attendance in previous years (450 per evening in 2019), but it demonstrates even more convincingly the public’s desire to listen, their curiosity, and their longing for beauty – in our case, through cinema.
The short films – 450 in total – arrived from 62 different countries, a sign that, in an era when distances are shrinking, international reach is already, to some extent, an achieved goal.
We are ambitious about growing further: first throughout neighboring territories, then across Italy, and eventually throughout Europe and the world. It is an ambition we can fulfil, beginning with the willingness of the local population to participate.
The festival is supported by the Municipality of Santa Teresa di Riva, by a group of private sponsors, and is patronized, among others, by the University of Catania, the University of Messina, and the Academy of Fine Arts of Palermo.
Beyond the many challenges we face – one above all being that access to most public funding calls requires advance payment of expenses, in addition to the paralysis caused by the spread of COVID-19 – we still have many ideas.
We would like Zabut to grow while remaining deeply connected to Sicily and without losing its identity, and we hope to attract institutional interest at a national level.
We are aware that bringing people to Santa Teresa di Riva is more difficult. But then again, bringing people to Taormina was – and still is – difficult as well.
We would like to overcome this “territorial limit” and be able to invite guests and jurors from outside Italy. At present, this limitation is due not only to inadequate infrastructure, but above all to the difficulty of securing greater financial resources.

We would also like to fight, through Zabut, against that stereotypical idea of Sicily still associated with the mafia and organized crime. In some ways, we ourselves still indulge in our past, even in its negative historical memory: in the souvenir shops of Savoca, for example – the village where several scenes from The Godfather were filmed – shops sell gun-shaped mugs as souvenirs…
Sicily has, for the most part, freed itself from that reality, but I do not believe that other Italian regions, including those in the North, are untouched by infiltration from the ‘Ndrangheta and the mafia.
The theme of the mafia has become a kind of folklore that feeds itself through the approval of mass tourism. Yet this carries a negative weight, limiting and undermining trust in these territories. As a result, those who come from elsewhere continue to judge these places through the filter of mafia-related memories and stereotypes.

What is the way to free the South from the South itself?
First of all, by distancing ourselves from stereotypes.
And then by becoming aware that our place of life is slower than that of Nourthern Italy. This is not necessarily a negative thing. But we must not lose ourselves in it or leave things unfinished. Otherwise, we will never truly move beyond the “South”.

The opening photo is by Stefano Anzini.

THE BRIDGE ACROSS THE STRAIT AND THE RECOVERY FUND, ANGELA MERKEL’S PRAISE FOR ITALY AND INVISIBLE MEDITERRANEAN(S): THE CONNECTION EXISTS AND IT IS VISIBLE

Invisible Mediterranean(s) is a permanent project; it does not end with the duration of the Journey. It seeks connections and pathways, nourished by the continuous relationship of interest that the South generates in Italy and across Europe.

Today’s Il Sole 24 Ore published an article about a Mastercard study on tourism trends in G20 countries.
At the opening of the article, journalist Gianni Rusconi referred to a statement by Angela Merkel who, during a video conference with the ministers-president of the German Länder, described Italy as a country that is not at risk and where it its reasonable to travel. Whether the “Merkel effect” will generate a flow of German tourists – provided coexistence with the virus allows it – remains to be seen.

The Mastercard report highlights a rapidly consolidating trend: “…the way people travel has gradually adapted to the new scenario. Spending on fuel, restaurants, or car and bicycle rentals reflects a growing inclination toward ‘on the road’ and local travel, rediscovering national landscape territories.”

“Invisible Mediterranean(s) – Journey Across the Strait” investigates places and tells unexpected stories with the aim of bringing an end to the sort of cultural oblivion surrounding the lands around the meeting point of the two seas, the Ionian and the Tyrrhenian.
It is a project born from a cultural initiative and private economic commitment, supported by several companies, bringing together research on territories, the enhancement of communities, and a courageous awareness of the difficulties resulting from decades of inadequate policies deaf to real needs.

Mastercard’s research has highlighted what Invisible Mediterranean(s) has been telling for the past three years.

The first two journeys were educational explorations in search of the invisible, within landscape and architecture, but also through the stories of the women and men of the Strait: in 2018 through Reggio Calabria, the Grecanic area with Amendolea and Gallicianò, Filanda Cogliandro, and the Costa Viola; in 2019 through Rosarno in Calabria, Scilla, Gerace, and Messina, in Sicily. A narrative built through dialogue, gathering testimonies and fostering discussion, bringing together the visions of authentically Mediterranean people – different in background, age, and role – who share, even through contradiction, the identity of their territory.
The third journey, in this difficult and painful 2020 (from September 17 to 20), marked a turning point.

Journey Across the Strait 2020. Photo by Stefano Anzini

Many things have changed since previous years.
During the summer, the whole of Southern Italy experienced a revival in tourism. After months of mandatory quarantine to contain the spread of the coronavirus and restrinctions on travel to foreign countries, Calabria and Sicily ranked among the five most visited regions in Italy. This was stated by CNA Turismo together with Eurispes. Visitor numbers far exceeded expectations.

The pandemic generated a flow of interest toward the South, and the South revealed the most exposed part of its territory, arousing attention and curiosity even toward its “invisible” aspects.

The protagonists of the third edition of Invisible Mediterranean(s), even more motivated to express–according to their own sensibilities and without conforming to standardized language–the “invisibility” of their places, celebrated through the journey itself and through debates both the territories–in Sicily, the system of the Ionian valleys of the Peloritani Mountains between Capo Scaletta and Capo Sant’Alesso, and in Calabria, from the Tonnara di Palmi to Gioia Tauro–as well as the strong desire for integration within the European context.

Courageous in denouncing the difficulties – from the lack of infrastructure, to the managerial inconsistencies of urban centers, to the territorial-scale dissonances of the Port of Port of Gioia Tauro, and even the unresolved and painful issue of the ‘Ndrangheta, which undermines strategic planning–many mayors took part in the Invisible Mediterranean(s) talks: Piero Briguglio, mayor of Nizza di Sicilia, Nancy Todaro, deputy mayor of Alì Terme, Natale Rao, mayor of Alì, Giovanni De Luca, mayor of Fiumedinisi, Natia Lucia Basile, councillor for culture of Roccalumera, Rosanna Garufi, councillor for culture of Furci Siculo, Sebastiano Gugliotta, mayor of Pagliara, Giuseppe Briguglio, mayor of Mandanici; Armando Neri, deputy mayor of Reggio Calabria, Giuseppe Ranuccio and Wladimiro Maisano, mayor and councillor of the municipality of Palmi, Aldo Alessio, mayor of Gioia Tauro, Giuseppe Idà, mayor of Rosarno, Andrea Tripodi, mayor of San Ferdinando.

Also in agreement in affirming that the post-pandemic “renaissance” could recalibrate the map of the map of the Strait by relaunching economic investment through culture, tourism, and agriculture, were the presidents of the territorial Orders of Architects: Salvatore Vermiglio for Reggio Calabria and Francesco Miceli for Palermo; together with the “ambassadors” of Invisible Mediterranean(s)–architects active in the territory and holding academic positions at the Universities of Reggio Calabria, Ferrara, and University of Naples Federico II. For Sicily: Gaetano Scarcella and Francesco Messina; for Calabria: Salvatore Greco, Giovanni Multari, Michelangelo Pugliese, and Giovanni Aurino.

In particular, the transit area between Calabria and Sicily, shaped by geography and infrastructural limitations, is dense with uncertainties about the directions to be taken – torn between the desire for expansion and the will to protect an extraordinary heritage. This protection is not about restricting widespread knowledge, which is in fact desirable, but about resisting the vulgarization of low-cost, superficial dissemination.

