Page 225 - Únete. Join us (Bienal de Venecia, 57 edición)

JUMPING OVER WALLS A CONVERSATION BETWEEN FRANCESCO CARERI AND JORDI COLOMER 225
this subject of trespassing would be valuable. And in this respect, we should also talk about your video Medina Parkour (2014), where you walk on the rooftops of the city of Tétouan in Morocco ...
JC: When I arrived in Tétouan, it seemed clear to me that there were two parallel worlds: a world at the street level, where intimacy and domestic privacy have their own rules, and another one on top, on the roofs, with different laws. On top of the city children and cats play at jumping over the walls that below so zealously separate one house from the other. Up there, people gather to talk, smoke, and eat, you can exchange glances, observe, and send greetings to people who are relatively far away, sharing that same moment. This is a semi-invisible activity, but everyone knows that the roofs are very lively. I did a workshop in the School of Architecture where each student showed us the neighbourhood where she or he lived, stringing together very lively walks through the city – talking and walking are two fantastic activities and very cheap. We ended up meeting on the roofs and there were always very interesting discussions. After three months of living there I was still a foreigner, but I already knew my neighbours, so I felt the courage to jump a first wall from my roof, to see how far I could go, emulating the children and adolescents who practice a kind of “parkour”, as in some European cities, but in freer, a less gymnastic style. The fact is that while I was jumping I saw my neighbour on the highest roof of our house, which proved that he was a regular visitor. He came to get me and showed me his technique and his favourite routes, so the video shows how I try to emulate him, jumping over walls from house to house ...
FC: When I saw your video, I immediately thought of our experience with Stalker in Tunisia, where we walked on the rooftops of the souk and saw people in the market through the holes in the vaults. Suddenly, we could not continue anymore, until a lady came out of her house and brought us a ladder. This is not a utopia: there are cities that are completely accessible via their roofs. In warm weather, the roofs serve for sleeping, to get some fresh air at night. There are also kitchens, gardens ... And in cities where this is not possible, bridges should be built. Bridges between one roof and another. In many Neorealist films filmed in Rome there are often scenes that take place on the roofs, between the clothes hanging on lines, among the water towers. They were places where different families from the building met, where social ties were forged, where schools of thieves were organised. Nowadays, if you see Rome from above it is difficult to see someone on the roofs: they are completely uninhabited.
JC: Your famous outing through Rome with the Stalkers (“il giro di Roma”) from 1995 always made me think of the wonderful film by Pasolini, Uccellacci e Uccellini, with Totò and Ninetto Davoli touring the periphery of Rome.
FC: Pasolini is a fundamental reference and it is no coincidence that a month after our first wandering we decided to pay homage to him in our first performance, “a blue asphalt street”, which began with one of his untitled poems. Many of the photographs of our first “giro a Roma” remind one of the small group of boys who spend their time in Mamma Roma, traversing fallow fields and large blocks of housing estates. The most beautiful thing about Rome is that Pasolini’s image still exists and will always exist, even in the future Roman suburbs. Uccellacci e Uccellini is perhaps more clear