The roof is burned, now I can see the moon

These photographs I took at the Ragusa Photofestival during the workshop: Territory, stage of relationships managed by Massimo Siragusa.
2023

A haiku by Mizuta Masahide guides me through Ragusa. It takes me on a journey in which I go through various state transitions: from high, I go down, underground; from hot, I go to cold; from dry to wet, from blinding light to darkness. And finally, I come back up, when it is dusk, among narrow streets and silent buildings.

Based on cause-effect relationships, the mechanistic view, the engineered and technological approach to problem solving are failing in the face of macro factors such as finite resources and waste disposal.

To escape extreme events caused by our own wicked choices, we will return, and we are already returning, to the caves from which we emerged at the dawn of our time with the intent to decipher and dominate the world. But those rooms will no longer be as cozy as the cradles we left – in the meantime, vices and necessities have refined. They will likewise be grim and bare, littered with refuse and propped up by braces and buttresses, pillars of Hercules upon which weighs the weight of the structures above that we built. And the staff increases, year after year, asking for more columns, and more effort from each of them.

As a kind of counterbalance, while we humans descend, there are those who climb, climb, explore the interstices, smash them. It reclaims spaces left empty, grows, and thrives. What is born in the shadows aspires to the light, it is a story we know, it is the order of things. And it undermines those who dominated until recently. Nothing is perfect or finished, and nothing lasts, including us.