Temporary Life

TEMPORARY LIFE a documentary project by Francesca Cao curated by Irene Alison/DER*LAB Temporary Life is a photographic documentary project about unfinished post seismic-reconstruction in Italy. Italy is strongly interested by a seismic activity, during the centuries earthquakes changed the topography of the country, displacing many. During the 1900s a lot of money was allocated by the Italian government to reconstruct the broken lands, but, due to mismanagement of the local administrations, in many situations the rebuilding process has never ended, even after more than a century. This is the case of the Balsorano area, in the L'Aquila province, where in 1915 an earthquake completely destroyed the city of Avezzano and the surrounding area, and where the temporary houses where never abandoned to the point where the inhabitants restructured them. Like in Messina, where the earthquake has been in 1908 and the people still live in shacks built more than a century ago. The project travels through the country telling the stories of who lives in temporary situations for sometimes even decades, like Ernestina Cristiano who lived in an asbestos temporary house for almost thirty years. These accommodations are made of different materials depending on the year they where built, but most of the times they are unhealthy because covered by asbestos. In the case of the Belice valley in Sicily, where the earthquake struck in 1968, the broken villages where abandoned and the new ones where rebuilt next to them. The abandoned villages stand like cathedrals in the desert and inside of their houses there still are signs of a forgotten life in the objects that have been left behind forty years ago. The project is conceived to be composed by the pictures, that tell narratively the story and by the objects found in abandoned villages in the Belice area. The objects have been mounted in boxes and hanged on the original wallpaper, found with them in the broken houses, to symbolize the Temporary Life of the people that left them behind. The objects bring the documentary project on a more intimistic level showing the rural life made by simple things like a soccer ball or a cow bell, few letters from the parents who fled in south america or a school theme. They are the physical evidence of the behavioral pattern of the people that keep waiting for a better life.