This 360° docu-essay reflects on this event, which raises
questions about the role of conservation and the portrayal of
colonial heritage.
Building upon Benedict Anderson’s beliefs that a Nation
is “imagined, and, once imagined, modelled, adapted and
transformed,” this video piece stresses the importance
of framing the prominent role of colonial narrative as an
abiding component of Italy’s national identity. Nevertheless,
it approaches the architectural presence as the embodiment
of coexisting and often contradicting narratives, explored in
conversation with different characters.
Hinging around the ever-present testimony given by modernist
architecture, this work aims to invite the viewer, as Carter Walsh
asserts: “to open and engage venues and paths of decolonial
conviviality, venues and paths that take us beyond, while at the
same time undoing, the singularity and linearity of the West.”
Considering colonial narrative as an endemic aspect of the
Italian national identity, what happens when they start losing
ground? Do they collapse, or will they merge into a new ones?
Consequently, who needs to be decolonized: the colonized or
the colonizer’s mind?