ViewsVisions. Parco delle Cave, Milano, 2024 (1976-1979, 1981).
Each frame is designed to be played in a continuous loop. It doesn't necessarily have to be viewed in its entirety.
Soundless video installation by Alessandro Vicario with 2 photographs by Ennio Vicario.
Direction, cinematography and moving shots: Alessandro Vicario
Photographs (1976-1979): Ennio Vicario
Editing: Davide Ferrario – Videozone.
Emerging around the artificial lakes (the quarries) created by gravel and sand extraction activities that began in the 1920s and were abandoned in the 1960s, the Parco delle Cave is the third largest park in Milan, after Parco Nord and Parco Forlanini. Located in the western part of the city, in the Baggio district, and managed by the Municipality of Milan, along with Boscoincittà and Parco di Trenno, it constitutes the Parco Agricolo Sud Milano.
The Parco delle Cave includes a water system dominated by four artificial basins (the quarries); agricultural fields (mostly associated with Cascina Caldera); and natural environments such as groves, wet meadows, and wetlands. The vegetation, which is dense and lush in the more wooded areas, is dominated by black locust, field maple, hornbeam, ash, poplar, oak, and willow. The park is inhabited by a rather varied fauna, consisting of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and even rabbits and foxes. Many bird species are present and can be spotted: the cormorant, heron, egret, mallard, moorhen, flycatcher, swallow, skylark, woodcock, green woodpecker, and redstart, to name just a few. Near the farmhouses, nocturnal predators such as barn owls and little owls nest.
The installation ViewsVisions. Parco delle Cave, Milano, 2024 (1976-1979, 1981) does not claim to be a documentary. Few (and arbitrary) visual fragments evoke the radical (and positive) transformations undergone by this urban area in recent decades. From the late seventies, dominated by abandonment, decay, and squalor (which already offered precious glimpses of beauty to those who knew how to spot them), to a present capable of surprising with lush, vibrant natural glimpses. I focused my attention on nature and the animals that live there. I preferred to represent human presence in an indirect and allusive way. The rhythm reproduces the long and relaxed times of nature.
The work also recalls my individual and family memory. And my (early) visual formation. Among the moving images, black and white photographs taken by my father Ennio between 1976 and 1979 occasionally appear (some of which were printed on linen canvas and hand-colored); and a couple of photographs that I took myself in the winter of 1981, with the legendary Rollei with a Galilean viewfinder (the camera of my childhood). These latter ones, carefully preserved in a photo album, represent some specimens of a flock of mute swans from Northern Europe that came to winter in Milan that year, staying for a few months at Parco delle Cave.
The installation consists of 9 projections (or monitors) that continuously reproduce different shots of variable duration. The work presupposes a fragmented vision influenced by chance. What the viewers will see depends mainly on chance (the moment they find themselves in front of the monitor), as well as on the curiosity and patience that the operator (myself) had during the shooting. And finally, on their own patience and curiosity.
Alessandro Vicario
Milan, May 23, 2024
