NEWS & EVENTS > “CERIMONIA”: URBAN UP | UNIPOL ALONG WITH ART FOR THE REVIVAL OF THE SUBURBS

“CERIMONIA”: URBAN UP | UNIPOL ALONG WITH ART FOR THE REVIVAL OF THE SUBURBS

The first installation created by TRAC - Tresoldi Academy in Bologna in the disused area of ex Mercatone Uno, the propriety of Unipol Group

It was held today as a video call the press conference for the presentation of Cerimonia, the site-specific installation promoted by UrbanUp | Unipol, created in Bologna by TRAC - Tresoldi Academy, with the scientific collaboration of G124 – the group wanted by Senatore Renzo Piano to research constantly on the suburbs theme. The conference, moderated by Ebi Grassi, Head of Promotion for real estate initiatives for the Unipol Group, saw the interventions of Giuseppe Lobalsamo Head of the real estate Direction of the Unipol Group connected from Mediateca di CUBO – Company Museum of the Unipol Group, Alessandro Cecchini, CEO of YAC and co-curator of the Tresoldi Academy, Matteo Agnoletto, G124-University of Bologna and Edoardo Tresoldi, artist and artistic director of TRAC - Tresoldi Academy.

During the conference was presented Cerimonia, the opera thought to ‘mend’ the suburbs area of the ex Mercatone Uno – propriety of the Unipol Group – and making it a theatre for beauty, art, and creative experimentation.
TRAC mission is to create new centers and leave a mark on the territory: it is a school born from the collaboration between YAC – an architectural academy that prepares young designers letting them work along with some of the biggest architectural studios in the world – and STUDIO STUDIO STUDIO, the interdisciplinary project founded by Edoardo Tresoldi to create and support contemporary artistic projects.

The opera, a 5.30 meters structure realized with mesh wire, various materials, and dirt from the ground, is the final result of a combined work between the artist Edoardo Tresoldi and 15 young students of the academy – selected in July 2020 among 500 applications received from all over the world - that under the artistic direction of Tresoldi imagined and built for the area of the ex Mercatone Uno a site-specific intervention. It is a project that enhances the metropolitan suburban areas, giving them back to a larger audience and re-evaluating their perception. After almost 10 years of abandonment, the area of 4600 square meters circa, situated in Bologna in the batch between viale Aldo Moro, via Cesare Gnudi and via Stalingrado, will be the object – in 2021 – of a huge project of requalification. 18 months of work that foresee the demolition of the actual buildings and the realization of a new multifunctional complex focused on new residences and personal services.

“It has always been - said Giuseppe Lobalsamo – one f the aim of the Group to requalify and enhance the suburbs, strategic assets of absolute importance, where the social and economic future of our cities is played.
We joined this program by providing a disused place that was not intended for abandonment but for a huge transformation. The opera Cerimonia testifies and confirms that the transformation has started”.

Cerimonia will be kept for the whole year of 2021 until the start of the works and it will be visible every day from 8.30 am to midnight through a plexiglass wall realized purposely. Every Saturday from 10.30 am to 6.30 pm access will be granted to the area, following a path to the opera itself, always in respect of the norms anti Covid19.

"We wanted to think on how contemporary art can dialogue with a complex environment – explains Alessandro Cecchini, CEO of YAC and co-curator of the school – and via Stalingrado is a peculiar and fascinating set because all these years of abandonment and therefore the fading of the architectures, as well as the growth of natural elements, defined a suggestive background for the poetic expresses by TRAC".

Cerimonia was conceived as a site-specific work-of-art in an area characterized by signs of decomposition in which piles of rubble and spontaneous vegetation arise as linguistic elements of the aesthetic chaos that lives in the place. “Cerimonia gives life to a presence which is able to express itself through its cyclical nature, inserting itself into the process that the space already experiences. The intervention, accompanying the state of abandonment of the area for about a year, will therefore trigger a crasis between this process and the celebratory one of architecture - Edoardo Tresoldi pointed out.

Cerimonia is thought to dialogue with the biological phenomenons of the area. The ground of the site has been used for the opera; with the passing of time vegetations will cover the installation and will redefine its form. The transformation process of the natural phenomenon is the center of the opera as a ceremony of dialogue between architecture, nature, and the passing of time. The language of classic architecture merges with materials and languages of the original space, as well as with the transformation process of abandonment, creating a brand-new story. This process of never-ending metamorphosis will be documented by the installation of cameras.

“Nature has to take control of the city – underlined Stefano Mancuso, botanist and Italian writer, director of the international laboratory of vegetal neurobiology and extraordinary consultant of TRAC – I find Cerimonia to be extremely fascinating and a manifestation of how architecture can be thought. It is like imagining an ideal city of 2050 that is not anymore, the Renaissance-era one, but a city of human thought, where nature is free to roam move everywhere. The real revolution is to modify the idea of cities: if we cover our cities with green and plants, suddenly we will solve the problem of global pollution”.

USEFUL INFORMATION
Cerimonia via Stalingrado n 31 Bologna (ex Mercatone Uno area).
Open every Saturday from October 31st from 10.30 am to 6.30 pm. (Free entry but limited following the norms about Covid19 containment. Access granted for those who wear a mask only).
The opera can be admired from the outside through a plexiglass wall every day starting from October 31st from 8.30 am to midnight.

Bologna
October 28, 2020