DANCING AROUND GHOSTS
Monditalia - La Biennale di Venezia - 14th Architecture Exhibition
de Gayardon Bureau: Sara Angelini, Alessio Valmori and Colm O'Brien in collaboration with Betina Holt Haraldsen took part in the 14th International Architecture Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia: Fundamentals, curated by RemKoolhaas OMA. With our piece of Research about Italian Tourism, we have been one of the teams exhibiting within the framework of Monditalia, at the Corderie dell'Arsenale. Here you find pictures from the installation, Thanks to Irish photographer Alice Clancy, for the images.
This is a story about neglect. Neglect as a form of abandonment and as a form of distraction.
MiMa is a touristic city in pure state: an industrial machine for the production of leisure. It is the stage for a periodic danse macabre where the city dances around its own ghosts. Aperitivo-Street Bars, Beach Parties and Night clubs, the danse, are flourishing around an ever-thinning urban environment, Ghosts.
MiMa is a concentration of hollow built mass that coexists with highly congested open spaces, a modern day “panem et circenses”, enchanting and distracting the masses from the current state of decline.
the new Advertising Campaign
The touristic experience of Milano Marittima, has always relied on its attractive performances, thus it’s been grounded since its birth to advertising. The city, as a physical artifact, is in a way only a byproduct, a latter equipment of the touristic engine.
The prosperity of MiMa and its urban development are bound to its self-representation and branding strategies. When popularity means survival then the city actually exists through advertising.
the Real Estate virtual board
MiMa has one of the highest prices per square meter on the Italian Real Estate market. The marketing of the empty built mass becomes then the imagery tool not only to portray the city of ghosts; but also to explore its capacities and reveal the hollow of its economic bubble.
On sale in this mock real-estate-agency board goes a catalogue of ghosts: the other side of MiMa’s city-branding.
the Diorama theatre
The city of ghosts and the city of outdoor congestion are staging their coexistence in a seasonal danse macabre, taking place every new late spring.
Through the creation of a layered diorama, similar in composition to a digital theater, now the two cities are brought together for simultaneous perception, but as well opposed for individual analysis.
The new paradoxical elevation of MiMa speaks both of proximity and detachment.
