AN ORIENTATION TO THE VFI

Welcome to the Virgolo Future Institute. We are forming an inquiry into how certain spaces can be reconfigured in the mental constitution of the city. Virgolo is a hill, or a small mountain, right next to the station and the city center of Bozen/Bolzano.

“All cities are geological” (1); this is more about historical layering rather than earth and rocks. Not to claim that these are separate to one another. Cities are perpetual re-compositions of earth and rocks. At VFI you will see that many attempts at domesticating Virgolo occured and still do, some structured and some sporadic.

What is at stake is perhaps forecasting these broken pasts. An accumulation of a scattered geneaology to imagine possible futures for this place. Even though the Virgolo was formerly used, and fitted with infrastructure, it is now perceived as a ‘terrain vague’. We at the Institute believe this is exactly the kind of spaces that are vital to the contemporary city. Places that do not fall into the organizing logic of the city (or fell out of it) but have a life of their own. We see that many people were already using the Virgolo in many many different ways, and feel that this should be addressed before rushing into ‘re-developing it’.

The VFI, as any good institution, is structured into departments. These departments manifest themselves in the form of ‘almost identical but not’ stations. The succession of these stations, form a corridor, a triangular prism, when located in the premises of ar/ge kunst, generate three volumes. These volumes each resemble triangular prisms as well.

The structure that enables this division of space resembles a roof, or is it a mountain? Perhaps a tunnel of sorts.

The findings and reflections presented at the VFI, are categorized and located in these three stations, yet some seem to be seeping outwards into the lenghty volumes. Though these can be tracked and visited in various orders at the Institute, the stations encase, or frame a set of interests. And this is the formation of its departments:

• Landscapes of Desire
• Inhabiting Infrastructures
• Limit Experience
• Hacienda Langerhof
• and Split Horizon, which can be seen as a satellite, or an appendix.

LANDSCAPES OF DESIRE

 Many stories intermingled during our investigation on the Virgolo. What almost all had in common was that each involved an attempt at domestication, resulting in some form of resistance from the mountain. And at times, some of these attempts of domestication provided forms of resistance to other attempts. It is a complicated geography, we are certain no one can deny that. There are many dualities embedded to the recent history, going back almost a century. But these dualities also form contradicting relations. Furthermore there are discrepancies between various narratives that form these dualities.

So, when talking about a near future for the Virgolo, it is an easy way out to locate it ONLY as a matter of neo-liberal development versus preservationist resistance. This is the kind of geography where referendums are bound to be misleading, yet somehow policy makers insist on organizing them.

The “Landscapes of Desire” station tries to map out various narratives that have been encountered in the process of investigation. The institute is certain that these are not the only narratives at stake, but they are significant and meaningful nonetheless.

These include, anachronologically: the numerous attempts at establishing a transport infrastructure, in the forms of funiculars and cable cars leading to a social center, a recreational area of sorts; the bombings and the inner struggle during the World War II and a very personal encounter with a captive American officer whose plane was taken down (an encounter that challenged the rights and wrongs of a young individual named Ettore); a group of theatre enthusiasts aiming to rehabilitate some buildings in an initiative to make it an art space, yet surrendering to a fire that took down their roof; a local investor wanting to build a fantasyland; an international investor inviting global star architects to design yet another funicular as a token for access to deeper and wider land grabs in the city center; plants taking over formerly used areas such as tennis courts, various groups of youth occupying the derelict buildings in order have parties, graffiti events, free-running (aka Parkour) routes; others seeking refuge in those same places; news media scape-goating the place as “degrado” and a menace to the city.

All of these and the various visual techniques and modes of representation these embrace are available in this station: historical paraphernalia, archival images, newspapers, fancy architectural renderings that employ the same bright future for everywhere around the globe, and many photographs, some documents manipulated and some documents used for manipulation.

Landscapes of Desire include actions, projections, vegetations in and of a place. Afterall, it is the Institute’s desire to open a discussion over the visions and the possibilities to “handle” the mountain: a matter of “figuring out” and “figuring in”. As Italo Calvino said, the city is not its 77 wonders, it is the desires it can accommodate (2).

INHABITING INFRASTRUCTURE

 A little known story about the Virgolo mountain is that of a group who settled in the semi-constructed tunnel and lived there for some years after the Second World War. News articles on the "mole people" suggests the tunnel dwellers informally made the gallery their home. This is the perfect starting point, for this station: a little-known history for discussing the current conditions of spatial justice. So the question is about who has access to public space, and who is refused and forced to seek inhabitation out of sight. And infrastructure is something so vital to the city, yet it also becomes the habitat of those who do not fit in.

This station is inhabited by images and objects that resonate with this sense of withdrawal, escape, refuge, into the darkness of the city. Appropriated from cinema, popular culture, and real myths of those who dwell underground. Narrow living in Bucharest, Dark Days in the New York Metro Underground, and more.

LIMIT EXPERIENCE

 Some label Bolzano as ‘Lampedusa in the Alps’. The VFI attempts to tackle this issue of borders, touching upon borders in Virgolo, borders in Bolzano, borders of civic space, and how mental borders as well as very physical ones are being constantly raised. This problem of borders both within the city and in-between larger territories will be haunting everyone in the foreseeable future unfortunately. One needs to be alert, and not fall into political polarizations when faced with these moments. We at the Institute believe there is too much of a reactive mentality, everybody seems to ask for quick solutions. There is a great need to think, problematize, and develop slower, deeper responses to the situations. This is both in relation to how to organize the city, our immediate environment; and in relation to influxes of people on the move, people who are passing through land and sea in search of better places.

