[HN Gopher] Gibellina, known as "Sicily's Marfa", is looking for...
___________________________________________________________________
Gibellina, known as "Sicily's Marfa", is looking for a revival
Author : BerislavLopac
Score : 56 points
Date : 2024-02-22 15:39 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| n4r9 wrote:
| This sounds like it was an interesting residential experiment. I
| find myself wondering at the use of "utopia". There's no mention
| of any radical changes to (self-)government, economics, social
| structures or cultural norms. Nor is any of that mentioned in the
| city's Wikipedia page [0]. It seems to be more about exploiting
| tourism to fund an artistic and architectural vision.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibellina
| chaostheory wrote:
| I feel that Disney was the most successful when it came to failed
| utopia projects. Epcot Center is still going strong to this day.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Though Epcot Center the park is nothing like EPCOT the
| experimental prototype for the city of tomorrow. Seaside, FL;
| Celebration, FL; Cotino near Palm Springs, CA, and other
| "Storyliving by Disney" projects present and future are all
| much closer to the EPCOT vision than the Epcot Center itself
| is, despite the name intended to evoke the imagination towards
| the original EPCOT plan and Walt's masterful but failed attempt
| at selling it on national television.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| Oh man, Cretto di Burri is amazing:
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7874044,12.9707702,444m/data...
|
| check some of the photospheres to see how it looks at ground
| level
|
| There's something magical to concrete mega monuments (the Balkans
| have quite a collection, btw), like massive ruins-that-are-not-
| quite-ruins.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Wow. I thought it was a glitch in the map at first because it's
| a grayscale square, but then I looked closer.
| Tronno wrote:
| I find it grotesque.
|
| It could have been a park, a farm, a forest. It could have been
| left as an interesting ruin for humans to explore and nature to
| reclaim. But in the name of some selfish artistic vision, this
| person built a vast concrete wasteland.
|
| Good art triggers strong emotions, I suppose. I feel horror and
| revulsion.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| I mean, you're entitled to your emotional response, but let's
| not pretend that's an impactful amount of concrete or land.
| Might as well be outraged about a supermarket.
|
| I find it irrelevant myself.
| Tronno wrote:
| There's lots I find objectionable about our built
| environment, but at least it has a purpose. Between
| butchering an animal for food, vs doing it for fun, this
| artwork is the latter.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| 200 people died there, 1000+ were injured, and 100k left
| homeless. This art is a monument and tombstone. This is
| perfectly respectful. I think most communities wouldn't build
| a supermarket or park over a recent human disaster site like
| this.
|
| Its really a memorial, not modern art:
|
| "I told him immediately, 'let's go see the old town'. It was
| almost 20 km away and I was just shocked. I almost felt like
| crying and then this idea came to me: here I could do
| something... This is what I would do: we compact the ruins --
| which are a problem for everyone -- we reinforce them well,
| and with concrete, we create an immense white crack as a
| permanent symbol of what happened here," Burri described on
| first seeing the ruins of Gibellina.
| Tronno wrote:
| A fair interpretation, but consider the work the artist is
| known for: https://www.maggioregam.com/artists/42-alberto-
| burri/biograp...
|
| Did he see the disaster as an opportunity to ply his trade
| at an even greater scale? _Sixteen years_ after the
| earthquake, he was asked not to build a memorial, but to
| help reconstruct the new city. He declined and created this
| piece instead. Your quote in context:
|
| > mayor Ludovico Corrao called upon numerous architects and
| artists to help with reconstruction efforts. [...] "We went
| to Gibellina [...] When we finally arrived to visit the
| place, _the new city was nearly complete and full of new
| pieces. 'I can't do anything here,'_ I told him
| immediately, 'let's go see the old town'. It was almost 20
| km away [...]
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Did he see the disaster as an opportunity to ply his
| trade at an even greater scale?
|
| So what? The artist had a style of art in which he was an
| expert and known for. I totally get and respect that his
| art is not your cup of tea, but I don't see any negatives
| in the fact that he did see the opportunity to build this
| as a opportunity to "ply his trade" as you put it. Would
| you rather have him build something in a style he's
| totally unfamiliar with and bad at?
| jjk166 wrote:
| I, for one, think it's sublime. Art is not a waste of land.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Totally agree. I never previously knew this existed and I
| think it's not only visually stunning, but an incredibly
| impactful instantiation of the tragedy it's meant to
| represent.
|
| Most importantly, given that globalization and technology
| have resulted in a "homogenization" of a lot of art and
| culture, this piece feels truly unique to me (I also
| thought it was just a glitch in Google Maps when I first
| saw it) in a way that's very rare these days.
| more_corn wrote:
| Horror and revulsion are proper things to feel about a
| monument to tragedy. Perhaps some additional feelings of
| solemnity and timelessness would come if you visited.
