campo volo 26 marzo 2011 (Saverio Tonoli Adamo: Selbstbildnis)

Many, many years ago, on a fine, clear day, the floating city appeared in the air in full public gaze, hanging like a hot air balloon. Above the city several layers of clouds rolled, and at the foot of it heaving sea waves roared. There it was, the floating city; suspended in mid air neither rising up, nor dropping down. When a light breeze came along, it would slightly sway for a brief moment and then become completely motionless. How did this happen? Only the grandparents of our grandparents witnessed this incredible event. It was a marvellous and yet terrifying experience. When they remembered it would distress and overwhelm them just as it did way back when it happened. Above their heads there were layers and layers of colliding clouds, a sky full of lightning and roaring thunders everywhere. In the sea sailed a great number of pirate ships, waving skull and crossbones flags and relentlessly firing cannon shots. Suddenly the floating city came down from the layers of clouds and remained suspended in midair. Many years passed by, and after a while, our great-grandparents passed away along with our grandparents, one after the other they slipped into eternal rest while the stories they had transmitted slowly became obscure legends. Their descendants then decided to live in the floating city, slowly adapting to its conditions. Legends about the city slowly faded away until most of the citizens convinced themselves that the city would have remained that way forever; afloat in mid air neither rising up, nor dropping down and when the wind blew, the city would slowly dangled like a swing. Years and years went by just like this.

(From “Marvels of a Floating City”, by Xi Xi, 1998. Translation by Anna Martinelli)

Saverio Tonoli Adamo (Lucca, Italy, 1984) enquires the alienage of presence along with the reconstruction of new ways of research as tèchne of the imaginary. By forcing the visual language, the distortion of the pre-existing, meant as a developing root, becomes the vacuuming goal for the creation of spatial thoughts finally creating a potential line for an out of the ordinary projection. Creation becomes research. The origin of a shared unreal urban landscape is represented through the conversion of something ordinary into a geometrical reality of impossible beauty. (Progetto Diogene)