416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (2022), Artist impression in situ, as officially announced by Universita’ di Pisa in March 2023 here
416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (12 July 2023) installation view
DEVELOPMENT
I conceived the artwork 416_SR1939 (concept, design and activation) as part of the wider Places of Memory, in response to an invite by Prof Paolo Mancarella and this has evolved with the support of Prof Riccardo Zucchi, Rector of Università di Pisa. It contributes to the Memory Pole, SR1938 building designed by Heliopolis 21 Associate Architects (whom Alessandro Melis, former Curator of Padiglione Italia, 17a mostra di Architettura, la Biennale di Venezia, is founder and Ilaria Fruzzetti is Associate) together with Diener & Diener Architeknen. SR1938 is included in the census for Italian architecture since 1945 to today, promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity – Italian Ministry of Culture.
The name “Memory Pole San Rossore 1938” was chosen by Prof Mancarella to recall the collective memory to the “Ceremony of the memory and apologies” celebrated in 2018 on the occasion of the 80th of the signature at San Rossore of the Racial Laws in Italy (1938).
Screenshot of first meeting on 20th December 2020 with Ilaria Fruzzetti (Heliopolis), Paolo Mancarella, Carla Caldani, Fabrizio Franceschini, Maurizio Gabrielli (President of Comunita’ Ebraica di Pisa), where the concept of the project was approved
I set out to develop the concept based on my long time interest in perception in the present in relation to memory (since 1994, and https://elenacologni.com/projects/rockfluid/) based on visual perception studies and gestalt, but earlier also through technology ( https://elenacologni.com/projects/memory/ ),
The proposal of the project The Places of Memory was positively received by the Jewish Community and the University at the end of 2020 and developed along several lines that converge in the final design of the memorial work entitled 416_SR1938 (2022) to be accompanied by: a temporary exhibition on the research carried out and the evolution of the idea I proposed; the activation of places in the city through walks or ‘walkshops‘; and a symposium which includes international contributions.
The project is based on the idea that a memorial should remember that past, and be a fulcrum of dialogue, which can indicate shared paths of activation of communicative memory (Jan Assman 2008)’.
ARCHIVE RESEARCH
The research conducted in the archives of the “Tullia Zevi” Bibliographic Center in Rome (Foundation for Jewish Cultural Heritage in Italy) included two strands: 1) activities of the Associazione Donne Ebree Italiane (ADEI); and 2) documents on the correspondence between the Italian Jewish community and the Mussolini government indicating that in 1938 in Pisa there were 416 members belonging to the Jewish community. Even if this number seems to be only partially verifiable, as Prof Franceschini claims – it is in fact possible that there have been omissions and that many Jews preferred not to be registered – it is true that the numbers of Jews present in Pisa since 1938 have quickly decreased. As we know, the effect of racial laws on the Jewish population in Pisa and throughout Italy has been dramatic.
Folder, “Tullia Zevi” Bibliographic Center in Rome (Foundation for Jewish Cultural Heritage in Italy), photograph by Elena Cologni
DESIGN
To respond to the research done, I conceived an artwork based on previous work and studies, that generates perceptive stimuli in the viewer (including Gestalt and more specifically Gaetano Kanizsa 1955), through the light conditions on the building, in order to implement a temporal suspension by triggering a process of stratification of memories in the present of the fruition of the work itself.
Considering 416 elements, I worked creating sketches and prototypes, to define an increasing spatial progression of the individual modules thus casting a variation of shadows brought onto the surface to which they are fixed in a grid. The static basis of the elements is itself perceived as a shadow and interferes with the real ones that move over time during the day.
This result was of course based on studio experimentation, from initial tests of light and shadows to defining the grid structure, its proportions and positioning.
416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (2022), from initial tests light/shadows (wood+brass)
416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (2022), work in progress
416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (2022), Axonometric sketches of ‘fregi’ (graphite + Indian ink on graph and tracing paper)
416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (2022), work in progress for grid prototype (graphite+Indian ink)
416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (2022), work in progress for grid prototype (graphite+Indian ink+ pins +brass)
416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (2022), defining the dimensions, from a Moleskine sketchbook ‘ The brass elements generate a real shadow, a non-static indication of decreasing depth in the grid, which interacts with the static dark square elements at the base of each module’
The brass plaques in the work aim to remember the 416 Jews in Pisa in 1938 whose fate is not known. If the garden inside the building was designed in parallel to bear the names of the professors of the University of Pisa expelled in that period due to the racial laws, this intervention on the external facade, aims to recall the community in the city and their places, where they lived, worked and raised their children. Theme that of the relationship of individuals with places, attachment to (and detachment from) place, central to my research.
Paolo Mancarella, Alessandro Melis, Carla Caldani, and I on 05 August 2022, when the final design was shared
In the resulting memorial the shadows move with the changing of the light during the day to become prominent at times, just like it happens in history. Maurizio Gabrielli (12/07/2023) said:
“the memorial is very much alive […] you have given life to these 416 people“.