| nntwozz wrote:
| Il Grande Cretto di Gibellina
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oTaTK99em6U
|
| Well, not my cup of tea to say the least.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Looks like a concrete cap placed over a toxic waste dump, e.g.
| Runit Island has one:
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Runit_Do...
| mrtksn wrote:
| >There's something magical to concrete mega monuments
|
| Concrete, more specifically brutalism, these buildings tend to
| be very opinionated. In many of those constructions even tables
| are made from concrete as part of the building, they enforce a
| particular function.
|
| In one way its magical, it is shaping you because you have no
| choice but follow the architects vision and that vision is
| usually some idealised version of the future - an acquired
| taste. For example, Barbican Centre in London was supposed to
| be this utopia about living in the future. I'm big fan of it
| and because it was close to my office I was frequent visitor,
| however that vision clearly failed.
|
| It very divisive style, and the division is %90 hate it, %8
| feel unsure about it and the %2 love it but when you count the
| opinion(an opinion made of strong, large concrete pieces) of
| the building it easily surpasses the %50 love and the building
| stays.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| This remind me of Naoshima an island in Japan full of art
| projects that's absolutely worth a visit.
| diggan wrote:
| Also Freetown Christiania, located in the center of Copenhagen
| - https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/freetown-christiania -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania
|
| Very unique place, located in the center of a busy metropolitan
| city. Great feeling when you enter it, going from noisy cars,
| people and city life to something like a tranquil garden filled
| with art.
| euroderf wrote:
| There's a similar area in Vilnius called Uzupis. Any HN'ers
| visited there and can comment ?
|
| Oh and fwiw per wikipedia since 1997 it's an independent
| republic, the Republic of Uzupis.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| Feels similar to Columbus, Indiana in that it is a place that has
| tons of amazing expressions of space but little practicality for
| people to inhabit them.
|
| It's the grand utopian disappointment to realize beauty isn't
| enough.
|
| Brunello Cucinelli is doing the same thing in Solomeo Umbria, but
| this time trying to use classical architecture and fund it all
| privately with his billion dollar fashion label. I visited and
| it's impressive, but still quiet.
| NikkiA wrote:
| > They eventually settled on the "garden city," a design
| popularized in the 1960s by English urban planner Ebenezer
| Howard.
|
| That's your problem right there! The 'garden city' concept had
| already failed by the 1960s (both of the true garden cities were
| built by Howard in 1903 (Letchworth) and 1920 (Welwyn GC) - he
| died in 1928, so he wasn't popular in the 1960s).
|
| What they were probably getting confused over, was the new town
| concept of the post-WW2 era, when towns such as Slough and Milton
| Keynes, which, as brutalist horrors, were already roundly panned
| by everyone except fashionista architects at the time they were
| built, and predictably sank into deprivation and decay by the
| 1980s.
|
| Neither Garden Cities nor New Towns took into account any of the
| organic usage patterns that developed in organic towns, and thus
| ended up producing cultural wastelands for different reasons -
| Garden Cities because howard was a Quaker and had unpopular
| religious motivations resulting in stepford style living. And new
| towns because brutalism is depressing as fuck unless you're a
| fashionista, and encourages antisocial behaviour in normal
| people.
| NikkiA wrote:
| For reference on how desolate the place is, Letchworth is the
| only place I've been casually offered heroin while minding my
| own business walking through the city centre during broad
| daylight.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| I've been offered heroin on the street in daylight in Dublin
| (Ireland), which is hardly desolate
| jrflowers wrote:
| Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago,
| Dallas, Houston, Denver, Miami, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and
| Portland are similarly desolate in this way
| NikkiA wrote:
| Bit of a difference between those cities, and letchworth,
| which had a population of about 10,000 at the time.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The idea that MK is deprived, decaying, and hated is certainly
| not universally held, least of all by the people who live there
| and say they are happy. You can quibble about its
| nontraditional layout but for the work-from-home era it seems
| almost prescient. If I had to nuke one of MK or Poundbury it
| would be the latter.
| switch007 wrote:
| I thought MK has severe infrastructure issues that the
| council has no money to fix, and everyone is just ignoring
| it? I could be totally wrong though
| snakeyjake wrote:
| 1960s urban planners.
|
| Never before in history had there been a profession as infested
| with snake-oil peddling, arrogant, hucksters.
|
| 70 years later numerous cities all around the world are still
| dealing with the echoes of their concrete monstrosities, err,
| monstrocities.
|
| A famous and skilled surgeon suffering from the most deeply
| entrenched and severe god complex known to medicine would take
| one look at the lot of them and say "god damn you got me beat".
| collyw wrote:
| You should look into the World Economic Forum
| snakeyjake wrote:
| I don't believe that the covid vaccine is a mass
| sterilization conspiracy, so I don't really have a problem
| with the WEF.