The issue of the construction of the Bridge across the Strait is interwoven with and cuts across all the other reflections. Also today, an in-depth article in Gazzetta del Sud confirms the exclusion of the bridge project from those eligible for funding under the Recovery Fund, which allocates more than 190 billion euros to Southern Italy, to which are added 123 billion euros in European and national funds through 2030.
The journalist Lucio D’Amico analyses both the criteria for the exclusion and the positive employment effects (citing a study by the Bocconi University in Milan) that the construction of the bridge could have generated in the coming years. But above all, he emphasizes how the Bridge is “the infrastructure that more than any other would bring the South and the Strait area back to the center of national and international politics. And while opinions on the Bridge remain controversial, the issue of restoring the Strait to a central geographical and political position within Southern Europe is, instead, a significant opportunity for the whole country. Precisely the theme of the relationship between the Strait and Europe was the provocation of this third edition of Invisible Mediterranean(s).

We asked mayors, architects and Presidents of Professional Orders which paths should be taken to face the future of these extraordinary places, and to relaunch the country starting from the South, interpreting the Strait of Messina in a European key.
The answer was unanimous: it is possible.
The rigorous (and unsparing) analyses, the concreteness of the statements, and the proposed programmes all describe a territory ready to take off – provided that strategies and actions emerge from below, from communities, rather than being “placebo” measures adminstered by the central government.
Showing attention and listening to the demands expressed by local communities, using European funds and allocating dedicated resources, and aligning interventions with territorial vocations: these are the actions that can drive renewal.

One of the moments of discussion from the third edition of Invisible Mediterranean(s). Photo by Stefano Anzini

In multiple voices, there is a call for the need not to impose a pre-established vision –something that has happened in the past, for example in the mid-1970s, when, within the framework of the special project for the development of infrastructure in the province of Reggio Calabria (CIPE Resolution of 1974), the Port of Gioia Tauro was built. The scale and structural characteristics of the work were determined by its original functional purpose, serving the industrial settlements planned by the Government Authority, which envisaged the creation in Calabria of Italy’s Fifth Steel Centre. In the early 1980s, the construction program came to a halt due to the well-known crisis in the steel sector, which in reality had already begun in the previous decade. The port was therefore converted from an industrial port to a multipurpose one, requiring the redefinition of infrastructure programmes, operational structure, and development plans.
As stated by Giovanni Multari, architect and professor at the University of Naples Federico II: “Gioia Tauro is a geometric center, but also a generator of economic and political meanings. A place of missed strategies and lost opportunities. The Port of Gioia Tauro is a giant facing only the sea, turning its back on the land, because it generates little local impact, is self-sufficient in its function and organization, and is more inclined to look toward the Suez Canal or the Strait of Gibraltar than toward its own plain.”
However, as explained by Giuseppe Idà, mayor of Rosarno “it is also the third in Europe and the largest in Italy for transshipment, the transfer of cargo from one ship to another, usually through unloading and reloading in port; it takes place in hub ports where many shipping lines with different origins and destinations intersect. In the area surrounding the port, the flow of goods and culture intersects and integrates.”
Also, Salvatore Greco, architect and council member of the Order of the Architects of Reggio Calabria, brings the issue of the port back to the territorial scale. “The port is a ZES – a Special Economic Zone – which means that goods are produced and processed there, and trade takes place within the port itself. The lack of adequate rail infrastructure and railway terminals hinders the development of its potential economic spin-offs.”

Supporting the territory means fostering its cultural and tourist vocation.
Once again Salvatore Greco helps frame the issue: “(…) I believe that an extreme form of protection is preferable to misguided interventions or redevelopment solutions that turn villages into something resembling an Indian reservation. That would mean losing wealth, not gaining it, making room for a form of consumption that empties places out – a disposable, use-and-throw away approach to territories. We must encourage a gentle form of tourism, not one that is offensive and arrogant.
A landscape transformed into a postcard panorama becomes aligned with an undifferentiated multitude of postcard landscapes. The danger is that the richness of values may be reduced to a merely temporary purchasing power – and then be lost forever.”
Adds Michelangelo Pugliese, architect and professor at the University of Naples Federico II: “Calabria is a landscape that cannot be trivialized through opportunistic interpretations tied to places, villages, coastlines, or mountains. Beginning with the villages themselves, we are not speaking about idyllic situations, as the term might suggest regardless of context. Often these villages are not only abandoned places, but also devastated by mercilessly ugly construction. Violations that have been committed and, unfortunately, layered over time. The complexity of reinterpreting them also involves the issue of dwelling, which contemporary life has profoundly transformed.”
“Not everything can take the traditional tourism paradigm as its model for development, either because there is no spontaneous vocation for it, or because places do not wish to transform themselves in that direction, – explains Gaetano Scarcella, architect on the “Sicilian side.” “For example, the Ring of Nisi is a circular network of paths connecting the four centers of a valley marked by subtle and previously unexplored landscapes, abandoned workshops, agricultural scenery, and scattered monuments. (…) If it makes sense for the revival of a territory to pass also – though not exclusively – through tourism, then it is necessary to find the right and respectful interpretative key, because these are still unexplored places.”

Inaccessibility and the lack of physical infrastructure remain the constant factor – a brake and an obstacle to any hypothesis of development.
Salvatore Vermiglio, president of the Order of the Architects of Reggio Calabria, takes a particularly strong position regarding the Bridge across the Strait of Messina: “A coordinated and parallel project involving both the bridge and the related infrastructure would mean transforming Sicily and Calabria into Europe. Stepping back from the commitment to build the bridge, on the other hand, means remaining still, anchored to that prefabricated vision of Southern Italy, denying its European and global potential. To deny the bridge means to remain invisible. The invisibility of the territory is not a protection of its beauty, but rather damage to its enhancement and dissemination. An effective parallel, in all its harshness and discomfort, is the contrast between expansion and contraction. The risk of contraction is extremely high and, in a global context that tends toward expansion and integration, the danger of permanent exclusion from development processes increases.”

The political attention currently focused on Southern Italy thanks to the Recovery Fund cannot ignore the actual needs of the territory. As Francesco Messina, professor at the University of Ferrara, stated: “There is a total lack of attention from central government toward real needs, and even local politics struggles to understand the priorities.”

Francesco Miceli, president of the Order of Architects of Palermo, broadens the perspective: “Accessibility to the enjoyment of heritage, as well as public spaces, concerns the issue of citizens’ rights. Providing infrastructure to a territory means enabling every individual citizen to access it.
The lack of accessibility represents a denied right to historical and cultural heritage”.

The protection and enhancement of the territories along the Strait cannot be resolved through infrastructure alone: smaller towns and peripheral areas, suspended between a distinct identity and degradation, must become part of a broader project aimed at safeguarding their identity. Explains Miceli: “The connection with the most authentic territory is difficult to preserve for smaller towns: the relationship between urbanity and rurality becomes increasingly complex, to the point of tearing apart and becoming distorted – Palermo is a paradigmatic example of this. The interweaving of agricultural fragments within the outskirts of the consolidated city can become a major resource: these too are invisible places, though invisible in a different way from the hidden invisibility of villages. They are invisibile because people do not wish to look at them, yet they are strategic for rethinking the city – certainly not to transform them into new building developments, but to construct an identity of connection and enhancement. In order not to deny natural sustainability, the intelligence of the place, and to exalt its resilience.”

To the concept of a natural limit impoed by geography is added that of a self-imposed limit, as explained by Messina “Limitation is the truly serious problem of our territorie: the Strait of Messina has a geographical and political specificity, a point of tension between the Italian mainland and the island, a great water square where the distance between the two shores is ‘dialectically’ variable. Invisibility is a limit tied to the difficulty of physical connections between places, a condition that feeds and perpetuates itself through the restraint imposed by a culture of conservation which, through a cognitive distortion, becomes intertwined with certain environmental policies.
Thus, a geographical limit is transformed into a major political limit that discourages development projects and fosters the abandonment of territories surrounded by ever-higher mental walls”.

