CITY 'ART IN EUROPE AND THE FUTURE OF URBAN LIFE
NAPLES: THE MEMORY OF DWELLING (Raffaele Bruno) The
city, every town is a construction of time: it is time for you space, which becomes the houses, streets, squares, horizons, size, depth, views. The immense Mediterranean capital, more classically ancient than Rome itself, and with English Empire and Eastern Europe. The beautiful view of the whole of Roberto Longhi, Caravaggio Naples on inspiration, lights nell'introcata, stratified and uninterrupted plot of the story, the poetry of the time, exist side by side and epochal cultural differences in a kind of dissonant harmony, a figure in-depth picture of human Napoli.Passaggi, customs, habits, not by chance that such terms as "habit", " dress, "have the same root as the word" live ". The live shows by default the abode of men, their "star house" in a place that is physical and symbolic, natural and cultural, historical and mythical.
Unlike all other large cities, Naples has no time to exercise the "proper" place. Its differences are its glory, both witnesses, both survivors, insuperably together. In the capital of the South seems implement a continuous compromise between present and past, an endless negotiation between memory and oblivion. How he loved to recall Bartolommeo Capasso, Naples has never been destroyed and, therefore, was never rebuilt, but has grown continuously on itself gradually altering the lines of the original urban body that has remained essentially unchanged. Emerged, imposing a stratification, a contamination, a juxtaposition of time and leave traces that each of them: a weave from which the past does not let neutralize and, above all, do not assign leave no space limit, do not you leave shut in the glass case of memory, does not let museificare. The life of the city seems caught in a swirling vortex of time where the past seems to be always present and, on the other hand, this often seems to have the appearance of the past.
The presence of the past, this sedimentation of memories, both tangible and intangible, does not mean, however, that Naples is a city firm, immobile, a company "cool" according to the image of Levi - Stratuss. On the contrary, it is the story recombination constant-
mind the factors considered in the very heart of the transformations, such as overlay, an extraordinary ancient permanence, even arc: both tightly woven into modernity, with present and not simply survivors. This simultaneity helps to make Naples a place of monumental "widespread", and family, where the memory, a sign of a deep, non-academic familiar with the old. A city rests on its myths, its symbolic foundations - which is Onon's knowledge - just as it alights on its foundations materials on "emergencies" only after the time that the collective memory becomes monuments, giving them a meaning "further". This meaning is precisely the lesson of time, to tell us what the tempoha through certain places and certain symbols not by chance that a synonym for an ancient monument was "monimento" both derived from Latin.
Naples is the only city of Europe which has preserved in everyday life, that are similar to those of ancient cities. It 'a voice, this, that passes from mouth to mouth among the players in the grand tour: Goethe and Nietzsche, Rilke by Benjamin. Most of them feel the value, the importance of the diversity of Naples awakens in the viewer, always consistent in appearing in another part, elusive than the impressive amount of images and stereotypes that claim to represent them, to affirm full complexity. Those visitors intigrata capture the Neapolitan singularity, arising from the fact that what is missing elsewhere, here is guarded and preserved alongside the new. Thus was born the myth of Naples "Porous" archaic "Meridian", an image sometimes affected and mannered - the reverse of that seen in the city, the antidote to the Mediterranean Nordic disembodied reason - but not, however, of a truth. Further test this, the virtuality of the symbolic city of the South, where everyone can find their own truth seeking.
Today, this wealth, common sense, and his aesthetic so common, they see mostly aspects deteriorate, epidermal ones, ie the disorder, dirt: everything that makes it superficially similar to the large urban areas. It is no coincidence that Naples is often seen and portrayed as a degraded body: in fact the degradation in question, or rather, the Convention is the degradation, are partly the effect of continuous stratification of memory and its objects. Escapes so that old unit locations, times, behaviors, fragmented but that time has not stopped.
This case is not only museum conservation of the past, but it is the constant remembrance and heed the continued sound of the time, and in turn translate into memories, places, objects, habits and culture of a city, his way to be, that is the place to live. Naples, which also owns the largest center of Europe, however, is not reduced to an open-air museum: it is also a extraordinary time in laboratory work continues to look with eidetic attention. In this ancient crossroads of the Mediterranean in the past is not totally "forgotten" by the monument, is a living testimony, does not change and quiet allegory or archaeological reserve granted exile of the gods.
Raffaele Bruno