GENTRIFICATION OR SUPERMARKETIFICATION?

GENTRIFICATION OR SUPERMARKETIFICATION?

Mar 1, 2025 | WHO CARES

Gentrification we know by now, is the term coined to define urban redevelopment that involves a change in the original social fabric.

The small country gentry, in today’s times we could extend the concept to those who fit the description of middle class? Rich? Fortunate?

In short, ‘gentrified’ urban areas are neighbourhoods converted into areas accessible only to those with the purchasing power to sustain a very high standard of living.

Do you find this a positive or negative phenomenon?

The broken windows theory comes to mind.

We had already chatted about Philip Zimbardo on the Lucifer effect. 

Another experiment, again at Stanford University 1969: originally on two absolutely identical cars, one abandoned in Palo Alto, which remained in place intact, unlike the one abandoned in Bronx.

The breaking of the stall coincides with the breaking of a window of the car in Palo Alto, a prelude to looting in line with the car in Bronx.

As if to say that something that already appears damaged presupposes that it is not taken into account.

An idea later taken up by Rudolph Giuliani for New York City, starting with the underground.

Can we define New York as the epitome of gentrification?

Is your city gentrified?

Vigevano is not, in fact I would need a word for the exact opposite.

Degradation?

In fact, a part of the historic centre instead of being gentrified gradually becomes ‘disqualified’.

Several times I have told you about our province, Max Pezzali in the days of the lire had described it in four words: two discotheques, one hundred and six pharmacies. 

The one hundred and six pharmacies are still there, the discotheques are not.

And there is no alternative.

Nothing at all for the youngsters, who find themselves left to their own devices, but in constant company of the risk of being attacked and robbed by packs of peers well known to the police.

On the other hand, we have a number of supermarkets that is trending towards infinity as it keeps growing.

By now we are at the level of card collecting, even the ‘double’ ones have become so many.

The certainty is that one will come out of each supermarket with some kind of dissatisfaction, as well as enormous nostalgia for that now extinct trade.

I invent the definition: supermarketification.

No doubt we have to eat, but by now the need for nourishment of another kind has also become pressing: cultural nourishment, social nourishment, and the hunger to feel free.

Gentrification or supermarketfication?

Couldn’t we simply progress?

GIFTS, HOW?

GIFTS, HOW?

Dec 28, 2024 | WHO CARES

Gifts, how?

To tell the truth, for me the beauty of presents is the search, the moment when you think of the most suitable thing for the person who will receive it, the instant when you look at the eyes, hoping it will be a surprise, hoping to see joy.

But I also have been so lucky to receive gifts of the kind that

The excellence of a gift lies in its appropiateness rather than in its value.
Charles Dudley Warner 

So here it is:

the illuminated sign

Regali come?

which my husband has already strategically placed in my reading corner.

The bookmark with the cup 

Regali, come?Regali, come?Regali, come?

ready to be with me in reading my next book. 

Il Caffè della Terra coffee produced in Vigevano. 

Regali, come?Regali, come?

How about it?

Would you like to tell me about a gift of yours?

A gift received or given, a guessed gift or an embarrassing gift, a useful or desired gift, a bizarre gift or the gift you will never forget.

I generally always take a long time for presents, some people choose a shop and then find everything quickly.

Do you have a strategy or do you rely on chance?

Do you plan months in advance or do you dedicate yourself to presents in December?

Do you ever follow a common thread?

Do you prefer to request gift wrapping from the retailer or do you take care of it yourself?

Lately, many shopkeepers use the logo shopper bag, which is no longer included in the price.

Do you think the anti-waste concept or the surprise is more important?

What if you receive a gift that for some reason you will definitely not use?

Coffee’s ready, sit down and we’ll talk!

THE HANDS TELL

THE HANDS TELL

Jun 1, 2024 | ART, ART

Le mani raccontano – The hands tell is an exhibition organised by the Arte in Vigevano association at the second stable of the Castello Sforzesco in Vigevano. 

As you can see from the cover of the exhibition catalogue, the hands of the artists are portrayed, hands that are an expression of the feminine as art.

The preface is by Edoardo Maffeo. 

The hands tell the story of art expressed in different ways, but still manage to communicate a common element: passion.

The hands that tell of women’s creativity.

The hands that tell are those of ten women from the Pavia area:


Samantha Bonanno

Antonietta Bussi

Luciana Casatti

Loretta Dell’Acqua

Laura Dell’Erba

Diana Dent

Carla Gioetto

Rosy Mantovani

Chiara Sidoti

and Rita Viarenghi, artist and organiser of the event.

I have been following Samantha Bonanno for some time and once again I was enchanted.

Her hands are magical, capable of creating ethereal suggestions with paper together with concrete emotions.

She says about herself: ‘for me everything in life is Art.’

This is her Nubivago: a learned voice retrieved from the Latin nubivagus, composed from nūbes “cloud” + vagus “wandering” that wanders, flies among the clouds, with the head in the clouds.

And I am in love with it.

IPSEITA’ instead represents all the reflections made on asserting oneself, as a unique and distinguishable individual.

Becoming oneself is a lifelong journey, and perhaps that is what is so fascinating in my eyes.
Samantha Bonanno 

What could your hands tell ?