Territories along the Strait must – by right – find their place within European geography. To achieve this, suggests Giovanni Multari “Before thinking about new projects, we should first conduct a survey of what already exists – abandoned places and unfinished construction sites. We should involve a network of local enterprises, freeing ourselves from a system governed by a politics of favors that has damaged all of Italy, and Southern Italy in particular.”

The project Invisible Mediterranean(s) was initially conceived with the aim of revealing little-known places – scarcely photographed or narrated. It sought to satisfy a desire for knowledge about a unique part of Italy. Over the course of three years, the project grew and evolved, feeding itself through a deeper understanding of the situations and territories involved, and setting increasingly ambitious goals – foremost among them, transforming the Strait area into a new center of energy for the entire Old Continent.

The opening photo is by Mario Ferrara.

THE STRAIT OF MESSINA IS NOT MERELY A PHYSICAL PLACE, MADE UP OF LANDSCAPES AND ARCHITECTURE. ACCORDING TO PATRIZIA GIANCOTTI, ITS “TRUE DIMENSION” IS THE IMMATERIAL ONE

An anthropological reading of the Strait of Messina reveals its intangible heritage. Europe’s finis terrae, an inner landscape, a geographical singularity: this is how anthropologist and journalist Patrizia Giancotti outlines the elusive profile of a place rich in meaning. It is a place whose protection should extend beyond the beauty of its landscape to include its “volatile assets” – the intangible cultural treasures that are on the verge of disappearing.

Patrizia Giancotti recounts that anthropology has been a passion of hers since her youth, when, as a teenager, she would listen to the stories and songs of an elderly aunt from Calabria sitting by the heart, recording and preserving them in written form.

“Anthropology,” she explains, “is also the study and narration of the intangible and the invisible. It provides a textual anchor for cultural heritage that is fading away, sometimes capturing it at the very moment before it disappears.
It is not mere storytelling: it is research, carried out with scientific rigor, and the systematic organization and interpretation of findings.

Your perspective on the Strait of Messina is quite distintive. Many acknowledge the existence of an important intangible heritage there, yet they often only touch upon the subject, preferring the more concrete dimensions of history and culture. What is the immateriality of the Strait?

I believe that, in order to truly understand the Strait, an anthropological approach focused on intangible culture is essential. We are talking about a place that is remote by definition, overlooking a sea marked by a transition between continents.

It is the finis terrae of Europe.

But is it really the end?
Nothing ends at the Strait.

Stretto di Messina-journal-giancotti- ferrata — During his exile in Brancaleone, Cesare Pavese referred to the single-track railway line that still connects Taranto to Reggio Calabria as “la Ferrata”. Photo by Patrizia Giancotti.

If one arrives in the right frame of mind – perhaps at sunset, after a journey across the entire length of Italy – what emerges is not a sense of ending, but rather the sight of an explosive and magnificent elsewhere: a mythical horizon, complete with snow-capped smoking volcanoes, suspended above and continually transforming across this stretch of sea. If anything ends at the Strait, we might say, borrowing the words of Fitzcarraldo as he gazes over the Amazon rainforest: “Here reality ends, and visions begin”.

Etna from Bova Marina point. Photo by Patrizia Giancotti.

By its very nature as both a divider and a connector, the Strait embodies a rite of passage. Between one shore and the other, between the continental mainland and what lies beyond, between one vision of reality and its opposite, one is alternately audience and spectator.
For centuries, this has nourished myth and ignited our imagination. Yet, in many instances, reality surpasses even the myths themselves.

The stories and practices associated with the phenomenon of the Fata Morgana, with oceanic fish, the women who were believed to cut down waterspouts, the She-Wolf, swordfish fishing, the Feast of Saint John bonfires, and the apotropaic tradition of the women of Bagnara Calabra, are also anthropological treasures – living symbolic arsenals, complete with their ritual gestures and practices. They are manifestations of the intangible rooted in the territory: treasures, immaterial extensions, “visions” of the Strait. These elements also serve an important social function: they help stitch together and preserve the bonds between the island and the peninsula.

The She-Wolf, for example, is the name given to the fog that typically forms over the Strait and appears in the sky as an elongated shape, sometimes resembling an animal, causing a dramatic reduction in visibility. From this phenomenon – highly dangerous for navigation and resulting from the Strait’s unique atmospheric and geographical conditions – have emerged stories and legends, traditions, and shared practices found on both shores.

Stretto di Messina-journal-giancotti-07 — The “She-Wolf” on the Ionian coast changes shape while preserving the elongated form of the Strait. Photo by Patrizia Giancotti.

The Bonfires of Saint John have long served as a means of communication between the two shores, which share an ancient ritual tradition: the simultaneous lighting of bonfires, similar divinatory practices, nursery rhymes, and gestures of good fortune. Together, these customs testify to the deep and complex bond between Sicily and Calabria – one that has also, at times, been marked by conflict.

It should not be forgotten that the Strait is where Italy’s eastern and western coastlines converge. Here, the two seas – the Ionian and the Tyrrhenian – meet, each with distinct temperatures, marine life, currents, and depths. Flows and currents travel thousands of kilometers along the coasts of the peninsula before confronting one another at this very point, erupting into whirlpools and eddies, their power further intensified by the region’s tectonic forces.

All of this has, throughout history, nourished the myths of the Strait, endowing the place with an aura of mystery as well as a distinctive sense of power, magnetism, and energy. In many ways, it lends an uncanny quality to the cities overlooking its waters and shapes the unique character of the people who inhabit these shores.

The ancient rituals shared by the two shores reveal much about the deep and complex relationship between Sicily and Calabria – a bond that has also, at times, been marked by conflict.

These striking contrasts – between cliffs and abysses, wind and sea – give rise to extraordinary landscapes, stretching from depths of one thousand meters above sea level. These mountains emerged from the sea and still preserve its memory, with fossilized seashells scattered along their trails and the skeleton of a whale discovered at an elevation of 800 metres.

Equally remarkable are the vast, stony fiumare – the seasonal riverbeds characteristic of Calabria –with their silent sentinels: ancient remnants of the past, reclaimed by abandonment until they have become part of the landscape itself. From the rocky heights above them, the gaze extends far across the sea.

Beyond the decay and the concrete, there is this as well.

“Disorientation, enchantment, and unease” are, according the anthropologist Vito Teti, the feelings that overwhelm particularly sensitive observers when confronted with the landscape of the fiumara and its abandoned villages. Other travellers, however, may recognize in this dramatic intensification of opposites the contours of their own inexpressible inner landscapes, and feel a profound sense of kinship with them” from *Filoxenia* by Patrizia Giancotti, featuring the author’s photos.

The Strait possesses a boundless frontier-like dimension, one that inspires a visionary and mysterious form of maieutics – a process of revelation and discovery that emerges through contemplation.

In the end, all of this becomes an inner landscape – something one carries within oneself, and from which it is difficult to remain distant.

The Strait’s intangible heritage is not only difficult to uncover, but also challenging to convey. Patrizia Giancotti explores the people who inhabit these landscapes – and who, in many ways, embody them – in her book Filoxenia …

The Strait’s invisibility also extends to its intangible heritage: a fragile, elusive, almost volatile legacy constantly at risk of disappearing. It is an invaluable cultural inheritance that urgently calls for preservation, documentation, and recognition. This is an anthropological imperative. It is the anthropologist’s task to “capture” this heritage before it fades away, using the tools of the discipline: film cameras, audio recorders, photographic equipment, and other means of documenting what is otherwise destined to vanish.

