Dafnà Moscati and Marco Mazzotti
il mediterraneo nella tua città
Racconti per un confronto
[the mediterraneo in your city
stories for a confrontation]
A project and a documentary video by Dafna Moscati
and Marco Mazzotti for 'Love Difference' during the participation in the
50th Venice Biennale.
Project in collaboration with Love Difference.
Love can start only after the 'confrontation'. We need first of all to create
opportunities to meet the other, to be confronted with the different. From
curiosity and surprises the prejudices can naturally disappear and the space
for real contact can appear.
The Mediterraneo in your city is a way to get curious about ‘the
foreigner’, to get to know better ‘the stranger’, to get
closer to ‘the other’. We are afraid of what we don’t know,
of what we imagine only through prejudices.
We wanted to find ‘the Mediterranean’ in different cities. We
started with Venice. The Mediterranean, as a starting point, an example of
an infinite variety and richness of different cultures. We searched and interviewed
23 people coming from each one of the Mediterranean
countries that are living and working in the area of Venice. We
explored in which ways these people are keeping contact with
their ‘home’ country, which traditions, rituals, habits they are
still
preserving in their new home. We spoke about food, superstitions, games, fairytales,
proverbs, education, festivities, symbols, characteristic objects, behaviours,
animals, smells, nature and much more.
A main point in the interviews was to find out about ‘stories’:
personal stories, traditional stories, tales, legends, anecdotes and of course
what mean to them the Mediterranean and these two words: ‘Love Differences’!
The special familiar atmosphere that was quickly created during
the encounters, the openness and hospitality of the people we
interviewed, their will to talk about themselves, their life and
their experiences, the taste of all these different countries left us
with the desire for more.
by Dafnà Moscati, artist
Download
the printable .PDF file