On Wednesday, June 12, 2013, at 8 p.m., we open the exhibition of contemporary Italian authors Laura Fiorio and Francesca Cirilli.
With photos from their latest series, they present us with their own vision of the problems of the city, (too) rapid development, and the more or less successful adaptation of the inhabitants.
In the urban jungle
Almost half of the Mediterranean coast is built up. Benidorm on the Costa Blanca is an emblematic case where speculation has started a process that homogenises the identity of spaces, creating standards brought from outside rather than enhancing local characteristics.
After the 1960s, Benidorm turned into a strange collection of skyscrapers, placed directly on the beach, where tourists and foreign investors make up the majority of the population, who use English as their mother tongue, despite being in the middle of Spain. The few remaining locals call the place Beniyork , partly out of mockery, and partly as an indictment of building too fast.
The project is connected to other works that have been created since 2009.
Like a demolished apartment block
In the middle of Berlin, where the wall once stood, I found projects based on an alternative way of life. They are connected to the city and nature, experiment with political and social aspects and question the problems of settlement.
A community like a "demolished apartment block", as one of the project participants said: demolished and transformed. A kind of island in the middle of generic buildings. When the Berlin Wall fell, there was a space in the middle of the city that was empty, dead, like a wound in the ground. Many empty houses and areas along the line of the former wall have been occupied by new residents. Since then, people have come to some parts of the city with trailers, and have settled in their mobile homes pretty much permanently. Often, users have changed the spaces to make them more beautiful and pleasant for them, and rearranged them to best serve their needs.
You can read more about the exhibition at this website.