In Filoxenìa, I explored the landscapes of the Greek-Aspromonte hinterland overlooking the Strait, in search of the ancient meaning of hospitality – of the care for the stranger celebrated in Homeric tradition. Filoxenìa, the love of the outsider, stands as the very opposite of the more familiar concept of xenophobia. To pursue this search, I deliberately reversed the usual perspective, following the road signs that point inland, towards the vertical landscape and the ancient heart of Greek Calabria.
At the centre of this photographic narrative – poised between travel reportage and ethnographic research – are the people I encountered along the way: shepherds tuning the bells of their goats, guardians of the Greek language of Calabria, traditional dance masters, women preparing zippuli, scholars of Byzantine culture, musicians, elderly women who preserve ancestral knowledge, and young girls proud to call themselves Calabrian. Together, they become luminous points in an intimate geography overlooking the Strait.

Stretto di Messina-journal- giancotti-01

How can the slow time of invisibility and immateriality be reconciled with the accelerated pace of contemporary life?

During my long anthropological research among the peoples of the Amazon, I came to realize that there are places where it seems both more realistic and more fruitful to bring the ancient and the hypermodern into dialogue, allowing each to enrich the other. This is not about indulging in nostalgia or imagining that the past was somehow better. Our own agro-pastoral past, for instance, was also marked by hardship, injustice, and inequality.

It is up to us to discern what within traditional culture can still be useful and inspiring in improving our lives, in light of today’s renewed awareness, and what is better left buried once and for all.

Can the safeguarding of such a singular experience find a home in museums?

To cease being mere repositories of dusty, dying objects – condemned to the loss of their social function – the museum must learn to tell the story of a community. Indeed, it must become a tool for community cohesion, a device through which the community itself recognizes and expresses itself: a living, articulate, and active form of memory, where objects, when present, are allowed to become spokespersons.

A museum must know how to communicate, involve, and move people, engaging new generationms to the point of making them active participants in the narrative. It must also be capable of using new technologies, but only insofar as they serve this purpose with humility and precision.

Certain values – our relationship with nature, seasonality, knowledge of the land and its plants, and above all the sense of community – are precious resources for improving contemporary life. They strengthen awareness and a sense of humanity, giving value to shared existence, to the feeling of being active, living, and even transformative agents within our surroundings.

In the Strait, I imagine a “narrating museum”: a weaving of faces and voices, of images and speaking objects, of Sirens, the Fata Morgana mirage, and women who “cut” waterspouts; stories of fishing and crossings, ritual specialists, songs, testimonies, living communities. An anthropological task force of students engaged in research and recovery of what is being lost; a fluid, evolving, immersive and open experience; a collecting device for those who wish to take part. Its aim would be not only to give value to all this, but also to capture, entangle, and draw the visitor into the “vision” of the invisible.

Opening: The shadow of Patrizia Giancotti on the Amendolea River, from the book Filoxenìa. Photo by the author.

Patrizia Giancotti, born in Turin to Calabrian parents, is an anthropologist, photographer, and writer. She teaches anthropology at the Academy of Fine Arts in Reggio Calabria. She is also an author and broadcaster for Rai Radio 3, and has published more than one hundred reportage pieces in major magazines, as well as produced over fifty photographic exhibitions in Italy, France, Germany, Portugal, Africa, and Brazil. She has conducted visual anthropology research in Italy and abroad, particularly in Brazil, where she lived for over ten years, receiveng the high honour of the Order off the Southern Cross (Cruzeiro do Sul) for cultural merit. In Southern Italy she has carried out visual anthropology fieldwork taht has resulted in photo-filmic and musical works. For the GAL of the Greek-Calabrian area, she conducted visual anthropology research that resulted in the book Filoxenìa – L’accoglienza tra i Greci di Calabria (Rubbettino Editore), winner of the Ali sul Mediterraneo Prize 2017, as well as in the radio documentary series for Radio3 Volti e voci della Calabria Greca. Among her travelling lecture-performances are Filoxenìa e altre storie di Calabria and Dal Mediterraneo al Brasile sulla rotta delle Sirene, presented, among other venues, at the Arena dello Stretto. For the past four years, she has been living in a small village in Calabria.

WHAT IS BEAUTY FOR THE STRAIT OF MESSINA, WELL EXPLAINED BY ANNA MALLAMO

Messina is a painful city. So painful that it is hard to perceive its beauty. In Reggio, the new promenade with Tresoldi’s work, a sign of urban growth and hope, is confronted with rubbish abandoned at the corners of the streets.

With Anna Mallamo, journalist for Gazzetta del Sud, we discuss one-sided visions that corner the Strait, but also a future made possible by its Beauty.

The Fondazione Italia Patria della Bellezza launched a call titled “Comunicare Bellezza”, a support program for cultural and territorial projects throughout Italy – a way of putting into practice a value that has historically been appreciated through its artistic, environmental, and cultural expressions, yet which does not traditionally belong to the sphere of primary individual and social needs.

Around the word “beauty”, a language dense with prefabricated layers and meanings is often used.

Beauty lies in tourism, in history, in landscape, in design, in science and technology, in manufacturing and food. In books, poetry, and photography. In men, women, boys and girls, animals, and plants.

Almost always, it is beauty as an adjective – a visual or intellectual attribute assigned to a defined subject.

Anna Mallamo during the talk in Messina, Invisible Mediterranean(s) 2021, Journey across the Strait IV. Photo by Stefano Anzini.

Anna Mallamo, journalist for Gazzetta del Sud, Reggio-born, Messina by adoption, and a citizen of the Strait by passion, believes that beauty is as necessary as food, water, and air – essentially as necessary as the things that keep us alive. Anna argues this starting from the effects produced by its opposite: desolation, decay, and abandonment.

She says, “Landscape is a determinant of the soul”, and it almost seems an inevitable statement when speaking about the lands of Scylla and Charybdis. “I find myself fighting every day against the oblivion that pervades those who live in the Strait and causes a progressive and selective blindness: decay prevails, people avert their gaze from the landscape, and thus they lose their soul.

And from that moment on, you are only able to see and describe what is ugly, and within that narrative there is a kind of complacency in pain and tragedy that leads to inaction.

The perspective closes in: the Strait becomes a territory either to abandon or simply to endure.”

Anna Mallamo with Alfonso Femia and other participants during the talk session in Messina, Invisible Mediterranean(s) 2021, Journey across the Strait IV. Photo by Stefano Anzini.

Future and the Strait: how can a connection be created between time and place, a connection that seems to be missing?

The only apparent solution seems to be the bridge that people have dreamed about since the mid-twentieth century, never built – and this alone has become a good reason for complaint. In recent decades, the bridge itself has become “the meaning”, in a desperate search for a collective signifier, the only possible form of redemption.

It is clear that many other forms of emancipation exist: the seafront promenade of Reggio Calabria, with Tresoldi’s installation, is one example, because the people of Reggio – not only tourists – appreciate it and make it part of their lives, supporting local businesses and generating wealth and employment. Even so, just around the corner there are piles of uncollected rubbish, and when you turn your back to the sea, the curtain of buildings you see becomes a fabric of unravelled signs with which you must contend every day.

In the past, Messina was a great city. At the time of the 1908 earthquake, it was the third largest port in the Mediterranean. I do not intend here to provide a condensed history, but, for example, before 1908, there was a 9-kilometre-long seafront known as the Palazzata – a continuous sequence of buildings constructed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, better known as the Teatro Marino, which housed a range of functions: residences, silos, and warehouses.

An avant-garde architectural vision, which replaced an earlier Palazzata of much older origin, damaged by the 1783 earthquake.

At the end of the 18th century, it was decided to rebuild the Palazzata and, more broadly, the entire city preserving its previous layout and appearance. However, after 1908, different choices were made.

The Palazzata by Simone Gullì before the earthquake of 1783, painting by Louis François Cassas ( wikipedia).

