Foundations

Landing in Rome and travelling by car to Pietrafitta, we are moving at speed through the landscape, giving a sense of passageways glimpsing the concentration of architecture and built environment. The further we go, it slowly dissipates into more haphazard formations cut into the mountains careful navigation is needed as we move closer to the village.

Mak9’s residency project, Riv-er-be-ro at Pietrafitta is taking my interests in clay down below the surface- subterranean – where the earth is reverberating activity of instability, earthquakes and aftershocks. Architecture is marked with fracture lines where the exposed foundations and constructions are patched and supported with skeletal struts and scaffolds.

Moments of composition are held in every view.

After a day or two, observations of contrast have arisen; construction sites abandoned and empty buildings are intersected with the new and inhabited. Ageing bodies of the environment, where buildings are succumbing to terms of contention with the organic; reclamation and regrowth. Agreement to gravity is still in negotiation.

My eyes are attuned, my skin is actively receptive and my breath in taking Pietrafitta – all is permeable and felt, open and active.

The work can now begin.

Gail

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