| bobsmith432 wrote:
| No matter what you think about the vaccine, the WEF is
| something straight out of Deus Ex.
| pavlov wrote:
| They're not all failures around the world though.
|
| The one 1960s garden city / new town project that I'm most
| familiar with is Tapiola, part of Finland's capital Helsinki
| area:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapiola
|
| It was praised by the 1960s urban planners and architects, yet
| remains attractive today with high property values and a
| popular mix of suburban-style living combined with easy access
| to urban services. (Though it surely helps that Helsinki built
| an expensive metro line straight through Tapiola, and that some
| of Finland's leading universities were relocated into the area
| from central Helsinki within the past 10-15 years.)
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| This style of architecture deserves a more descriptive term than
| simply "postermodern". I think this style should be called
| "malevolent".
|
| Because you have to actually be malevolent to entertain even the
| slightest notion that any of these designs could ever possibly be
| a good idea. They're insults. No, worse than insults - they are
| _violence_. These grotesques do violence to the landscape. They
| assault the eyes. They rape beauty.
|
| >What can you do with a failed postmodern utopia?
|
| Destroy the abominations and reuse the stone to build prisons for
| everyone who had a hand in designing and green-lighting these
| experiments.
| toyg wrote:
| Yes, destroy that infidel idolatry! Burn down the buddhas!
| Death to false prophets!!1!1!
|
| /s
|
| Or, you know, find new ways to use these things. Brutalist
| architecture is _absolutely fantastic_ for street-art, for
| example, or to shoot sci-fi films.
|
| Beauty is everywhere, when one has eyes open to beauty.
| ganzuul wrote:
| So I asked SD to generate a modernist monument. It was abstract
| concrete shapes with a set of stairs leading to nowhere. Then I
| asked it to generate a postmodern monument and it was also
| abstract concrete shapes but some were painted red and the stairs
| were removed.
|
| I did feel it got it exactly right.
| bsimpson wrote:
| It's wild how easy it is to not know that something exists.
|
| One of my pandemic trips was touring Italy by Vespa, from the
| Alps to Sicily. I rode right past Gibellina without knowing it
| was worth a stop.
|
| That was actually one of the challenges of the trip. If you're
| touring California, there's often only one road to get where
| you're going. In my case, I just took PCH the whole way north.
|
| Italy has thousands of years of villages and paths between them.
| Their road grid is a spiderweb. Even figuring out what route to
| take on any particular day needed a lot of research and some
| random luck.
| epivosism wrote:
| I often wish I could tell Gemini or some other ai my general
| preferences & interests (unique parks, board games, bonsai,
| pickleball courts etc) and while I was driving, google maps
| would occasionally pop up a silent notice saying "did you know,
| just 1 mile ahead is an exit leading to a nearby world-famous
| bonsai exhibit that is open now)
|
| They could do this really really easily, and it would be EPIC
| and offer you the chance to discover things you basically NEVER
| would know about otherwise...
| toyg wrote:
| On one side, yes, great.
|
| On the other side: more notifications while driving? No,
| thanks - bad for safety, likely to be very annoying, and
| extremely likely to be coopted by adsense ("did you know?
| Just 1 mile ahead you'll find the newest McDonald's in the
| city...")
| pessimizer wrote:
| What's the point of a town without any industry, filled with
| inhumanly scaled sculptures? It's like a tomb, only dead people
| would want to live there. They seemed to think that it would be
| populated by the a segment of the independently wealthy that
| they're referring to as "artists," but those people don't want to
| live in the middle of nowhere without adequate luxury services
| and servants. And then the income of the town was meant to come
| from tourists wanting to stare at the "artist's" work. For free.
| There's no door charge, and there's no luxury infrastructure for
| the visitors to spend money on during their bicycle trips between
| massive concrete paperweights.
|
| Pretty sure the goal of this project was to funnel somebody's,
| probably the state's, funds into the contractors who covered an
| acre of ground in a thick concrete slab, and similar, admittedly
| stunning, feats. I wonder if the concrete in those sculptures is
| of the same quality as the concrete of Genoese bridges.
| toyg wrote:
| You're being cynical.
|
| We used to have ambitions and utopias, as societies; we used to
| think the future can be whatever we want it to be, that work
| would be done by machines, that we would live free in our
| flying cars, that nobody would go hungry, etc etc.
|
| Obviously, it didn't happen; partially because some of these
| ambitions were unrealistic, but partially because we simply
| stopped believing it was possible to live without an incessant
| capitalist-driven commercialization of every inch of our
| existence.
| op00to wrote:
| I hope I'm not the only person who read this as "Sicily's Mafia".
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-02-22 23:01 UTC)