Palazzata and Neptune’s statue before the earthquake of 1908.

Palazzata after the earthquake in 1908. (wikipedia).

Palazzata of Messina, project by Giuseppe Samonà (wikipedia).

It is a decades-long, almost century-long lack of vision on the part of Messina’s administration. Twenty years ago, for instance, the tram line was built alone the seafront, despite the existence of a less invasive route that had already been identified. It was a short-sighted decision, especially considering that in recent decades coastal cities have worked to remove barriers between the city and the sea. Reggio and its promenade, geographically close, are a clear example of this. The tram on the seafront has further diminished an already struggling Messina

Messina’s past is its landscape: hills flattened, hills rebuilt.

The people of Messina move between the memory of the past and what the gaze itself generates – two forms of memory that produce a permanent sense of uprooting.

Before 1908, there was a saying in Messina used to describe a highly negative situation: “to do more damage than 5 February” (the day of the 1783 earthquake). This is not only a reference to popular culture; it almost represents an anthropological evidence of how the “damage” suffered offered the people of Messina a pretext not to fight back, an alibi not to react, turning inaction into a way of life. With the second earthquake, even more so, identity was lost in the collapse, and there is no desire to recover it.

What has been built – the geometry, the heights, the materials of the buildings – acts on people’s perceptual sensitivity, generating daily feelings of either positivity or discomfort. One is subjected to, and gradually becomes accustomed to, the most disturbing elements, to visual dissonances, and to the lack of connections between the fragments of the city, the greenery, and the sea.

This happened in Messina.

How does it work for those who stay?

“Restanza” – a word effective both in sound and meaning – is a complicated and risky choice.

Vittorio Teti – an anthropologist – speaks of the “adventure of staying” (in the South, editor’s note): “the effort, the harshness, the beauty, the ethics of ‘restanza’ are no less decisive and foundational than the adventure of traveling. The two adventures are complementary and must be understood and narrated together.”

The risk is one of habituation and diminishing vision, eventually leading to complete blindness.

Creating a cultural condition that compels “the people of the Strait” to look at the Strait – to know it and to recognize it – means designing a radical cultural intervention, one that activates a continuous rather than episodic process of revitalization, ultimately capable of bringing about lasting change.

The abiility to perceive the beauty of the Strait, of Messina, and of Reggio must be constantly encouraged, for it has long been stifled not only by its opposite – the accumulated ugliness of the landscape – but even more so by inaction.

The makers of beauty – writers, artists, architects – seek to jolt their fellow citizens into readjusting their gaze, revealing the immaterial to those who observe from afar, captivated by legends yet fearful of disappointment.

This is what Nadia Terranova has done in her novel Farewell, Ghosts and in the graphic novelCaravaggio e la ragazza (created with Lelio Bonaccorso), featuring beautiful illustrations of Messina.

Isabella on the balcony (from the graphic novel Caravaggio e la ragazza by Nadia Terranova and Lelio Bonaccorso. Illustration by Lelio Bonaccorso)

Retruning to the starting point of this reflection and to the question – how it works for those who stay – the need for beauty must find a synthesis with the economy.

Architecture is, potentially, one of the elements of balance and reconciliation: it introduces new layers and integrates the functions of everyday life into urban contexts of good formal quality, in a continuous dialogue with the built heritage of the past and with the natural environment.

From a naturalistic perspective, the Strait is a goldmine to be monetized, ideally not (only) through a “milk-the-tourism” approach, assigning a handful of square meters of coastline to sun-and sea-hungry tourists, in a B-movie-style model.

This is not what the people of the Strait need. There are alternative approaches that can be developed for a form of tourism in which the beach is a pause, not the goal: for example, territorial itineraries, routes tracing the residencies of artists, nature excursions, and so on.

This hidden beauty, which already exists, has become invisible because it has been diminished by other choices that the Strait – Messina, but also Reggio – has inflicted upon itself.

What emerges is illegal building activity and a monstrous ugliness. Even everyday living has taken on a diminished, impoverished dimension. Pervasive speculation has generated a sense of possession without beauty.

Fortunately, there are many projects underway …

Some things have been done, but many others have been left unfinished or interrupted. There are still miles of coastline to be restored. What is lacking is a political and economic vision. When a local administration is focused on defending itself, it does not invest in major works, but in reassuring the electorate in the short term.

Work is lacking; work is a priority.

It must be so.

But “work” is not an isolated category. It is the design and planning across different sectors that generates work. The people of the Strait have a short-sighted obsession with the “bridge” as a generator of employment for years to come, even before considering it as a means of connection.

Without taking into account that today, within a framework of ecological transition, this would perhaps be a choice that depletes the territories.

The construction of the bridge would increase both heavy and light vehicle traffic, a vision anchored in the past, whereas the guidelines of the European Green Deal require a reduction in road transport.

There is a lack of cultural elaboration around any vision of the future, which as a consequence fades further and further, because the conditions for a serene “staying” no longer exist. Younger generations are not given the conditions to love their places.

The waters of Lake Ganzirri, a few kilometers from the centre of Messina, are connected to the adjacent sea by means of canals, some of which date back to the 1830s, as well as to Lake Faro further north.(source: archeome.it)

What do you think about the issue of conurbation between Reggio and Messina? Are there risks of forcing the concept?

The people of the Strait share the ecological and landscape system of the Strait, but from different perspectives. From Messina, for example, we see Villa San Giovanni, not Reggio.

Sicily is an island, while Reggio lies on a peninsula. The approaches are different, but this heterogeneity is a value to be preserved.

The Strait’s ecosystem is an incredible heritage to observe, understand, and preserve.

It is important not to lose sight of the goal and to formulate good projects for a neglected territory.

To attract capital, we have so much culture, memory, and beauty – and this is what matters.

Much of the beauty of the Strait lies more in its villages than in its cities. To what extent is a “village system” imaginable?

A project based on a relationship between villages and cities, developed through physical and digital infrastructure and through securing areas from water-related risks, has great potential. From an economic perspective, it demonstrates that the beauty of the territory can generate stable wealth, independent of tourism seasonality.

More marginal cities, such as Messina, can offer much to a possible village – city pairing, not as an alternative choice – villages or cities – but as a system of relationships the operates at different scales of distance and time.

realtà culturali che amplificano le specificità del territorio in modo attivo e concreto e rappresentano il bello che avanza.

It is essential to start from cultural realities that actively and concretely amplify the specificities of the territory and represent the advancing notion of beauty.

Anna Mallamo, a “strettese” (from Reggio Calabria, she has lived in Messina for many years), works as a journalist at Gazzetta del Sud, where she heads the Culture and Entertainment section. She hosted a regular column for several years in L’Unità and runs a blog on the Huffington Post. She is very active on social media, with the account @manginobrioches.

IN THIS 2020, THE MEANING OF THINGS HAS CHANGED. THE SOUTH IS OUR BEST OPPORTUNITY

Alfonso Femia opens the third edition of Invisible Mediterranean(s) – Journey across the Strait.

“We can no longer just talk; for politics and architecture, it is time to act.”

It was not supposed to be a four-day event, nor was it meant to take place in September.
The idea was for it to last a full week, in June, during which field research on the territory would be combined with an organic re-examination of the themes and situations we had previously explored separately in the two earlier editions. I am referring to Invisible Mediterranean(s) – Journey Across the Strait III,, which despite the pandemic, we chose to undertake also – or rather especially – in 2020, albeit with reduced time and programming, in order to affirm the need and the will to state that the South can no longer be read, interpreted, and experienced as it has been up to now.

