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The spirit of Ancona: amphibious city
Is it still possible to tell a story about a city, to take care of its thousand stories, to evoke its spirits with new words, without turning it into a product, one to be sold like a merry-go-round?
On Saturday, February 11, 2023, a new run of NONTURISMO, the project curated by Sineglossa to produce a tourist guide written by the community, started in Ancona. This guidebook describes the territory by collecting the voice and visions of those who live in it, and people who study or work there.
Together with writer Wu Ming 2 and 100 people joining the event “What if Ancona was a living being?” a multifaceted narrative was born, in which the themes of environment, urban planning, culture, and work met and generated the image of “Ancona amphibious city.”
It is a hypothetical collective narration, a way to care for places firstly by listening to what they have to say, gently, respecting penumbras, conflicts, and secrets. So writing a non-tourist guidebook together is an opportunity to discover the faces of a city, to grasp its meaning. To question the identity of an area and get it moving again so that it doesn't get lost, or, worse, grow old under glass.
The community-based process
Starting with the theme “Ancona amphibious city”, from April to June 2023 there will be 3 workshop courses, open to 45 people who live in the city of Ancona, dedicated to exploring and narrating three characteristics of the amphibiopolis.
These courses engaging the local community in the NONTURISM project are called “community editorial boards” and include:
- 3 meetings of three hours each, facilitated by Tommaso Sorichetti, Annalisa Trasatti, Simona Rossi
- 1 day-long collective writing workshop with Wu Ming 2
- 15 attendees
- the creation of 1 non-touristic route, including maps and highlights, set in Ancona
Editorial boards: What you do in the meetings
Between meetings, people may be asked to do some “homework” including, for example, collecting stories on their own, verifying information, and recovering sources by accessing a shared digital space (Google Drive).
Editorial boards: themes and dates
Sunrise and sunset on the same sea represent the continuity between yesterday and tomorrow, between past and future. The sun rises from the depths, brings to the surface submerged wrecks, forgotten legends, and at the same time illuminates the new day, with its surprises and landings previously unseen. It rises high in the sky and immediately falls again, loses intensity, dives to the horizon, and is already old. “Ancient to the future” is the title of an ’87 record by the Art Ensemble of Chicago. In drawing Ancona as a living being, many people have emphasized its long history, the little-known episodes, and the scars of time. Others highlighted the unexpressed potential, the futures abandoned and those realized, the uncertain future that is difficult to glimpse.
Are there any ancient places for the future in the city of two suns? Places in which what happened is wedded to what could happen, or what is already happening? Like a centuries-old tree, harboring and feeding insect larvae, and rodent communities, an ideal habitat for life to come?
(Wu Ming 2, for the “Two Suns” community editorial board of Ancona’s Nonturismo guide)
The community editorial meetings will be held on:
- Monday, April 3 | h. 18:30 – 21:30 | Fogola Fàgola (Corso Mazzini, 170)
- Tuesday, April 18 | h. 18:30 – 21:30 | Fogola Fàgola (Corso Mazzini, 170)
- Tuesday, May 16 | h. 18:30 – 21:30 | Creative Ground of Sineglossa (Marconi Street, 41)
- Saturday, May 27 | h. 9 – 18 | Creative Ground of Sineglossa (Marconi Street, 41)
Coming out of the water, the amphibian retains the energy of the current, waves, eddies and gales. He was born in an element that never stands still, and he carries that restlessness in his muscles. His own metamorphosis from tadpole to adult is a reshuffling of forces, a genetic collision that no longer leaves him. At regular intervals it changes its skin and feeds on its own peel.
Is it possible to trace, in the city landscape, the reservoirs of vibrancy? The social experiments, the fruitful mixes, the spontaneous projects, the batteries that recharge the community? Buildings that exude ideas, squares of animated encounters and clashes, streets lived in and redesigned every day. But also, by way of contrast, the black holes where all initiatives sink, the dead spaces, the dens of zombies and vampires?
(Wu Ming 2, for the “Tides” community editor of the Ancona Nontourism Guide)
Community drafting meetings will be held on the following days:
- Thursday, April 6 | h. 18:30 – 21:30 | Fogola Fàgola (Corso Mazzini, 170)
- Thursday, April 20 | h. 18:30 – 21:30 | Fogola Fàgola (Corso Mazzini, 170)
- Thursday, May 18 | h. 18:30 – 21:30 | Creative Ground of Sineglossa (Marconi Street, 41)
- Sunday, May 28 | h. 9 – 18 | Creative Ground of Sineglossa (Marconi Street, 41)
In the amphibian heart, needless to say, blood is mixed in the one ventricle: venous and arterial, dirty and clean. Similarly, we could say that Ancona’s lungs, the organs that give it oxygen, are the Conero and the Adriatic, but its arteries carry a mixed blood, made up of concrete and plants, smog and sea breeze, trees and asphalt, saltiness and fine dust.
To enter the city, even the green becomes amphibious, learning to survive among obstacles, in cracks, skirting walls. Unexpected flowerbeds sprout between alleys, paths unfold between stairways and buildings, while the scent of waves escapes the queued cars and reaches the lookouts on the hills.
Where are Ancona’s arteries, her invisible lungs, her reserves of impure blood? What are the unusual gardens, rebellious plants, ecological corridors, biodiversity patches? Where is it that the sea enters the city, grass grows unexpectedly, and dolphins meet secretly with wild boars?
(Wu Ming 2, for the “Mixed Blood” community editorship of Ancona’s Nonturismo guide)
Community drafting meetings will be held on the following days:
- Monday, May 15 | h. 18:30 – 21:30 | Fogola Fàgola (Corso Mazzini, 170)
- Tuesday, May 23 | h. 18:30 – 21:30 | Fogola Fàgola (Corso Mazzini, 170)
- Tuesday, June 06 | h. 18:30 – 21:30 | Creative Ground of Sineglossa (Via Marconi, 41)
- Saturday, June 10 | h. 9 – 18 | Creative Ground of Sineglossa (Marconi Street, 41)
PLEASE NOTE: You can subscribe to more than one editorial board.