We ask everyone to reconsider quick reactions, as channelled through news articles or propagandist displays promoting constructions; for example to question manouvers in the city such as handing over the Hotel Alpi (a dis-used building in a very strategic position with regards to the developments proposed by an international investor) only temporarily for housing those who are seeking refuge.

In terms of this station, which is somewhere in-between “inhabiting infrastructure” and “Haçienda/Langerhof”, but also related to the “landscapes of desire” we invite you to move away from pre-mediated responses, and to question the bombardment of very structured and repetitive representations about the future of the city. These representations, whether they are drawing a beautiful or a grim picture, block one’s imagination, and disable from coming up with alternatives, or even more sophisticated analyses of the situations.

HAÇIENDA / LANGERHOF

“no longer setting out for the hacienda where the roots think of the child and where the wine is finished off with fables from an old almanac. That’s all over. You’ll never see the hacienda. It doesn’t exist.

The haçienda must be built.”

 So said one of the key texts of the Situationist Internationale: “A Formulary for A New Urbanism” (3). This was also the text that gave the name to the infamous Manchester nightclub. It called for place that can be collectively made and remain constantly to be in the making. A place where the ideals of the city can be perpetually tested. Testing, not as simulating but as trying out, taking actual steps. Virgolo Future Institute asks for the derelict campus to be turned into such a space in the making. The representation or a visual projection of such a space is not a matter of concern. It needs to be thought and made. It must be built.

The Institute calls for such a space, to be constantly in the making, to be in the name of a thinker whose life’s work was dealing with the complexities of this geography. Even though times change, some fundamental questions Alexander Langer raised, seem to still resonate. We believe the resonance of Langer’s ideas need to be housed in some form. 

Alexander Langer was not only a politician, a founder of the Green Party in Italy, and a European Parliamenter. He was also someone who is deeply troubled and outspoken about the complexities and the political impasses the geography of the SüdTirol posited. Langer also held regular meetings at one of the privately owned restaurant-houses on the Virgolo, on of the two “...hof”s located here.

Our proposal for Langerhof, is not a memorial but a living monument. We dare not make visual embellishments, beautiful presentations to project a desirable architectural edifice, our objective is not an object that will sit on top of this mountain. Therefore the Institute only maps the site, the campus, the Virgolo.

We find another map drawn by Langer himself. A map drawn by words and phrases, that provide a geological excavation of the place, the area: a geology of history and politics, of the ghosts one encounters here. The Glossary of South Tyrol, is an unfinished project that compiles 138 entries, titles that less than a third were written off. But these phrases already provide us the tools for navigation, almost as if the explanations were never necessary. These tools sometimes can be confusing, or what they resonate today may differ from Langer’s intentions. But nonetheless they form a map, that allow one to read this geography. The VFI also utilizes excerpts from this map to allow a reading of its stations (or departments). These words cover a whole wall of the space, pointing to: “youth”-”intellectuals”-”farmers”; “monuments”-”placenames”-”alternatives”; “fears”-”prejudices”-”xenophobia”-”cohabitation”-”discrimination”-”displacement”; “borders”-”languages”-”survivability” and more.     

SPLIT HORIZON

 The split horizon is a vision device, that has travelled extensively in Bolzano, locating itself in key positions of significant meaning in terms of spatial dynamics and urban politics within Bolzano and its history. It is another tool to navigate the split geology. It is not a map, but it is an observation device, much like a telescope or a periscope. It provides access to opposing horizons at the cost of frontal vision.

The split horizon is at once a seed and a satellite of Virgolo Future Institute. It has travelled long before arriving to the Institute, and it can be removed and returned at will. It is a situated object with an open trajectory, the links that generate between the single locations are real but can be regarded also as purely mental.

ENTERING AND EXITING

 The window that divides the Institute from the street is a filter. It is green from the outside and blue from the inside. Somewhere central, at eye-height, there is triangular cut-off that proportionally matches the triangular structures that form the sequence of stations. This transparent hole, is about the size of one’s head. It provides peeping inwards or outwards.

Virgolo Future Institute is searching for an antidote, or at least a way to oppose the various manipulative visual regimes at stake, when it comes to imaging and imagining the city. We are making a call to keep thinking on, keep questioning the decisions, policies, and processes that are shaping our environment. We are proposing an admission of the complicated and fragmented nature of the urban space, and to build it accordingly.

NOTES

(1) Ivan Chtcheglov “Formulary for a New Urbanism” in Situationist International Anthology. Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006.

(2) As noted during the Reading Group session on David Harvey’s Urban Commons, directed by Paolo Plotheger. This was one in series of sessions as part of the wider programme that led to the foundation of the VFI.

(3) Chtcheglov, ibid.

DIRECTED TOUR #2: Michael Obrist (architect, Feld 72) in dialogue with the curators

15.07.2016, 7 pm at ar/ge kunst

A project by ar/ge kunst and Lungomare.