It is precisely 2020 that marks the first demonstration of how strong the South can be, and how this strength can sustain the country as a whole.
I believe that what Invisible Mediterranean(s) has revealed – and will continue to reveal – is important for the country. As we will read in the interviews with representatives of local public administrations, presidents of professional orders, and Sicilian and Calabrian architects, the meaning of words and actions can change when the perspective and gaze are different, and above all when dialogue and confrontation take place on site.
“Infrastructure”, “school”, “village”, “territory” carry different meanings and nuances in places such as Messina compared to places like Siena or elsewhere, and the evidence of this diversity must be strengthened and made more widely known.

There is no romanticism in the gaze of Invisible Mediterranean(s). Each investigation brings to light problems that can no longer be confined within an isolated identity, but must instead be expressed and resolved through connection with other identities. Citiens exist within territories, just as villages do, just as landscapes, coastlines, and mountains do. And Journey across the Strait reveals these connections and the overall system of relationship that binds them together.

Citing Cyprian Broodbank, author of “Il Mediterraneo” (Einaudi, 2015), perhaps the most interesting and brilliant narrative on the subject in the last decade, the characteristics of the Mediterranean are often taken as given facts. Yet the Mediterranean system is made up of closely interconnected centers, whose surprising economic and cultural development has become a model for the entire world. As Broodbank writes: “The Mediterranean of prehistory, a microcosm where everything has come to a standstill, is the perfect model for helping us investigate the globalized world in which we live”.

For example, in the past, highly original civilizations such as Cyprus and Malta, which reached peaks of development, were later reabsorbed into the dominant trend – and this represents, in Broodbank’s view, “the dark side of globalization. A warning message for all of us”.

And is the contemporary Mediterranean a sea of relations?
“Absolutely. If in the past it experienced both moments of confrontation and conflict, the prevailing message that emerges is that of a place of encounter – a place where stereotypes are constantly challenged and dismantled”, says Cyprian Broodbank. We strongly believe that, starting from the second half of 2020, national and European policies must invest in the Southern Mediterranean of Italy. Not as an act of compassion, but as a new center of energy for the entire Old Continent.

Journey across the Strait. Photo by Stefano Anzini.

The exploration Invisible Mediterranean(s), with the third Journey across the Strait, resumes together with Marco Predari (500×100) and Giorgio Tartaro, journalist who followed the previous editions, capturing the invisibility not only of the Mediterraneans, but also of journeys themselves.

GIORGIO TARTARO’S NEUROIMAGING FOR INVISIBLE MEDITERRANEAN(S)

Let’s play a game.
A videogame.
Or rather, a game of images.
To make the invisible Mediterranean visible – even in its plural form – we can imagine the bounce of a ball. A basketball, perhaps. And imagine its sound in an empty gym.
As a bearer – hopefully a healthy one – of internal Invisible Mediterranean(s), as a lake dweller who loves the sea, I imagine this ball bouncing from Greek and Latin epics to the recent image of a Mediterranean rotated ninety degrees: unrecognizable, yet fascinating, like a future highway.
From Phoenician and Roman splendours to the Maritime Republics, from the fragmented history of a richly biodiverse “boot-shaped” country to the troubled process of Italian unification, from times of excessive government to times of no government at all… It is astonishing to think that, apart from devastations and agricultural, artisanal, and industrial revolutions, many – very many – things have fortunately endured.
For instance, the desire for discovery: just as in coastal landscapes, so too in inland, pre-Alpine and mountainous ones, it reveals exemplary moments of recognition. Tradition, the will to recover, effort, commitment, attachment, people, identity.
The encyclopaedists work on these dynamics and return splendours. The fact is that Invisible Mediterranean(s) bounces very high. It elects a “Virgil 4.0” and surgically identifies heterodox contemporary heroes – those who fight against the common opinion of the obvious, who research, design, study, involve, and connect… in short, as my children would say, they really go all in.
No, it is not just cool or picturesque: it is an ethical and luminous way of being in time, this telling of Invisible Mediterranean(s).
Those that some know and hide. Those that many long for and cannot find. Those that, sometimes, by sheer luck, we happen to encounter.
And then it becomes a kind of drama. Because they are like beautiful songs, refrains, synthetic dependencies you can’t quite escape.
Travel is about seeing with new eyes…new sounds, scents, energies, sensations, friends, anecdotes…in short: human beings. Women and men who, outside the uniform of formality, rejoice in telling, collecting, giving.
For me, Invisible Mediterranean(s) are everything that escapes the individual, egoism, the idea of status and social position.
Once Muhammad Al began a speech in public. He apparently didn’t quite know what to say. At some point, he said: “Me, we”.
He then reportedly reworked the “Me, We” pronounced at Harvard in 1965 into “Me, Whee” a joyful “me!”, or rather “I? Hooray!” Perhaps suggested by his team or by circumstance.
Personally, I prefer the first version. Which is also my point of view on the Invisible Mediterranean(s), seen from the kaleidoscopic position of the Inner Mediterraneans: it is, fully and legitimately, an “I,we”. A-Sea Our Sea.

YOU CAN START AGAIN FROM THE SOUTH, BY MARCO PREDARI

Invisible Mediterranean(s) is part of the broader project of Marco Predari, 500×100, which was launched five years ago with the aim of investigating, through dialogue, paths of built and conceptual architecture. It has progressively strengthened and expanded, moving from its first Milan-based experience at the Salone del Mobile to other national contexts, including Venice, Rome, Pisa, and the South.

It represents an important commitment for a company such as Universal Selecta, a leading organization that this year won the Compasso d’Oro in the “Office Furniture and Accessories” category. The company supports the process of growth in Southern regions through the encounter and alignment between politics and architecture, also through the 500×100 platform.

As a company, we share initiatives rich in content in Puglia, Sicily, and Campania, and we believe that the entire South can be transformed from an area of development into a territory for validating effective experiences.

CALABRIA IS IN CONSTANT MOTION, BUT SOMETIMES ITS COURSE IS THE WRONG ONE. LET US ABANDON OLD PROCESS MODELS AND FACE OUR “ARCHAIC FUTURE” with Salvatore Greco

Salvatore Greco, architect and council member of the Order of the Architects of Reggio Calabria, overturns the preconceived narrative of a poor Calabria. Its supposed poverty exists only in the eyes of the those who are unable to see.

“Calabria is wealth”
Salvatore Greco opens with this stement, immediately and decisivly removing one of the many stereotypes surrounding Calabria as a “poor region”. It is a beautiful narrative by Greco one that does not indulge in sentimentality but instead develops a rigorous analysis grounded in observation and the memory of places. An alternating vision – close-up and from a distance – that returns the most honest and passionate portrait of the South.

Calabria is rich in perceptions. Its highly distinctive morphology is itself a form of wealth.
It is a mountainous region, made of mountains that face each other across the seas (the Ionian and the Tyrrhenian), and the physical space between the coasts and the Aspromonte is filled with countless stories.
Eight hundred kilometers of coastline, pastoral culture and cuisine…other narratives and forms of wealth.
Another form of wealth is the Calabrian “unfinished”: the rebar of pillars emerging from slabs, awkward volumes rising up, unfulfilled promises of houses – behind every house there is a social story, and this is wealth. Further wealth is the suspended sense of time, as if it stops and then resumes.
A sad form of wealth, but still wealth, is that of lands abandoned due to economic necessity, hydrogeological instability, earthquakes, and floods.
There is also the wealth of ghost towns, where only the past exists, while present and future are merely illusory intentions: the village of Amendolea and its river, the Cretto di Burri in Gibellina, which tells not what once existed, but its disappearance, the aftermath of the earthquake. The linguistic richness of the Grecanic area (certainly not a “minority” – a word that feels wrong and contradicts its enchantment and fascination).

Again, suspended time. All of this is wealth.

