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#93 Residency in Italy

Beneath the surface

A city founded by the Greeks, become a cultural center under Romans, fought to become a Kingdome of Naples to finally unify into Italy and today become the third biggest city in Italy – Napoli. Layer upon layer of history, partially forgotten, but built into the city’s everyday life. Its streets echoing with history layered beneath its surface. The labyrinth of underground tunnels, aqueducts with WWII shelters for 10 000 people, underground road and a shopping center that was never finished, from amphitheater built into the apartment complexes to garbage disposal shafts, contemporary funiculars and metro lines create subterranean veins of a live city. Connecting past and present, Napoli’s residents and tourists walk those paths everyday, living in the houses made of the same stones mined for centuries and slowly digging new tunnels for easier transportation needs, discovering centuries of history and survival of Napoletani. The layers of the city testify to the survival needs of its people, the mechanisms of durability and persistence, and the layers of artefacts build upon. 

By exploring the depths of the city, we explore the depths of human experience. The all-embracing continuance of life. That life weaved of emotions. The emotions that push us forward and give meaning to the layers of history. The emotions that drive us to survive, to build and to create art. The art that is present on each subway station in Napoli and that is excavated in subterranean city. Emotions that are present in Pompei frescas, Caravaggio’s paintings and the graffities of stranded citizens who lived in the cavern shelters after the war when the city was in ruins. The same emotions that drive us today to live, to love to create. And we create on top of everything that has already been made. 

The layers of the city become the layers of the people that build it. For a fraction of a fraction of its history our work become a part of it.

By Tena Bosnjakovic

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