In December 2023, we came back to Chiasso. For two days, we invited the inhabitants to meet, to discuss about hospitality, to build a pavilion, to walk with a parade through the city, to play, to eat... This is how we imagine the Fabbrica di Ospitalità.
In Ticino, 111 people have NEM status. Their asylum application has been rejected, but they cannot be sent back to their country of origin, despite the wishes of the SEM. They are therefore stuck for years and have no right to education, work, etc.
Over several afternoons in Chiasso and Mendrisio, we made 111 Christmas balls, each representing one of these people.
On 6 January, we carried these balls through the streets of Bellinzona to draw attention to the problem.
The manifesto, drawn up by the R-esistiamo collective, ended at Bellinzona town hall, where we deposited the balls.
This is a documentation of a spontaneous gesture we did in Capo Ponente, a location in the extreme west of Lampedusa. Capo Ponente is known as a nice panoramic spot, but it is also where the demolished refugees' boats were left through all these years.
Once we reached the spot we started looking around: the landscape seemed empty. Then we noticed small pieces of wood: the rests of the boats.
We instinctively started to collect them and while we were walking around the site, new objects were discovered. Metal wires, gasoline cans, life jackets, nails, clothes, coins, and so on. Both personal items and boat equipment were scattered in the area, covered or half-buried by the arid earth.
During the creation process, we decided to define a circle of stones to perceive the "mass presence in space" of this abandoned and intangible reality.