Then we move into the question of how to use and invest this extraordinary value.
A first reflection is that some of these situations have been preserved precisely because they have remained inaccessible.
And while invisibility and inaccessibility can certainly have negative connotations, I believe it is preferable to maintain an extreme form of protection rather than resorting to misguided interventions or restoration approaches that turn villages into something resembling and “Indian reservation”.
That would mean losing wealth rather than gaining it – making room for a form of consumption that empties places out, a throwaway use of territories.
Change, “progress”, even in its most aggressive forms, has reached Calabria filtered through its environmental character and geography – sometimes hostile – and this has caused less damage than in other regions.
We must encourage a delicate form of tourism, one that is not offensive or arrogant.
Landscapes transformed into postcard panoramas end up aligning with an undifferentiated mass of postcard-like landscapes.
The danger is that the richness of values is reduced to a merely transitory purchasing power – and the lost forever.

Can the authenticity of the Calabrian territory be reconciled within a European framework? The provocation we are putting forward with Invisible Mediterranean(s) is that of restarting the country (and Europe as well) from the southern Mediterranean.
These are not separate positions, but shared objectives grounded in respect for identity.
In Calabria there is no strong opposition between countryside and city; our wealth comes from the rural world and can be interpreted and strengthened within a European perspective. We are cities, villages, and communities: we must relaunch the vision of the world within and through communities.
For this reason, I believe a surgical level of attention is needed in how tourism is directed. And we must do this ourselves, as Calabrians.
Many things have been “dropped from above” onto us – for example investments in the steel industry, despite its crisis (with Taranto already struggling as a competitor). The Port of Gioia Tauro later managed to transform itself into a transshipment hub, but generating little local spin-off. The port is in fact a ZES–Special Economic Zone–which means that production and processing take place and exchange happens within the port itself. However, the lack of adequate rail infrastructure and railway terminals hinders the development of a potential local economic ecosystem.

We simply need to return to being what we once where, without anachronistic positions, within a framework of real change.
Calabria is in constant motion, but too often the course it takes is the wrong one.
We can speak a great deal about conservation– about architecture, landscape, and places. But places and landscapes exist through their transformation. To trivialize concepts and apply labels – first “sustainability”, now “resilience” – while pretending not to understand what real mutation means, overlaying inadequate models onto communities, is precisely to take the wrong direction.

In Calabria there are two dawns and two sunsets: the sun rises over the Ionian Sea and over the Tyrrhenian Sea, and the water is made of two seas and of the fiumare. Geography is what shapes history. And it is from here that we must begin.
Politics – which is a fundamental component in triggering architectural processes – must detach itself from models that do not work and embrace the regenerative capacity inherent in territories.
Nik Spatari, an internationally renowned artist and recently deceased, founder of Musaba, the art park in Mammola, spoke of the “archaic future” of Calabria – an idea that is less visionary and more deeply rooted in reality.
“I wish greater fortune to this my, and our, ultramediterranean Calabria”.
With Nik Spatari.

A GIANT LOOKING OUT TOWARD THE SEA AND THE PLAIN BEHIND IT: GIOIA TAURO, A UNIQUE PLACE DIVIDED IN TWO, EEMBODYING AND REFLECTING THE DESTINY OF A SOUTH SHAPED BY ILLOGICAL SEPARATIONS. A CONDITION THAT ARCHITECTURE CAN TRANSFORM with Giovanni Multari

Giovanni Multari, architect and professor at University of Naples Federico II, believes that regeneration should be a program implemented through small steps, relying on alternative solutions: if the Bridge is not built, let’s immediately redevelop Villa San Giovanni. If industry is not working, let’s invest everything in agri-“culture”.

Invisible Mediterranean(s) is dialogue, comparison, and investigation. It is a journey and a revelation of the invisible dimensions of Sicily and Calabria. It is all of this, but above all it is a way to recognize and reaffirm the strong identity of shy places seeking a sustainable synchronicity with contemporary time.
The Mediterranean is a vast theme belonging to many cultures, marked by different geographies and united by ‘invisible’ aspects, contradictions, and harmonies. The Mediterranean of the Strait is a hidden and reserved place, despite still being a major crossroads and a transnational hub.
At the heart of this Mediterranean, of the South, Rosarno, the plain, and the port of Gioia Tauro form an extraordinary aggregation of masterful visual and olfactory euphonies, together with striking dissonances and urban distress.
Gioia Tauro is a geometric center, but also a generator of economic and political meanings. A place of failed strategies and missed opportunities.
The Port of Gioia Tauro is a giant facing only toward the sea, turning its back on the land because it generates little local impact, is self-sufficient in its function and organization, and is more inclined to look toward the Suez Canal or Strait of Gibraltar than toward its own plain.
Expanding the gaze outward, the richness of extraordinary places immediately emerges – places that have always nourished Calabria. A predominantly agricultural world, whose Calabrian environmental context makes it fertile ground for an evolution that can positively intertwine with architecture.

In Calabria and throughout the South, architecture takes on the meaning of care for the land and for communities; it becomes agri-culture.
We must invest in the traditions we have, enhance them, and make them known: recent pandemic events have confirmed Calabria’s capacity to be an extraordinary reservoir of energy and have highlighted that the region can be self-sufficient.
Infrastructure difficulties still exist, but we are working on them step by step: for example, our mountains are no longer inaccessible. The Club Alpino Italiano has mapped most of the trails and opened the way to a form of tourism that is passionate and respectful of places.
In these mountains lie areas only partially shaped by human activity, revealing an authentic heritage of culture and traditions. It is a unique monumental reality, that of the Sila mountain range, which contrasts with the coastline – a threshold element of the Mediterranean – where design is directed toward the essential themes of ecology and the environment.
In this unusual summer, the first phase of coexistence with coronavirus, Calabria experienced a moment of great redemption, lived across its entire territory, visited by tourists from all over Italy and even by some European visitors. A sign of attention, appreciation, a first step toward taking – by right – a place within a European geography, also through tourism.

Where do we go after tourism?
Urban regeneration processes are not only made of large-scale transformations. Alongside major works – complex and difficult to implement – there is a small, continuous effort that also reaches the less visible territorial fringes and opens up unknown cultural and physical channels of communication.
We already have an infrastructure system in place that works, and it must be integrated with what is still missing.
The Ionian backbone suffers more, while the Tyrrhenian one is very dynamic, and from these different speeds of places emerges an unusual beauty, the awareness of a diachronic condition that generates positive evolutions out of contradiction: Paola, Crotone, Lamezia Terme, Catanzaro, Reggio Calabria.
There are territorial conditions that can be improved without major transformations, regenerating from the ground up and involving communities and citizens.

Let’s take a step back: how do the different “souls” of the same territory coexist?
Sometimes they are separate, sometimes they intersect. The Port of Gioia Tauro should be better connected with the plain. And if the best industry in Calabria is agriculture, then the agricultural system must be highlighted and enhanced, from cultivation to forestry, considering that it generates a significant economic impact, with exports across Europe.
But above all, precisely in order to reconcile these different identities, we must never stop and proceed in small steps: if the Strait Bridge is not built, let’s redevelop Villa San Giovanni, equipping it as a place of transit, imagining a large marina, and replicating the same program in Messina, to improve the efficiency of the two gateways.
Before thinking about new projects, we should survey what already exists: abandoned places and unfinished construction sites.
Let’s create a table of people who live in the communities; we do not need prefabricated solutions imposed from above.
Let’s involve a network of local businesses, breaking away from a system governed by patronage politics that has damaged Italy as a whole and especially the South.

THE INFRASTRUCTURAL GAP GENERATES A CULTURAL GAP. THE DESIGN NARRATIVE STOPS, THE PERSPECTIVE CLOSES. CONNECTION – BETWEEN CLABRIA AND SICILY, BETWEEN THE IONIAN COAST AND THE TYRRHENIAN COAST – IS THE ONLY WAY TO GO BEYOND THE LIMIT with Francesco Messina

Francesco Messina, architect and contract lecturer at the University of Ferrara, addresses the concept of “limit”: the limits of cultural policy, of environmental policy, and of an attitude of self-imitation that prevents major transformation in the extraordinary space between Sicily and Calabria.