ABANDONED DISCOS

ABANDONED DISCOS

Apr 20, 2024 | MUSIC, MUSIC, VIDEO, VIDEO

Abandoned Discos is Max Pezzali’s new song for Warner Music. 

The title makes no secret of the subject, but what struck me was the video: a sequence of images depicting the crumbling remains of what were once places full of life and joyful moments, now inexorably abandoned.

The suggestion is made even more incisive by the succession of phrases by the Gotha of disc jockeys, see for yourself:

Have you ever been to one of these discos?

I used to like Friday nights at Celebrity: a discotheque near Novara that actually still exists, where my friend Daniela and I would literally spend the whole time dancing, and at the same time managing to chat 🙂

But it was at Vanità where I went to meet the man who later became my husband <3

The Vanità, the disco in Vigevano portrayed in the picture below the title, no longer exists: a mansion complex was built in its place.

This is also why I find that Max Pezzali succeeds in narrating by giving us the sensation of listening to words coming straight out of our own mouths.

It is definitely his trademark, as well as the secret of his success: simply being one of us.

I’ll never forget a summer evening before social media, before even mobile phones: the TV broadcasts the Castrocaro new voices competition and a Jovanotti introduced a duo.

They come in and sing Don’t bother me, I don’t understand what you want, you knew I wasn’t like you...

For me it was immediate and natural to stay in tune.

Soon the songs from the album Hanno ucciso l’uomo ragno (They Killed Spider-Man ) would be the soundtrack of holidays in Sardinia, Daniela was there too 🙂

1993: the following summer. Life has one of those difficult trials in store for my family: having to face destiny that bursts in to make it clear how from one moment to the next everything can collapse.

While I am in hospital watching my father struggle to live again after a haemorrhage, I receive a gift: the North South West East music tape.

Yes: the ‘cassette’ … Who remembers it?

The guy I went to look for at Vanità 🙂 gave me North South West East and North South West East gave us our song to sing embracing each other at the concert in the Pavia arena.

The days of the San Siro stadium were still far away, and the 883 sang at their home: Pavia, exactly, which is also a province in the broadest sense.

Their home, our home.

The days when the dream of the 883 would come true were also far away.

The characters of the Harley Davidson Pavia  staff are known to all those who followed the series Le strade di Max (Max roads), do you know it?

In case you missed it, you can have a good ride here. 

To get ‘on route’ let’s go back to 1994: when Mauro’s dream takes a different path …

On stage with Max are Paola and Chiara but also Michele Monestiroli and Daniele Moretto.

Thirty years ago.

And then?

And then life goes by and today we find ourselves in abandoned discotheques.

What did we miss?

RESTORED VELARIUM

RESTORED VELARIUM

Mar 16, 2024 | ART, BOOKS

Restored velarium at at the Cagnoni Theatre in Vigevano:  a rare case of a velario preserved in its original location.

It is a work by the painter Giovan Battista Garberini entitled The Siege of Vigevano.

The restoration was financed thanks to a fundraiser organised by the Associazione Amici del Teatro Cagnoni  and the Fondazione Piacenza Vigevano.

Sipario alla ribalta, written by Edoardo Maffeo, Dino Rabai, Giovanni Borroni and Pier Luigi Muggiati and published by Ievve, is dedicated to this work.

Sipario alla ribalta was published with the contribution of ASM Energia, Amici di Palazzo Crespi, Soroptimist Lomellina and the patronage of the Municipality of Vigevano. 

On Saturday 9 March at the Teatro Cagnoni foyer, the authors held the book presentation as speakers.

 

Edoardo Maffeo edited the part of the book concerning a careful biography of the Vigevano painter Giovan Battista Garberini.

Dino Rabai recounted what Vigevano was like at the end of the 19th century through meticulous research based on historical archives, interweaving his talk with curious and interesting information and anecdotes.

Giovanni Borroni dealt with the historiography of the 19th century on a national and international level as a century of important changes.

His speech offered a series of reflections that I really recommend not to miss: he himself called it a short chronology of a long century actually a long chronology of a short century.

I also leave you with the question that Giovanni Borroni asked those present: what is the historiographical sense of dividing history into centuries?

Pier Luigi Muggiati reassembled the historical facts, providing a precise reconstruction beyond the legend that has been handed down over time and revealing a particularly relevant detail.

But let us take a step back and return to the Siege of Vigevano portrayed on the velarium: if you pause to look at the scene depicted, you will notice that women are portrayed in the centre.

They are the ones strenuously defending the breach from the invaders commanded by Francesco Sforza, led by the woman depicted as a heroine in shining armour with drawn sword.

We have always known this character as Camilla Rodolfi.

However, Camilla Rodolfi is not a real woman: the name Camilla was inspired by the character in the Aeneid, while the surname Rodolfi belonged to an important family from Vigevano.

A woman who undoubtedly deserves mention is Pinin Brambilla Barcilon famous for the restoration of the Cenacolo: she was also the restorer of the Garberini’s velari, the book includes her report kept at La Venaria Reale. 

Giovan Battista Garberini also painted a second curtain entitled La Festa sul Ticino. 

Did you know that the curtain or velarium is also called a ‘comodino’ that more or less means handy?

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