Everything becomes a sign when you are lost

(Tutto diventa un segno quando si è persi)
 

The issue of the disappearance of collective memories and the importance of oral history in our social life has been one of the focal points of my work. For this performance, I was inspired by an old photo of my paternal grandparents photographed near a fountain, now disappeared, in my small home village in northern Italy. I began to wonder why the fountain had been removed, under what circumstances, what its history was and what social implications its removal had. But above all, I wondered what transporter of memory water was, then and now, in the small community where I grew up. In fact, water has always been considered, especially in popular culture and peasant oral traditions, a natural medium for the transmission of information between generations. This concept is or was based on the belief that water has the capacity to store information and memories, as if it was a natural recorder. The object of my research that I wanted to address with my artistic performance is exactly this real or presumed 'memory of water'.

In my idea, water becomes a symbol and metaphorical medium of memory and history, which, flowing from one place to another, preserves with it past experiences and traces not only of the generations that preceded us, but also of our own.