416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (12 July 2023) installation detail
CITY INTERVENTIONS
According to the sociologist Paul Connerton (2009) the place-memory relationship can be institutionalized, as in the case of memorials, and through architecture, but it is often in seemingly anonymous places, experienced through the bodily actions of the individual and every day that the individual’s memory grid is built. Through the memories that these places evoke, the individual can tame the surrounding world, but also re-emerge as a figure from the background of history.
So, what effect did the racial laws had on the Jews in Pisa and on the city itself? Where can traces of their stories be found in its streets?
The ‘walkshops‘ (from September 2023) are an integral part this project and were conceived precisely to ask these questions, activating the research underlying the memorial and at the same time stimulating new inputs from the participants to trigger communicative memory processes. For this phase dialogical sculptures will be adopted . At the basis of this modality is the inspiration from the activity carried out by ‘The club of the needle’, organized by the Association of Italian Jewish Women starting from 1936, which in addition to promoting initiatives to help the needy, supported cultural exchanges. This program is being developed with the support of Prof Fabrizio Franceschini and Alessandra Veronese, Director of the Interdepartmental Center for Jewish Studies, of the Università di Pisa, of Dr Maurizio Gabrielli, President of Pisa Jewish Community, of the secretary Federico Prosperi, and Prof Lucia Frattarelli Fischer.
(research in Pisa, comunita’ ebraica archives, 2022, with also Federico Prosperi)
(walkhops research in Pisa, 2022, courtesy of Ilaria Fruzzetti, and with Guido Cava and I, 2022)
Lucia Frattarelli Fischer, Alessandra Peretti and Carla Forti indicated sources to evidence the women’s perspective and experience at the time
The project Places of Memory as a whole, thus addresses people, place, architecture, and its history, within which the I operate as an interface, to allow the history of the Jewish community in Pisa to arise. I do so with an approach I have defined as caring with. This is a strategy of dialogic art which starts from the assumption that the identity of the individual within the community depends on the construction of memories through shared experiences and which leads us to think of memory itself as a place.
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INSTALLATION
Thanks to Carla Caldani in the initial phase back in 2020, and also Prof Francesco Leccese, Alessio Giacco and David Lischi for the technical expertise in the fabrication phase.
David, Michele and I at the end of day 1 of installation (left) and of day 2 (just before discovering we had to redo a bit :-).
OPENING
On 12 October 2023 at 17 : official opening of 416_SR1938 at Università di Pisa, Polo della Memoria San Rossore.
On 12 October between 9:30 and 15: Conference ‘Architettura e arte in dialogo con la memoria’ (Architecture and Art in dialogue with History), at Gipsoteca di Arte Antica, Piazza San Paolo all’Orto 20, Pisa. After welcome notes by Prof Riccardo Zucchi (Rettore Universita’ di Pisa), Prof Alessandra Veronese (Direttore CISE), Maurizio Gabbrielli (Presidente comunita’ ebraica di Pisa), Prof Paolo Mancarella (Università di Pisa), and Joe McCullagh (Head of Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University), the conference will include contribution by: Roger Diener (Diener & Diener Architekten ), Ilaria Fruzzetti (HELIOPOLIS 21 ARCHITETTI ASSOCIATI) and Alessandro Melis (New York Institute of Technology/ SoAD – IDC Foundation – HELIOPOLIS 21 ARCHITETTI ASSOCIATI ), Gabi Scardi (Universita’ Cattolica, Milano) Dr Caterina Albano (Reader in Visual Culture and Science, Central Saint Martins, University of The Arts London), Chiara Pazzaglia (Scuola Normale Superiore, & Université Paris Nanterre), Dr Elizabeth Johnson (Cambridge School of Art, ARU) Prof Fabrizio Franceschini (CISE), and Prof Lucia Frattarelli.
conference and opening
PUBLICATIONS
Cologni E. (2021) Invisible pillars. The role of Jewish women in women’s emancipation history in Italy – ARRO – Anglia Ruskin Research Online;
Cologni (2021) Figura/Sfondo. Un dialogo | Foreground/Background. A dialogue.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Commissioned by the University of Pisa and curated by Alessandro Melis and Ilaria Fruzzetti – partners of the HELIOPOLIS 21 ARCHITETTI ASSOCIATI – and Gabi Scardi, my intervention was developed in collaboration with the Jewish community of Pisa (president Dr Maurizio Gabrielli, and Federico Prosperi), Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi Ebraici “Michele Luzzati” (CISE) Universita’ di Pisa (Prof Fabrizio Franceschini and Prof Alessandra Veronese), Centro, Bibliografico “Tullia Zevi”, Roma, Fondazione per i Beni Culturali Ebraici in Italia, and many members of the local and international community.
The project’s design and conceptualisation phase was funded by the DYCP program Arts Council England (GB), and further support for impact comes from the Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University, through the Quality Research and Innovation Fund Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (ARU). One of the notebooks is held in the Moleskin Foundation Art Collection.
