Porosity is the inexhaustible law of life in this city.
Walter Benjamin & Asja Lacis: Thought-image Naples, 1925
Porosity results not only from the indolence of the southern artisan,
above all, from the passion for improvisation,
which demands that space and opportunity be preserved at any price.
Via Miracoli is situated in the Sanità – a densely populated quarter in the heart of Naples in South Italy. Via Miracoli is a typical Neapolitan stone cobbled narrow street, lined with tall old buildings where traditionally at the bottom the ‘Basso’ is situated.
The plaster of these house walls are falling down or seem temporarily fixed or not yet finished – this is not always clearly to distinguish. Layers of announcements, countless nails and and staples, religious shrines and washing lines are stuck to those walls, above all messages of all kinds creating intriguing man-made patterns.
This project is a depiction of Via Miracoli that encompasses the many elements and facets of this micro cosmos, where the ordinary becomes extra ordinary. People are not the centre of this project; it is rather their interaction with the surroundings. It is the almost symbiotic relationship between the urban environment and the people that forms the focus of this work.
I am inviting the viewer on a journey to follow the street as if looking through a magnifying glass; sometimes entering peoples private spaces, or to discover the intriguing detail of the normally un-noticed, banal and the everyday object embedded in this ancient city.
The secrets of the city are at a certain level decipherable.
Guy Debord
But the personal meaning they have for us is incommunicable.
The physical object is a 14 meters long hand-made concertina style book.
