NONTURISMO

The instrument of this collective process are community editorial boards, where artists, historians, economists, sociologists, botanists, hold short residencies with the community, helping them to reappropriate a common memory heritage to investigate their present and build new future imaginaries.

The community’s process consists of a series of meetings coordinated by an in-country or community partner, in which residents and foragers participate, stimulating the transformation of content into a multi-voiced storytelling, made up of words and images, far from the idea of a single author.

It is not possible to know what a nontourist guide will look like from the beginning. Its form and content are defined as it goes along, according to the spirit of the place. However, every guide cannot lack some basic elements, which define its backbone:

GENIUS LOCI: Historical, traditional, folkloric, as well as naturalistic elements that have contributed to the identity of the place.

EMERGENCIES: That which is on the surface, which is coming to the surface-positive and negative.

VISIONS: More or less utopian projections of what will be the land told fifty years from now.

A plural journey to discover Ussita, the village in the Sibillini Mountains hit by the 2016 earthquake. A guidebook as mobile as the land it narrates: from the movement of the earth shaken by the earthquake, to a community in motion, guiding the traveler to self-discovery through a “seismic” narrative, in which text and images speak at once of the old, the new and the imaginary.

The traveler is offered two narrative itineraries designed under the supervision of C.A.S.A. – Cosa Accade Se Abitiamo.

Vivere qui, collects residents’ stories on 8 routes and engages the traveler in the life of the Hussite community, guiding them in an urban/naturalistic exploration of the places that characterize the new post-earthquake daily life and history of the area.

From the Dalla valle alle vette, divided into 4 parts, is an ascent from the valley floor to Mount Bove, belonging to the northern part of the Sibillini mountain range and a symbol of the territory, a spiritual experience narrated by writer Alessandro Chiappanuvoli in which the traveler’s imagination is the indispensable element to give substance to the suggestions narrated. Some of the points of interest touched by the routes overlap, leaving the traveler free to rewrite his or her own route.

There are places in Bologna that still resist the aesthetics of tourism: they are not photogenic, they are not decent, they do not display the Unesco stamp and they do not sell tortellini at 35 euros a kilo. Yet precisely because they resist, they best express the city’s genius loci, its rebellious attitude. Places where unexpected plants grow, where culture changes the use of spaces, where homelessness can be inhabited, where the night belongs to everyone and everyone. This guide collects them in four routes thanks to the work of three “community editors,” that is, people who live Bologna and do not resign themselves to contemplating it as it turns into its postcard. (Wu Ming 2)

The theme around which the three community editorial boards for the Bologna guide have been activated is resistance, a word strongly linked to Bologna’s historical and social identity, which the editorial boards are called upon to reread and decline according to their own sensibilities:

• The resistance of biodiversity in suburban trails
• The resistance of homeless people
• the resistance of small cultural centers

The Ancona nontourism guide is part of Sistema, an initiative launched by the City of Ancona, in collaboration with Parco del Conero, CNR-IRBIM, CSV Marche Ets, Polo9, Casa delle Culture – il Pungitopo, Hort, Scholanova di Varano, with the support of Fondazione Cariverona.

For Ancona’s Nonturismo guide, between March and July 2023, Ancona inhabitants will be engaged in a participatory journey to tell the story of their city to those who travel as “nontourists”. Three community editorial boards led by trainer Tommaso Sorichetti, bookseller Simona Rossi and Museo Tattile Statale Omero coordinator Annalisa Trasatti, with Wu Ming 2 curatorship, will tell stories about certain places in Ancona, according to a “spirit of place” chosen during a collective co-design workshop.

Thinking of the city as a living being: online the results of the public event in which curator and inhabitants co-designed the theme of Ancona’s Nonturismo guide.

Nonturismo Ancona: what’s going on in the community editorials? an in-depth look at the first places mapped by the three community editorials groups for the collaborative writing of the Ancona Nonturismo guide.

Watch the video of the project carried out in Bologna in 2022.

Read the interview with Federico Bomba about Nonturism on La Freccia, Trenitalia’s in-depth monthly magazine, the article (in French) in Culture & Démocratie magazine, and Wu Ming 2’s article on Bologna’s nontourism guide for the blog Giap.

Shop now the guides on Ussita. Monti Sibillini and Bologna.

Listen to the audio documentary by journalist Sara Sartori on how earthquake affected tourism models in mountain area, through voices from Ussita inhabitants and local municipality.

Nonturismo is a project conceived by Sineglossa and Riverrun and a series published by Ediciclo.

The Ussita guide is produced by Sineglossa with the collaboration of C.A.S.A. – Cosa Accade Se Abitiamo as part of the “Once App On A Time” project, funded by the Department of Youth and National Civil Service.

The Bologna guide is produced by Sineglossa in collaboration with Piazza Grande, Kilowatt, Yoda, ITACA, Tatanka, with the support of Comune di Bologna, Lo Stato Dei Luoghi, Orchestra Senza Spine. The project is funded by the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture with Creative Living Lab Call for Proposals III edition, with the contribution of Fondazione del Monte.