Invisible Mediterranean(s) is a narrative that makes it possible to discover territories that would otherwise remain in the background. Above all, it is a form of ‘proof of existence’., because without knowledge, storytelling, and representation, places and landscapes would not exist beyond their physical boundaries. The Journeys Across the Strait have the merit of going beyond the limit of invisibility.
The limit is the most serious problem of our territories: the Strait of Messina has a geographical and political specificity, a point of tension between the island and mainland dimensions of Italy, a large water space where the distance between the two shores is ‘dialectically’ variable. The journey becomes a syncrasis between these cultures – Sicilian and Calabrian – which find in the Strait a unique form of synthesis and propulsive energy, something that concerns the entire Italian South.
Landscapes are revealed, places are identified, and their knowledge is amplified, extending it to the entire local community and to Italy, in a global expansion where, finally, the limit is broken down.
Invisibility is a limit linked to the difficulty of physical connections between places, a condition that feeds and perpetuates itself through the constraints imposed by a culture of conservation which, in a distorted cognitive process, overlaps with certain environmental policies.
Thus, a geographical limit is transformed into a major political limit that discourages development projects and encourages the abandonment of territories sorrounded by increasingly high mental walls.
All levels of infrastructure are missing, starting from the physical one – and I am not referring only to exceptional engineering works such as bridges and viaducts, but also to basic roads.
In Sicily there is greater sensitivity; in Calabria, the two coasts – Ionian and Tyrrhenian – do not communicate with each other.
The revival of Calabria depends on these connection nodes between east and west, and between the interior, the mountains, and the coasts.
Architecture must intersect with infrastructure projects, acting on the territory to bring out its value and transform it into a driver for tourism flows.

Tourism is a key element for places with unique environmental characteristics. But architecture has the responsibility to look toward the everyday life of a territory …
A country’s strategy can coordinated through architecture, which brings together, within an overall vision, the regeneration of places without allowing certain functions to prevail at the expense of others, and without creating single “vocations”.
Calabria region, in particular, must restart from architecture because it is dense with contradictions; it has been scarred by illegal construction that has continued, unpunished, for years. Architecture recognizes beauty everywhere, even where the “ordinary” eye sees only ugliness, and design is the best tool for redemption.
Redemption and regeneration feed one another, creating places for social life, public and accessible spaces. And precisely the lack of places where people can gather, engage, and find orientation is another serious limitation for communities. On the part of central government, there is a total lack of attention to real needs, and even local politics struggles to understand the true priorities.

Do decision-making and operational processes seem slower in Southern Italy than elsewhere? Is there a different sense of time in Calabria and Sicily?
Contrary to this common perception, I distance myself from the cliché of the “slow time” of the South: time is the same in both the North and the South. The difference is that in the South, Time expands in order to settle, to be absorbed, and metabolized. In the unique space between Sicily and Calabria, there is no such thing as “disposable” time – a consumable kind of time that leaves no trace of reflection or growth. In the South, Time always leaves something behind.

VILLAGES AND LANDSCAPES SPEAK OF CALABRIA. BUT IT IS IMMATERIALITY AND SUSPENSION THAT CONSTITUTE ITS PERFECT NARRATIVE EPIPHANY with Michelangelo Pugliese

Unexpected are the reflections of Michelangelo Pugliese, architect and landscape designer, professor at the University of Naples Federico II: mutation as a stable element of the landscape, and the search for beauty everywhere – even in what is ‘ugly’

Is the South a territory?
Michelangelo Pugliese is not particularly fond of the world ‘territory’, arguing that it evokes a ‘1970s flavor’ and an overly technical, urban-planning dimension. He prefers to use the term ‘landscape’. Why?

Because, in his view, ‘territory’ tends to frame space as something primarily administered, measured, and governed through planning categories – roads, zoning, infrastructure, administrative boundaries. It carries a bureaucratic and functionalist imprint that became especially strong in post-1960s and 1970s planning culture. ‘Landscape’, instead, shifts the focus. It is not just a container of functions, but a lived and perceived space: a synthesis of natural forms, built environments, memory, perception, and everyday practices. It allows for ambiguity, change, and even contradiction – including abandonment, transformation, and informal uses – without reducing everything to a planning problem to be solved. In that sense, speaking of ‘landscape’ rather territory is also a way of resisting a purely technical or top-down gaze. It opens the possibility of reading the South not only as something to be organized, but as something already meaningful, already narrated, and constantly evolving – even in its fragilities.

The relationship between these three elements is in continuous evolution, and this immediately highlights how the expression ‘landscape restoration’ is, in itself, a contradiction in terms.
Mutation is the primary characteristic of landscape.
Calabria is a landscape that cannot be trivialized through opportunistic interpretations tied to villages, coastal areas, or mountains. Starting with villages, we are not dealing with idyllic situations, as the term itself often seems to suggest regardless of context.
In Calabria there is no widespread desire to ‘return to the villages’; this is more a media distortion or an exercise in balancing architecture and marketing narratives.
Often, villages are not only abandoned places, but also damaged by an unforgiving and often ugly form of construction – acts of architectural violence that have unfortunately sedimented over time.
The complexity of reinterpreting them also involves the theme of dwelling, which contemporary society has profoundly transformed.
As well taught in Spanish schools of architecture, the design theme is not singular but must be declared and adapted according to places and situations.
Thus, today, living in a village is different from living in a small town. The actions required must be appropriate and coherent with the historical dimension, the recent past, and future perspectives.
Certainly, the only thing that cannot be done is simply ‘returning’ as if going back to the village had, in itself, a healing or redemptive value.
If ways of living have changed, and this transformation must be supported through design actions, then with equal care we must avoid trivializing the process of updating, or turning interventions into mere salone exercises. A propositive example of a well-conceived project is Farm Cultural Park, near Agrigento, which has enhanced a degraded and abandoned place through cultural regeneration.

The example of Favara is remarkable, but its starting point already had some advantages: the Moorish-styly courtyards in Favara’s historic centre, and its proximity to Agrigento …

Villages to be restored do not all start from the same conditions of fascinating abandonment and decay wrapped in brambles that conceal extraordinary beauty.
However, the intensity of a suspended soul exist in all centres that were once inhabited: a hidden soul, sometimes deeply concealed by ‘uglyness’. I also believe it is an advantage to work on places where beauty is more hidden. In such cases, research can free itself from the constraints of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio, but above all from certain cultural approaches that do not allow for the new, or take into account the unpredictability of a design thinking shaped by landscape and communities.

Our project, Invisible Mediterranean(s), has the unique merit of revealing the beauty behind ugliness, without fearing to engage with visions closer to a scenario of desolation that to the enchanted forest of Sleeping Beauty.
All of this is the authentic contemporary South: a South that coexists with ugliness and, in turn, coexists with magnificent landscapes, tongues of sea and light. It is a reality that must be valued and cannot be ignored, because it is within it that communities live – memory of the past and energy for the future, the true strength of the South.
It is the immaterial dimension that filters the beauty of landscapes and villages, making everything clear and more legible, beyond the stereotype of the postcard image.
The architect’s work thus becomes more difficult, as it requires the reconstruction of the immaterial dimension of territories, often suffocated by labels and narratives that have distorted their soul.

In this balance between needs and desires, time plays an essential role.
The time of South is different, but it is not slower, as is often said. It is a non-linear time, made of compressions and dilations: at times it condenses rapidly, at others it settles. Actions combine according to this temporal balance, from which design action emerges.
More than ever today, architecture must step down from the pedestal, be courageous, take risks, and accept even the possibility of error.

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