22 Nov

Sony RX1, 35mm f2 Carl Zeiss
ISO8000, f/2.5, 1/80, raw

Ninth day of “Night Walking”.
Testaccio, Rome, Faculty of Architecture.

Testaccio is surely one of the most complex neighbourhoods around. With its mix of housing projects, squats, clubs, nice restaurants, expensive mansions, plus the co-presence of the Faculty of Architecture and the Museum of Contemporary Art (created inside what was one of the biggest slaughterhouses in central Italy), it’s all but easy to give a clear definition of the area. It is not even an “emerging” area, since it basically settled to this weird mix fifteen years ago and so it stayed.
Testaccio gives me an enhanced sense of detachment. Especially the area of the old slaughterhouse which, for as beautiful as it may be from the industrial archeology point of view, still reminds of a huge concentration camp for cows and veals and pigs and piglets and goats and lambs, and most probably horses too. They can put all the knowledge and the art they want and can here, but I’ll still be more amused by the things I don’t see anymore, the noises I can’t hear anymore, the smells I can’t sense anymore. This is a place full of what’s not around way more than what happens to be.

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