The Dam of the Damned

Abstract

Over the last five decades, Italy has invested in the construction of public works as the core strategy to dynamize its less favoured regions; however, due to multiple and inherent dysfunctionalities, many of these remain half-built and abandoned today. The group of artists Alterazioni Video refer to this phenomenon as “Incompiuto” (“Incompletion” in English), coining a name for a new architectural style where the characteristic unfinished materiality speaks back to Italian idiosyncrasy. In the pursuit of existential dignity, Alterazioni Video suggest that these sites muster and reassemble metaphysical places of contemplation, thought and the imaginary. Drifting at one of its most spectacular samples (The Dam of Blufi, Sicily), the present collaboration between an architect and a writer testifies to said assertion, and celebrates the phenomenological qualities of modern ruination argued in emerging geographical literatures.